School is home to plenty of teachers, all teaching different subjects ranging from science, social studies, math to English. Of course, teachers teach in different styles.
Some teachers have a visual way of teaching, where they often use visual aids and other presentations to teach information. Other teachers use auditory teaching or hands-on learning, focusing more on lectures and activities to teach students.
However, certain hybrid styles of teaching use parts of all three, and still have their specific attributes.
One of these hybrid teaching styles focuses on only teaching the main idea of the curriculum. However, only focusing on the main idea of the curriculum, instead of what other information should be taught, is a terrible way to teach.
An example would be a math lesson where the teacher only focuses on the new equation they are learning, while the students would need a refresher on a previous lesson to understand this new equation.
One much better way to teach is to look at what the curriculum requires, seeing what the students know, and then formulating a plan to teach the students in a way to equal out the knowledge level.
The biggest problem of only focusing on the main idea of a curriculum is that most students are at different levels of knowledge, especially during high school.
Especially since school has a three month break over the summer, that usually leads to students having a wide range of knowledge they remember when they return to school in the fall.
While main idea teaching is beneficial, since it focuses on making sure the students know the main idea of the lesson, it does not make up for when students do not understand the earlier context of the lesson.
It would be way easier to get all the students caught up on the same level of knowledge, then teaching the main lesson, instead of just letting students get behind and leaving them confused. Taking the time to first see exactly what students need a refresher on before going over the main lesson would easily clear up any confusion.
As someone planning to go into teaching, I understand getting every single student on the same equal ground when it comes to knowledge does not sound like a simple task, but just taking the time to see exactly what important information a student would need a refresher on will do wonders to clear up confusion.
Out of all the different ways of teaching, visual, auditory or even hands-on, there are many better hybrid ways of teaching than main idea teaching.
