Cartographer Name: Michael Medeiros Model: Complex Instruction

What is the learners role?

The learners role is to participate

in the group they have been
assigned. This is a time to be
social and work with ones peer.
However, this is not playtime or an
opportunity to be off-task and not
concentrated on the learning.

What is the curriculum?

The curriculum that works best for CI are topics that are more involved than
items that are simply memorized or
practiced by oneself. This topics include
higher order thinking where help from
ones peers are useful. Topics that have
varying levels of skills available are also
good for CI. This would be content areas
where some students are already
proficient while other students are
struggling. One area I use this is my
math classrooms is for word problems.
 What is the teachers role?

The teachers role is to

group the students in a way
that facilitates learning (see
phase 2 below). The teacher
also must validate the
competence of each student
so they will be encouraged
to remain participatory in
their group.

What is the key purpose of

instruction?

The best reason to use CI in the

classroom is to validate students.
If we teach all students separately
and then test them all separately,
some students will never do well.
This doesnt mean they cant
learn, it just means they dont
have the academic confidence to
move forward. Many students fear
being wrong to the point they will
give no answer at all. By having
students working together in
groups, they need not worry about
completing an entire assignment

Map Legend:

Big Idea: The simplest way to explain Complex Instruction is by using the phrase,
Group Work. This is an oversimplification as group work is not just putting groups
of students together and saying to go to work. The teacher must be careful in how
those groups are constructed as well as continually monitoring them to be sure they
are meeting the objectives in place.

Phases: According to our text and the curriculum of this course, there are five
phases to effective complex instruction.

1. The complex instruction must be organized around only one central

topic or theme. This allows for the groups to clearly understand what it is they are
to learn and work toward.
 2. Students must be grouped by various styles and skills. This doesnt
mean we put all the bright kids together nor does it mean that we keep them apart.
Each time instruction is given, new group arrangement may be needed to facilitate
that different skill sets are where they are needed.

3. Roles must be assigned to group members. These can be fixed roles or

rotating roles. If the grouping have been well thought out, differentiation can be
utilized within groups without calling out those students that need enrichment or
remediation.

4. Expectation must be presented to the groups. If the instructor can give

clear and well organized instructions as to the accountability of students, then
success will have a higher rate of occurrence.

5. Groups must be monitored. This is not a time for teachers to become

lazy and let the groups take care for themselves. The must be continuously
monitored and reinforcements and competencies must be distributed. This is the
time to really build the confidence of all students by validation.

Learning/Teaching styles: I believe the best teacher style for complex instruction
is facilitator. The instructor is only the mechanism that gets the students working
but the students must work to get the most out of the lesson.

The collaborative learning style works best within a classroom that utilizes complex
instruction. Those that fall into the dependent learning style will also benefit at
times as they have someone to lean on in their group.

Opinion: I have a hard time using CI in my classroom. I want to utilize it more and I
keep trying. The difficulty I have found is keeping the groups working and keeping
just one or two students in a group from doing the work. I have some plans to
combat this in the future by using collaborative groups instead of cooperative
groups. In my math classes I try to avoid the concepts that are just right or wrong in
complex instruction. These topics would be things like solving equations and
graphing lines. There is only one right answer. I do try to use it for word problems
because even though there is only one right answer there are many approaches and
it helps me to reach lower performing students when I have classroom tutors
working with me.