I Taught the Words "Induction" and "Deduction" to My Reading Class

I’ve found that I’ve been having some problems both with the inductive and deductive teaching methods that I wouldn’t have anticipated before the school year. Just queue it up behind my problems with classroom management and not having time to write lesson plans and grade papers no matter how many hours a day I put into it all…

If I teach deductively and have students practice it, most of them just plain don’t get it and I have to explain it about a million more times while the class does some guided practice. Everybody who has observed me so far tells me I’m hitting many teacher issues excellently but need to include some independent practice, which is all well and good if I want to fail half my students. Latin is just plain difficult in that way and doesn’t make sense if I just present the material so straightforwardly.

Likewise, if I teach inductively, students complain that I haven’t taught anything and largely refuse to try. Once again, Latin is some radically new material for them and I just can’t get any answers this way. Rather, I should say, my brighter students are really interested in the challenge and the answers, but I just lose the rest of my students for the rest of the period that way. It’s really the same old story: the brighter students practically teach themselves, and no matter what methods I use I can barely drag the rest of the students with me.

Overall, I don’t think my questioning techniques are all that bad; I have a decent knack for getting students involved and asking appropriate questions. In a nutshell, I’ve been using a combination of the two techniques (Oh, you’re sooooo original Mr. Jones…) to get through it all on a daily basis. I present the material deductively initially, then as students make mistakes with it I’m able to puzzle it out with them individually. It’s been working well for me so far, but obviously I don’t believe it’s a good idea to stick to either one exclusively.