I hear and I forget, I see

and I remember and I do and

Confucius.
I DO
WE DO 3 STEPS

YOU DO
 During Explicit Instruction, teachers
have a great deal of responsibility to
monitor student needs and provide the
kind of scaffolding most appropriate
throughout the learning process.
However, students have responsibility
too. They must realize that they will be
expected to perform the task by
themselves, and they should then work
toward achieving that goal.
 At the outset of any lesson – before
the teacher explains, models,
distributes the organizer or frame, the
teacher should make the responsibility
clear to the students: “I’m going to
teach you how to___________.
First I’ll tell you what to do. Then I’ll
show you how to do it. Then what do
you think I’ll expect you to do?”
 The students discern that they will need
to produce something themselves.
“So, what do you think you should be
doing while I teach you?” The consensus is
“pay attention.”
“Yes,” - by directing student attention
toward purposeful learning – “You should
be thinking about how YOU _______when
it is YOUR turn.”
C. When is Explicit Instruction Appropriate?
“Explicit instruction must be used for appropriate purposes
and in response to identified student needs.” (Goeke, p. 12)
Explicit instruction is provided when the following occur:
 “The goal is teaching a well-defined body of information or
skills that all students must master.
 Assessment data indicate that students have not acquired
fundamental skills, strategies, and content.
 Assessment data indicate that student progress toward
mastery of skills, strategies, or content needs to be
accelerated.
 Inquiry-oriented or discussion-based instructional
approaches have failed.”
~ Jennifer Goeke, p. 18
D. Constructs that Facilitate Effective Explicit Instruction
1. Teacher Presentation Variables - Teacher presentation variables
have been identified as fundamental behaviors for communicating
effectively with all students and promoting student achievement
(Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997) Teachers should be conscious of
delivering clear, dynamic instruction that is appropriate to
students’ needs. In the first four components of Explicit
Instruction, teacher presentation variables play a key role in the
success of the lesson.
a. Teacher Clarity includes speaking clearly, avoiding unclear
terminology and vague terms.
b. Teacher Enthusiasm involves varied inflection, actively
accepting student ideas, and maintaining a high overall energy
level.
c. Appropriate Rate of Presentation diversifies opportunities to
participate, requiring participation, and adjusting to student
understanding.
2. Student Engagement - For Explicit Instruction to
be effective, “students must be encouraged to
provide the second, complementary half of the
transaction: active engagement. An optimal
Explicit Instruction lesson involves an effective,
dynamic teacher and an active, engaged learner.”
(Goeke, p. 37) Learning is an active process during
which students gain understanding by connecting
new concepts, skills, and strategies to prior
understandings. Teachers should help students
stay actively involved in the lesson in order to have
the greatest impact on their learning.
 A. Students Actively Participate when they:
 Focus on what is being taught
 Try to understand and make sense of new material
 Relate ideas and information to prior knowledge
and experience
 Use organizing tools (graphic organizers, etc.) or
principles to integrate ideas
 Relate supporting details and evidence to
conclusions
 Thoughtfully respond after think time is provided
 Look for principles or patterns
B. Procedural Prompts are
• concrete, skill-specific references on which students can rely
for support until they become independent.
• Fred Jones in Tools for Teaching refers to these prompts as
VIPs (Visual Instructional Plans).
• Prompts should show one step at a time, include a picture
for every step, and have a minimal reliance on words.
• A VIP is simple, clear, and self-explanatory. Students can
look at it whenever they need clarification.
• VIP is not a substitute for teaching. You involve students in
the activity of the learning as you always have.
• VIP is simply a permanent record of that teaching. It serves
as the set of plans for independent work during Guided
Practice so you won't have to reteach the same material
over and over.”
 C. Monitor Understanding - Monitoring students’
understanding is critical throughout the lesson. It is a
way the students show their engagement in the lesson
and their understanding of the instructional objective.
According to Schmoker, feedback should be given 4-6
times per lesson. Monitoring student understanding
involves two complementary skills:
 Checking for Understanding
 Providing Corrective Feedback
According to Douglas Reeves, “Effective feedback not
only tells students how they performed, but how to
improve the next time they engage the task. Effective
feedback is provided in such a timely manner that the
next opportunity to perform the task is measured in
seconds, not weeks or months.”
The 6 Components of
Explicit Instruction
In Detail:
1. Setting the Stage
 The anticipatory set – the teacher’s hook to capture student
interest and connect prior knowledge to the new learning of
the lesson
 The teacher states/clarifies the standards/learning
objective/goal
 The purpose of the lesson is explained
 Students are able to restate the lesson objective back to the
