Importance of Varying Instruction
As you can see, varied instruction is not only desirable — it is a necessity. Varying instruction means that you do not just rely on one means of teaching students the material. Teachers who rely too much on role-playing and cooperative learning are committing just as great of an error as those who focus on lecture.
Varying instruction is important because it helps build interest in your class. Even if you have a student who works best when given an assignment to read from a book and answer questions, he will enjoy and benefit from other forms of learning.
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom found that over 95 percent of test questions that students encountered only required them to think at the lowest level: the recall of knowledge. It is imperative that you choose to ask questions at higher levels in order to help students think critically.
Varying instruction can also help you move your teaching beyond the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy. Incorporating critical thinking skills into your lessons is easier when you are varying the way you present the material. Although you cannot teach students to recall information like multiplication tables with this instruction, you can teach them to analyze and synythesize information.
