When trying to come up with cheap and easy ways of learning by doing, it can be useful to learn from those who have gone before. I grew up with the most time-honored (or vilified) version of Say, See, Do Teaching.

My classroom had three walls of slate chalkboards. Throughout my grade school years, I did almost all my lessons — vocabulary, arithmetic, sentence structure, verb tense — at the board.

Working at the board provided the involvement and precision of one-on-one coaching. In addition, that format prevented a lot of squirrelly behavior because it enabled us to get out of our seats, stretch our legs, and do something.

A half-dozen times a day, I’d hear the teacher announce the beginning of a lesson by saying, “All right class, let’s all go to the board.”

Imagine the lesson was math. She would write a problem on the board, and we would copy it. Then she would say, “Class, let’s do this first problem nice and slow so we all get it.”

The teacher would explain and model step one, and then we would do step one. It was easy for her to monitor our work from the front of the class because it was written large in chalk.

Corrective feedback was given immediately, often by way of partner pairs standing next to each other. “Robert, would you check your partners multiplication on that last step?”

The teacher coached the class through the new skill just as a basketball coach might coach a team through a new play. With continual monitoring and corrective feedback, there was little worry about getting it wrong. Board work was relaxed. And, since kids enjoy writing on the board with chalk, it didn’t seem much like work.

After completing the first problem, we would erase it and do another problem. The process would be the same, but we would pick up the pace, because we now were familiar with the steps. Then we would erase and do another problem, then another. By that time, we were in the groove. Then the teacher would say, “Let’s do one last problem for speed, and then we’ll take our seats.”

Once we were at our seats, the teacher might say,

“All right class, would you please open your math books to page 67 and look at the practice set at the top of the page. Do you see anything familiar?”

There would be a few giggles, as we realized once again that we had done problems 1-5 at the board. Then the teacher would say, “I think you know how to do these by now. Let’s do problems 6-9 just for practice, and I will come around to check your work. When you have done all the problems correctly, I will excuse you to work on your science project.”

Doing lessons at the chalkboard had some real advantages for the teacher, as well as for the students. It was simple and cheap and never got old. And we were busy doing throughout the lesson — which kept us focused.

for more information about Say, See, Do Teaching, please visit http://www.fredjones.com