teacher in their own words.
 The teacher specifically connects the lesson to:
o student interest
o background knowledge
o the big idea/concept that the skill/standard is linked to,
and/or the previous day’s lesson
2. Explaining to Students What to do
 Students need explicit details about the lesson.
 The teacher re-explains in this component what the task is,
why it is important, and adds to it how it is done.
 Give no-frills explanations that give students just enough
information to cover the basics and get them started. Less is
more.
 Don’t tell the kids that it will be hard. That discourages kids
right off the bat. They may tune the lesson out right then and
there.
 Make it simple and direct enough to make the learning
accessible to ALL students in the class.
 Divide the task into a few steps that are logically ordered.
 Present the steps both orally and visually to meet needs of kids
with different modality strengths. (Visual Instructional Plans –
Fred Jones)
3. Modeling for Students – ( I DO )
 Some people believe that explaining is synonymous with
instruction. When the extent of the instruction is ONLY an
explanation, without modeling or guided practice, teachers
have no idea whether or not students understand the lesson
content until it is too late. Just hearing or reading directions
is not enough.
 Modeling offers kids the opportunity to watch the process
unfold before their eyes. The teacher engages in whatever is
involved in the learning task EXACTLY as the students will be
expected to perform it.
 The teacher shares inner thoughts – modeling the thinking
process, and the teacher often uses a visual model to
demonstrate the concept being taught.
 It is important during this component for the teacher to
connect with the kids, to see their eyes alert and focused,
rather than glazed over!
 During this component, teachers need to elicit informal
input from the kids and keep them actively engaged –
Asking students to underline a portion of text on board or
overhead
Use the mini white boards
Repeat to a partner
Ask students to read the completed response aloud with you to
make sure it sounds good and makes sense.
Ask for possible revisions.
Teacher makes good strategies conspicuous for kids
Ask lots of questions – use Bloom’s Taxonomy
Delve and probe into questions – trying to elicit deeper
responses from kids
Appropriate instructional pacing
Adequate processing time (Think Time)
Constant check for understanding
4. Guided Practice
Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, in “The Release of
Learning” (Principal Leadership, February 2009)
describe a gradual release of responsibility to students.
“Unfortunately,” say the authors, “in all too many
classrooms releasing responsibility is too sudden and
unplanned and results in misunderstandings and
failure.”
Frey and Fisher believe that guided instruction
should consist of cues, prompts and questions to help
the teacher understand the students’ thinking, provide
scaffolding, get students doing some of the cognitive
work, and gradually increase their understanding.
Graphic organizers and frames work GREAT during this
component. These tools simplify the task of representing
knowledge on paper by providing graphic cues. They are
helpful instructional aids that help kids move easily from
teacher-control toward their own independent application of
the learning. BUT…. They are NOT a substitute for
instruction. If kids are to do well in a testing situation, they
need to have heard the explanation, seen the model,
practiced with the organizer or frame as many times as
needed, and then worked backward, removing one support
at a time. After enough trials with the graphic aide, the
teacher can take that away and expect kids to be able to be
successful with just a review of the model. Eventually the
model should disappear too!
 Provide scaffolding as a temporary support/guidance
in the form of steps, tasks, materials, and personal
support
 Provide examples/non-examples, and graphic
organizers, study guides, Kate Kinsella starter stems
 Check for understanding through ongoing
assessment and constant feedback
 Highly structured
 Use mini-white boards, highlighters
 Students summarize in their own words, turn to a
neighbor and tell them….
As students become successful with support (80% for new material, 95% for
review), begin reducing the level of support to move students toward
independence.
5. Independent Practice
 Students practice the SAME kinds of
problems as during the guided practice time.
 Don’t allow for too much time for this.
Students get off task, attention wanders, and
time is wasted.
 During this time, teacher should be moving
about the room, watching, guiding, and
moving students along.
 Be sure students are able to accurately
complete task independently.
6. Closure/Assessment
 The assessment portion can be informal - using
Fist-to-Five, 12 Word Summary, Brain Bark, Exit
Cards, Idea Wave, Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down,
etc.
 The assessment portion can be formal – a
method to measure student understanding or
proficiency of the learning objective in test or
quiz format or essay writing, project, report,
etc.
 It is a time to collect student learning evidence
of standards/objectives.
Will this fix education?
NO
 you will face the same
problem and the same kids as
you do now only tomorrow you
can be better equipped than
you were yesterday.