A Starter for Embedding Different Kinds of Practice in Instruction
Move students through phases of guided practice
When the teacher gives an explanation of a concept and then guides the practice until the class has a high success rate.
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What problem does it solve?
Students not knowing how to complete tasks just after you’ve told them what to do.
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Why should I use it?
In Principles of Instruction, Barak Rosenshine says, “When the rehearsal time is too short, students are less able to store, remember, or use the material.” We often release students for independent practice before they have had sufficient time to build their confidence under close supervision and feedback from the teacher.
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When can I use it?
When explaining new concepts.
How could you do it?
Live model
Show students what to do through worked examples. Go through each step required to complete the task or problem.
Model metacognitive talk
Use metacognitive talk to explain your thought process to problem-solve
Do it together
The backwards fading method can be used. This Is where you provide fully worked and then partially worked examples for students to fill out.
Check for success
Rosenshine suggests we aim for an 80% success rate before releasing students for independent practice.
Provide independent practice examples
Start with questions that are similar to the ones that have been modelled and slowly increase the difficulty.
☝️ Common Mistakes
Guiding too long can lead to the expertise-reversal effect where students who are already competent begin to show decreases in competence.
Releasing too early can lead to students failing during the practice phase.
Not explaining your thinking and the reasoning behind the steps you take can lead to students not understanding what to do when too many variables change in the questions during independent practice
How can I make it even better?
Use examples and non-examples to show the differences between aspects of the concept. Be intentional with what aspects you highlight to address common misconceptions.
Avoid asking questions like, “Do you understand?” or “Do you have any questions?”
How could I measure impact?
Have a teacher observe whether or not 80% of students are successful before being released for independent practice.
Example
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Emma (Year 3 teacher) had been informed by her Assistant Principal (AP) that they would be going through a Teaching Sprint on guided practice. She was appreciative of having her class covered for an hour while she participated in this Professional Learning (PL) session. It started with her AP explaining that they wanted to build on the progress they had made from the previous Teaching Sprint on presenting material in small steps.
They watched a Teaching Sprints Starter video from Tom Sherrington where he spoke about guided practice as being like an extended handover in a relay where the teacher doesn’t “let go” until the student(s) are ready. The teachers resonated with this video and Emma reflected on how she often went from modelling straight to having her students practising independently. Or if she did a “We do” stage it was often for only 1-2 examples, not necessarily until the students were ready to move on.
The group decided to put together some examples of what this could look like in writing. They discussed what extra support students might need and what they would be looking for to know that students were ready to move on to independent practice. For a writing program, they were about to start teaching, they put together some worked examples (full sentences) and faded worked examples (sentence starters).
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Emma was excited to use the guided practice activities the teachers had put together. She knew that there were a number of students in her class who would really benefit from the extra support and felt more confident with knowing when to release students for independent practice. She started by explicitly teaching and modelling the worked examples. As she did this she explained the process and then went through the faded worked examples. As the class went through more examples, she found the process of releasing students off for independent practice quite natural.
At their Check-in Meeting after 2 weeks of practising, the team spoke enthusiastically about the increase in engagement of their students and the quality of writing that was now being produced. Emma mentioned that she had really enjoyed the professional conversations that had gone on previously and would like to continue to collaboratively put together some more exemplars.
Intentional observations and evidence collection
Emma worked off the recommendations from Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction and aimed for an 80% success rate before releasing students for independent work. Her AP came in to observe whether or not Emma was achieving the 80% success rate and they discussed how they could continue to smooth out the process of checking for success.
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They went through what went well and what areas they improved in. Overall, feedback from staff was positive and they decided that the next steps would be to see how they could ensure they used guided practice in other areas of the curriculum.
Discussion of relevant evidence
Emma was able to develop a deeper understanding of how guided practice supports students build their knowledge and confidence. She had also started to pair it with examples and non-examples. Student work samples showed a vast improvement and student knowledge of sentence structure was at 85% in daily reviews.
For More Information
Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ971753.pdf
Kirschner P, Sweller, J and Clark R (2006) ‘Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching’, Educational Psychologist, 41(2):75-86.
Martin AJ and Evans P (2018) ‘Load reduction instruction: Exploring a framework that assesses explicit instruction through to independent learning’, Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 73(1):203-214.