Teaching From The Front: Strategy 2 - Teacher Explanation and Direct instruction
Teaching From the Front: Strategies
Consultant Research Group, December 2020
Overview:
In response to the additional challenges posed by restrictions due to Covid-19, The Consultant Research Group have created a series of succinct ‘teaching from the front’ strategies. Depending on the teacher who is using our strategies, some of these may be new ideas, whilst others may have been done before and ‘forgotten’ due to the additional challenges of teaching this year. These strategies will be of benefit more widely, for teaching in more ‘normal’ conditions too.
You will also find a brief summary of what educational research tells us about this area, as well as why it is particularly important to focus on this area of teaching practice during the current Covid situation. There are also suggested practical steps that teachers could use in their classroom, together with some suggested additional reading/research.
How to use this resource:
- These strategies could be used with departments or individual teachers
- The techniques could be used by a teacher as a refresher
- Departments could identify key strategies to focus on collectively
- Trouble-shooter – use individual pages with staff
- Print off and use as a tool; stick it on the wall in the department base as a reminder
Strategy 2: Teacher Explanation and Direct instruction
- Why is it needed?
When students are novices about an idea it is much more effective for teachers to instruct them explicitly rather than allowing them to find out for themselves. With expert understanding of direct instruction and clear explanations of key topics, students are more likely to have a better understanding. This is particularly important during Covid as we teach from the front because we may not have the opportunity to provide as much feedback to students, leaving them vulnerable to misconceptions and misunderstanding.
- How can I approach this?
Tell compelling stories - memorable personal stories brings lessons alive; dry statistics become enlivened when in the context of a story. However, we must avoid meaningless anecdotes of course, as stories should serve to illuminate the core message and not prove a distraction.
Make explanations simple, but not simpler. Convey a core message - effective explanations need to have the power of compressed language. Most often this core knowledge is linked inextricably to the language of the lesson objective. A great explanation may use the ‘inverted pyramid‘, used by journalists to prioritise key information.
‘Know what the students know’ when planning your explanation - this knowledge is paramount in pitching the explanation just right. Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’ is key here – the explanation should be matched to the audience: not too complex as to be unintelligible to the students, but not too simple or unchallenging so as to bore the students and prove uninteresting.
Use patterns of challenging subject specific language repeatedly - in most explanations there are one or two key words that you want to stick in the minds of students. Subject specific Tier 3 words work best here. Explore the etymology of those words, explore examples and repeatedly model them in your writing. With regular repetition, such key words become the touchstones of effective explanations and we stress these words in our delivery for explicit emphasis.
Teach through examples and non-examples - students should receive unambiguous and precise examples inducing only one possible logical interpretation. The teaching should result in the learner being able to apply what they have learnt to a wide range of situations.
3. Further reading/research
- Made To Stick: Why some ideas take hold and other come unstuck. Arrow: London
- Rosenshine, B. 2012. Principles of Instruction.
- Sherrington, T. Blog post on explanations
- Willingham, D. 2010. Why Don’t Students Like School? Jossey Bass: New Jersey.
This resource was compiled by members of the Consultant Research Group, led by Karen Haward
With thanks to:
Lucy Baker, Science consultant
Oliver Blagden, English consultant
Seb Greenwood, History consultant
Lin Liu, MFL consultant
Adam O’Connor, Geography consultant
Aaron Skepple, History consultant
