I chose Gagne’s Nine
Events of Instruction. These nine events serve as a framework for designing
lessons. Step 1 is about gaining the attention of our students, which makes
complete sense to me. Step 2 refers to ensuring students know what will be
expected and what the learning goals are for the lesson. Step 3 wants students
to make connections to prior knowledge or to apply to a situation they have
already been through. Step 4 is where the content is presented to the students,
and this can be done in a variety of ways. Step 4 leads into step 5 since this
is the event where teachers are providing guidance, and giving additional
information to help their students in the learning process. As students move to
step 6, they are in the active learning stage, they are deepening their level
of understanding. Step 7 is providing feedback which is followed by assessing
student performance in Step 8. The last step is enhancing retention, and being
able to understand the material enough to be able to paraphrase what they have
learned (Kelly n.d.)
When considering young
elementary students, I like the idea that “Gagne skills are to learned at the
lowest level and mastered before proceeding” (Al-Shalabi, Andrews, Alrabea
& Kumar 2012). The idea that students can become proficient before being
asked to learn more is a positive, when considering young elementary students. I
like that the steps are well thought out, and there is a clear path for the
teacher and students.
The downside to Gagne’s
Nine Events of Instruction are that I don’t see a way to deviate from the nine
events, yet still be effective. Not all students learn the same way, and some
students may never reach the full depth of understanding referred to in the
events of instruction. This would be a concern, yet may still be a possible
framework if adjustments could be made.
As far as applying this
theory to my own teaching, I think we are doing many of these steps even in
elementary school already. This was the first year we taught a common core type
math to our students. We spent much more time explaining what our goals were,
how we would reach them, allowing students to practice each skill and really
worked on the students gaining a deeper level of understanding before we moved
to more topics.
If we were to create
online practice for young students, the nine events of learning would help
teachers stay focused on the goals and help to ensure our students were
continually growing and learning. The nine events are a nice map to help get
our students through concepts and lessons.
Al-Shalabi, H.,
Andraws, S., Alrabea, A. I., & Kumar, A. V. S. (2012). V model of
E-learning using gagne nine steps of education. Journal of Software Engineering
and Applications, 5 (11), 850-854. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/login?
E-learning using gagne nine steps of education. Journal of Software Engineering
and Applications, 5 (11), 850-854. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/login?
url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1281851414?accountid=12085
Kelly, M. (n.d.). Gagne's Nine Events
of Instruction. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from
http://712educators.about.com/od/learningtheories/tp/Gagnes-Nine-Events-Of-Instruction.htm