I have found that giving a little instruction as a lecture for a small amount of time is good, but having an activity after for them to show that they have learned is always good. Most students do well with things that they can touch or do themselves. Activities are always good. Most of the time it just give another example of what they have just learned.

As a general rule of thumb, each lesson contains four basic parts: opening, mini-lesson, activity, and closing. In my classroom, the opening is a daily warm-up activity. This activity is meant to attract student focus towards the content matter through different depth-of-knowledge question levels. Each warm-up requires students to understand content-related vocabulary terms and is limited to 10 minutes. The mini-lesson is the instructional portion of the class time and is limited to no more than 15 minutes. The activity varies from review and worksheet completion, to project based research and takes approximately 25 minutes. Finally, we review the essential question related to the standard with a ticket-out-the-door activity that takes approximately 5 minutes. Tight instructional framework is key to maintaining student engagement.

I would recommend the teacher talking less and the students doing more. Students should have plenty of time to have accountable talk. So during the lesson that I am teaching I give students a chance to turn and talk to a partner and then share their thoughts with me. Also after our worktimes it is very important for students to be able to share their work so that misconceptions can be revised or other students might learn from their peers better than the teacher.