Duration: 10:48
This video showcases authentic examples of teaching practices outlined in the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)’s Teaching for How Students Learn model of learning and teaching in 4 Australian schools.
Each example aligns with a consistent set of techniques teachers can use to teach explicitly, demonstrated in a range of learning areas and with students of varying ages. These techniques include:
- Sequence the chunks of learning
- Move between guided and independent practice
- Explain new information clearly
- Link to learning objectives and success criteria
- Demonstrate and think aloud
- Model using worked examples.
You’ll also hear reflections and insights from teachers and students about how these techniques support learning.
We recommend watching this video after reviewing AERO’s Teach Explicitly practice guide. You don’t need to watch the video in one sitting – you can pause to reflect, take notes, discuss the content with colleagues or consider how it applies to your own practice. Viewing this video as part of a staff meeting or professional development session can help spark discussions and collaboration within your team.
Acknowledgements
AERO extends its gratitude to the teachers, students and families from these schools for their support and participation:
- Aveley Secondary College (WA)
- Briar Road Public School (NSW)
- Riverwood Public School (NSW)
- Serpentine Primary School (WA).
We would also like to thank Professor Lorraine Hammond, Dr Nathaniel Swain, members of AERO’s First Nations Expert Reference Group, and the teachers and school leaders who reviewed and provided feedback on these videos.
More information
You can find more information about this and related practices in:
- AERO’s Teaching for How Students Learn model of learning and teaching
- Teach Explicitly practice guide.
Transcript
[On-screen text] Teach explicitly: What it is:
- Teaching new information explicitly and at an appropriate pace.
- Moving on to the next chunk of new information once students have mastered component tasks.
- Demonstrating and modelling how to complete a task, with appropriate scaffolding.
- Providing regular opportunities for students to practise what they’re learning.
[On-screen text] This video demonstrates examples of the following techniques to teach explicitly:
- Sequence the chunks of learning
- Move between guided and independent practice
- Explain new information clearly
- Link to learning objectives and success criteria
- Demonstrate and think aloud
- Model using worked examples
Tanya Judd, Assistant Principal, Year 1 teacher, Briar Road Public School: Explicit instruction really can be fun and engaging. The students have great levels of success, which I think breeds their confidence about their learning.
Lauren Vickery, Year 3/4 teacher, Riverwood Public School: I use the same lesson structure in all of my lessons, so we always start with activating prior knowledge.
[On-screen text] Sequence the chunks of learning
Lauren Vickery: So the kids can think about what we might have learned on the previous lesson, or even a sub-skill they might have learned a couple of terms ago, that will link to the learning that we're going to do today.
[On-screen text] Link to learning objectives
Lauren Vickery: Then we move on to the learning intention, so the kids know exactly what they're going to learn. Then we move on to the modeled sections.
[On-screen text] Explain new information clearly and concisely
Lauren Vickery: That's when the teacher is talking and the students are still participating, but through checking for understanding questions. And that's where I explain exactly what they need to do to achieve success in the lesson.
[On-screen text] Model using worked examples
Lauren Vickery: Which place do we always start in when we are adding using place value? We start in the …
Lauren Vickery and class: Ones.
Lauren Vickery: 5 + 5 is 10. But do I write 10 at the bottom?
Class: No.
Lauren Vickery: No, I regroup my 10 ones into one 10. Now in my tens place, I have 1 + 7 + 5. What is that? That is …
Lauren Vickery and class: 13.
Lauren Vickery: So I keep my 3 tens and I regroup 10 tens into 100. Now I have 100 + 200 + 300 is …
Lauren Vickery and class: 600.
Lauren Vickery: So what is my final answer?
Lauren Vickery and class: 630.
Lauren Vickery: How many times did we regroup? We regrouped one time, two times.
Jessie Griffiths, Assistant Principal, Year 3/4 teacher, Briar Road Public School: In the classroom, what it looks like now is, it's really clear for me as a teacher what I want students to be able to do at the end of the lesson. And that way, I'm able to break down the information and chunk that into sequences for students to be successful.
Alright, 3/4A, we're going to do our vocabulary lesson. Each week, we always learn some new vocab words from the story that we're reading, Iron Man. Okay? So let's everyone read our learning intention. We can understand and use tier-2 words. And tier-2 words are words that we don't often use when we're talking. We often see them in texts, so books we're reading. And it's really important that we learn those words because they have some different meanings. So it's really important when we know the meaning of them, we can understand what we're reading better and use those words in our writing.
