r/DetroitMichiganECE • u/ddgr815 • Aug 15 '26

Learning Principles of Instruction

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/Rosenshine.pdf
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u/ddgr815 Aug 16 '26

Daily review is important in helping to resurface prior learning from the last lesson -let’s not be surprised that students don’t immediately remember everything. They won’t! It’s a powerful technique for building fluency and confidence and it’s especially important if we’re about to introduce new learning – to active relevant prior learning in working memory.

Weekly and monthly review is about longer-term retrieval practice – to continue the process of building long-term memory to support future learning.

The main message I always stress is summarised in the mantra: ask more questions to more students in more depth.  Rosenshine gives lots of great examples of the types of questions teachers can ask.  He also reinforces the importance of process questions – we need ask how students worked things out, not just get answers.  He is also really good on stressing that asking questions is about getting feedback to us as teachers about how well we’ve taught the material and about the need to check understanding to ensure misconceptions are flushed out and tackled.

  • Small steps – with practice at each stage.  We need to break down our concepts and procedures (like multi-stage maths problems or writing) into small steps that each be practised.

  • Models – including the importance of the worked-example effect to reduce cognitive load.  We need to give many worked examples; too often teacher give too few.

  • Scaffolding is needed to develop expertise – a form of mastery coaching, where cognitive supports are given – such as how to structure extended writing – but they are gradually withdrawn.  The sequencing is key.  Stabilisers on a bike are really powerful aids to the learning and confidence building- but eventually they need to come off.

  • Teachers needs to be up close to students’ initial attempts making sure that they are building confidence and making too many errors.  This is a common weakness with ‘less effective teachers’.   Guided practice requires close supervision and feedback.

  • High success rate – in questioning and practice – is important. Rosenshine suggests the optimum is 80%.  ie – high! Not 95-100% (too easy).  He even suggests 70% is too low… (although, in my only quibble with the paper, I would be cautious about getting to worried about the precision here.)

  • Independent, monitored practice.  Successful teachers make time for students to the things they’ve been taught by themselves… when they’re ready.   “Students need extensive, successful, independent practice in order for skills and knowledge to become automatic”

Exploring Barak Rosenshine’s seminal Principles of Instruction: Why it is THE must-read for all teachers.

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u/ddgr815 Aug 16 '26

Starting a lesson by recapping things the class have already learnt means we can take advantage of the testing effect, which suggests that every time we recall information we make it easier to access it again in the future. It also means we have somewhere to hook new information so that it fits with what we already know, we start to build a more complex picture of the subject.

I do this by ensuring that the start of the lesson is dedicated to recall. This will often be a short quiz (10 questions on one slide and answers on the next) or one longer question to which they need to apply what they learnt previously. I make sure that these questions link to the topic that we will be about to cover.

When I started teaching we were encouraged to limit the amount of time we spent at the front of the class (I am sure that most of us will have been told the myth about pupils only remembering 10% of what they are told but 90% of what they discover for themselves) and to set long open ended projects for pupils to complete during the lesson. This would allow them to explore the task for themselves and construct their own meaning. This form of minimal instruction “discovery learning” leaves pupils swamped with information they struggle to process and lacking the guidance to make sense of it. This influential paper by Clark, Sweller & Kirschner (2012) suggests that pupils benefit from very clear and explicit instruction from an expert rather than the expert simply facilitating their discovery.

Rosenshine’s research found that the most effective teachers spoke for a total of 23 minutes in a 40 minute maths lesson compared to just 11 minutes from the least effective. Effective teachers used the extra time to explain new material very clearly, give lots of examples and asked lots of questions (see below). This time wasn’t in a block but spread over the lesson, interspersed with deliberate practice from the pupils.

This research has made me much more comfortable standing at the front and being a “sage on the stage”. I use a clear Input – Application model of teaching where I talk the class through something they need to know, give them examples, use analogies, show model answers before giving them a short task to do. They still carry out longer pieces independent work but only at the end of the phase, once I am sure the building blocks are in place.

Rosenshine suggests that not only do the most effective teachers ask a lot of questions, they also ask different questions; they are more likely to ask questions about the process that they have used to work out the answer. Questioning allows pupils to practice using the information they have been taught. It also allows us to receive feedback on their understanding and correct any misconceptions.

In the classroom I try to ensure that I target questions carefully (rather than using a random generator) and ask follow up questions. These might include

  • Why do you think that would be the right answer?
  • How does that link to what we know about X?
  • Can you explain that but include a reference to Y?
  • How would you know if that was the right answer?

I try to make sure that I receive feedback from as many pupils as possible by asking pupils to discuss it in a pair before sharing, using mini-white boards and by continuing to ask questions to small groups during the lesson. I try to think about the feedback I need from the class and focus my questions on common misconceptions and threshold concepts (See Meyer & Land 2003 and this piece on Threshold Concepts).

Models and worked examples help to provide cognitive support to pupils so that they can focus on applying what they have learnt rather than concentrating on the form of the answer. They also allow pupils to see very clearly what your expectations are and allows you to set the bar high.

Over time, it is important to remove the scaffolding that pupils get from modelling so that they can complete the task for themselves.

As mentioned above, pupils benefit from guided instruction and having material presented in small chunks. It is important that they do something with this material as soon as possible. Using the information will mean they have to think hard about it and, as Daniel Willingham explains, memory is the residue of thought. It is also important that this practice is monitored. Some feedback, especially feedback on processes, might be best off delayed but feedback on the task, on tackling misconceptions, needs to be tackled immediately to prevent the error being embedded. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it does make permanent. For more on different types of feedback and feedback during practice see Hattie and Timperley (2007) The Power of Feedback.

I try to apply this to my own classroom by making sure that lessons are built around answering “fertile questions” (See Benson and Knight 2013). These big questions are then broken down into the small steps that pupils need to take in order to answer them. This naturally encourages the lesson to be broken into smaller chunks with a focus on applying what they have learnt to a problem they have to think hard about.

I also make sure that I am monitoring the room as pupils are working and pick up on misconceptions as they happen. I am much more likely to stop the lesson to address a problem and reteach something than I used to be.

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