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| What Works? |
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| Scripted Lessons or Hollywood Hi Jinx? |
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Are Districts and Schools shifting to scripted lessons to compensate for
ineffective instructional practices?
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| By Gordon Carlson and John Hollingsworth |
| Researchers, DataWORKS Educational Research |
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The next time you walk into a classroom don’t be surprised if you see the teacher
reading from a script as children, at least some of the children, follow his or her lead.
We might be rapidly entering into an era of scripting in education.
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For a variety of reasons, publishers and school district leaders are adopting scripted
lessons as the way to convey the rigor of the new content standards. What questions need to be
asked and answered by educators before we relinquish our creative rights pertaining to lesson
development to this "Hollywood Approach" to teaching?
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1. Do scripted lessons address the components of good teaching: i.e.,
state the objective, preview/review/activate prior knowledge; explain, model, and demonstrate;
check for understanding; guided practice; corrective feedback; closure; and independent practice?
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2. Do scripted lessons include cognitive strategies for students to learn
declarative knowledge?
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3. Do scripted lessons include step-by-step directions for procedural knowledge?.
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4. Are strategies included for second language learners?
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5. Are they teaching at the recall level or at higher levels of thinking?
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6. As teachers present scripted lessons, are children actively engaged?
Is there a "bore factor" that needs to be examined?
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7. Are teachers capable of presenting scripted lessons effectively
since most teachers are not trained as actors to deliver pre-written dialog?
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8. Are textbook companies, whose primary forte is curriculum,
well-versed in effective instructional methodologies, especially those that address the needs and
learning modalities of challenged learners?
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When an observer* trained in effective, research-based teaching observes a scripted lesson
answers to these questions emerge. Often times little attention is paid by the teacher to checking
for understanding, to ensure that the students are actually following along. There is often insufficient
time spent on guided practice where examples are worked with the students. Most scripted lessons
focus on explanations which address the needs of auditory learners while most challenged learners need
more modeling and visual demonstrations. Often there is no opportunity or strategy for re-teaching,
making it possible that many students will have internalized inaccurate or incomplete concepts
and procedures. These students will be unprepared for successful completion of independent practice.
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As an observer further analyzes uncovers that during a scripted lesson, boredom often becomes
a limiting factor. Since teachers are not accomplished actors, presenting such lessons can be
challenging even to the most potentially effective teacher. Scripts can take away the creativity
and spontaneity of a good teacher reducing the lesson to a robotic-like delivery. Kids can rapidly
become disengaged learners and turn their attention to other matters.
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If the purpose of using scripted lesson is to take the quality of the teacher out of the picture,
then this goal is being met. Teacher quality will become irrelevant. In fact, the lessons could be read
by aides, parent volunteers, high school students, etc. However, keep in mind that the use of scripted
lessons may not optimize the instructional delivery of content to the students.
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Scripted lessons may show a short-term gain if the scripted delivery is better than the existing
teacher’s methodology. But a far more effective approach for long-term growth in student
learning would be for districts to focus on optimizing the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery
of grade-level content by all teachers. Effective reform efforts are those that improve the
teachers’ existing capabilities rather than bypassing them. Student achievement goes up when
students have learned more. Learning more is a direct result of having been taught more.
Improved teaching MAKES test scores go up.
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*Note: Information in this newsletter is based on DataWORKS Educational Research’s
observations of more than 10,000 classroom across the United States.
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