The ASSURE Model of Learning

The only teacher that comes to my mind who follows ASSURE model is my 11th and 12th grades high school English teacher. She was a great teacher and she was very interested in her students. She certainly followed the first step in ASSURE model that is analyzing learners. Absolutely, she knew her students, she knew who the audience was. Not all teachers are concerned about their students’ mental, emotional, physical and social problems or socioeconomic level. However, she was really involved our problems. She paid attention our prior knowledge, skills and attitudes. She maintained the lessons according to our previous knowledge. She was aware that our future understanding of the topic are connected to our former knowledge. Also, she decided her learning styles after she analyzed us. She mostly chose verbal and visual styles to teach.

Second step is stating objectives. I know that she totally defined objectives before coming to lessons. But she did not tell us about it. She knew her audience, how to behave us or how to react our mistakes, what our reaction can be in a situation. By combining them, she constituted objectives. However, this stage is not clear for my English teacher.

She selected methods, media and materials after she was sure about her audience. Mostly, she chose useful sources for us for example, she did not use the MEB books in the lessons. She found special books from Oxford or Cambridge Press. These ones were more applicable for our goals. Of course our goal in high school was entering a university. She chose functional exercises from the books and applied them with us. Also, for the grammar exercises and topics she used “ELS English Grammar”.

She perfectly implemented the fourth step to our lessons. For example, when she taught anything, she started with warm-up activity. She talked about the topic and asked questions to us. This made us think about that topic and comment on it. Then, she started the lesson. This way of teaching the lessons help students understand better and enjoy.

In the high school and other educational steps, teachers prefer only teacher-student interaction. In other words, teachers ask question then student who raises her\his hand answer the question. The system of my teacher was the same. However, when I think whether it is the correct way of teaching or not, it is the only way. Because every student’ aim is to able to enter a university in high school. So, teacher-student integration is the only way of learning correct information. We participated the classroom activities that were teacher-student oriented.

The last step which evaluate and revise does not contain us. Teacher thinks about her\his lesson and evaluates both herself\himself and us. I guess my teacher did the same thing. So, I have no exact information about my teacher’ implementation of this step.