Explicit Teaching
A key theme for effective teaching and learning at St Laurence’s Primary is the research based pedagogical practice of explicit teaching.
Research shows that students make greater gains in learning new or complex concepts or skills when teachers use explicit teaching as a key component of their practice.
Explicit teaching practices involve teachers clearly explaining to students:
- Why they are learning something
- How it connects to what they already know
- What they are expected to do
- How to do it
- What it looks like when they have succeeded.
The explicit teaching model involves teachers moving through several stages as they gradually release responsibility for learning to the students. These stages include Activating Prior Learning (Review), Setting Learning Goals (Learning Intentions & Success Criteria), Presentation (I Do), Guided Practice (We Do) and Independent Practice (You Do).
Explicit teaching is a systematic, structured approach to instruction that involves specifically teaching students the content or skill to be learnt. It is clear and unambiguous, with a planned sequence for introducing content from simple to more complex. The sequence begins where the students have demonstrated competence and is taught in manageable chunks. The stages of explicit teaching should not be viewed as linear, or even cyclical. Rather they are interdependent, and decisions about when to move to the next phase of teaching are always determined by student responses.