Preventing Death by Lecture!: Terrific Tips for Turning Listeners Into Learners

I had fun reading the book and will refer to it often when creating new presentations.

Teachers take note: the time of giving straight lectures and expecting your students to "get it" is over! This slim volume from Sharon Bowman will give you the strategies that you need to avoid this situation. I teach in senior secondary classes. One of the biggest concerns with these groups is the never ending need to "cover the material" - the external exam is looming, and we need to get through it! As a result, it is easy to fall into the trap of lecturing for 40-50 minutes, and just hoping that they will remember enough to get through. Of course, they won't. And it is not fair to expect that they could! Try listening to someone speak for that length of time and see how much YOU can remember! So how do we overcome the problem? Ms Bowman suggests that traditional lectures are still necessary in some instances, and she provides a list of reasons that may encourage us to use this format. The bulk of the book is used to show us how to make this time more meaningful for our students. The end result is that you can still cover the material (phew!), but now you are more likely to create a learning situation in which the material will be able to be recalled and understood by your learners. The strategies listed are a bit mixed - perhaps some are suited to a younger audience than I teach. For example, I can't imagine working with the "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" strategy from page 33. However, there is enough here to make your purchase worthwhile - I have already used the "Shout Out!" strategy from page 49 with great success, and others have been quickly integrated into my teaching practice as well. A book filled with easy to implement strategies. And it seems certain to me that every teacher will find at least a few that they will use.