We always start off with teaching first. So, introducing that concept or skill and modelling to students what it actually – what it is. And using those think alouds.
[On-screen text] Demonstrate and think aloud
Lauren Vickery: So students can see an expert and how their thinking is happening. All right. So, we're going to get to the suffix -ment. ‘Ment.’ Everyone say ‘ment’.
Class: Ment.
Jessie Griffiths: Track with me. The suffix -ment means the result of an action. Okay? Read with me.
Jessie Griffiths and class: The suffix -ment means the result of an action.
Jessie Griffiths: Okay, I'm going to show you some examples. So in the word enjoyment, is the result of enjoying something.
[On-screen text] Model using worked examples
Jessie Griffiths: So it's a result of enjoying something. It's the action. Okay? Placement is the result of placing something in a specific position.
Chloe Howard, Year 11 science teacher, Aveley Secondary College: So to chunk information, so it's a bit more digestible for my students, memory aids definitely go a long way, especially when it's an ATAR [Australian Tertiary Admission Rank] course. There's a lot of content we have to cover in a small amount of time.
[On-screen text] Sequence the chunks of learning
Chloe Howard: When chunking, I just really want to make sure that I'm checking for understanding along the way before I move on to the next bit of content.
Good. So, with your blastocyst is that fluid-filled cavity or space.
[On-screen text] Explain new information clearly and concisely
Chloe Howard: Remember, think about a cavity. If you have a cavity in your teeth, it's a space. So if you have a fluid-filled cavity, referring to these areas here and here, it's going to form that barrier between that trophoblast, which is going to implant, and then eventually the embryo, which becomes the baby.
[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice
Chloe Howard: So, how I decide on how much time I spend teaching explicitly comes primarily from my students and their responses. Most of the lesson when I'm first teaching a concept or a skill will be me teaching explicitly because it's their first time seeing that content. As the lesson progresses, I take that explicit – some of that explicit instruction away slowly – provided I have indications that my students are on board and they are on the same page with me. And that will continue for the rest – until the end of the lesson – until they are able to do it independently.
[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice
Chloe Howard: On your whiteboards, can you please define ‘extra embryonic membrane’? When we use the term ‘extra embryonic membrane’, what does that mean? What am I referring to?
Chinning for me, please —— Fantastic, boards down. All right, Person A, could you please tell your partner – okay, when we refer to extra embryonic membranes, what does that mean? Person A, off you go, pair-share.
Class: [Interposing voices.]
Melissa Watson, Year 10 humanities teacher, Aveley Secondary College: So, during independent practice, this is not time for the teacher to sit back and relax. I feel this is where the teacher really needs to be switched on.
[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice
Melissa Watson: We need to be moving around the room, checking over shoulders, checking answers. Praising students is really important, so they know they're on the right track. Extending students, correcting any misconceptions that may be appearing in the work that you're looking at. It's really important to make it structured as well.
[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice
Melissa Watson: So, you need to provide a time frame, for example. So, I might be asking them to do 3 questions. And I'll say, in 3 minutes, we're going through the answer to question 1. So students have that maintaining accountability.
[On-screen text] Use an appropriate pace
Melissa Watson: They know in 3 minutes, we're going to be sharing answers with partners. The teacher is going to be calling on me, potentially, to share those answers. And then that's another opportunity for me to check. So, that's another check for understanding during independent practice. So I can go back and reteach if necessary. Or I can say we've got the basics, let's extend it. Let's add an example. And continuing to do that throughout independent practice to keep that work level up because you've worked so hard throughout a lesson to keep students engaged, you've got to maintain it during the independent when you step away.
[On-screen text] Explain new information clearly and concisely
Melissa Watson: These graphs will provide you with some data that you can use to further strengthen your describe, and also your explain answer. Okay? That's where I'm looking for that data. So in these next answers, I'm going to be listening out for whether you have incorporated some of these statistics alongside what we discussed previously in the lesson. Okay?
Loren Sorgiovanni, Year 11 mathematics teacher, Aveley Secondary College: So, during this lesson, I use during my skill development a strategy called problem pairs where I model an example and then students do something very similar.
[On-screen text] Model using worked examples
Loren Sorgiovanni: And the reason for this is because what I was teaching them today had a lot of variations, and I wanted them to be able to apply those different variations before I showed them to another one. So, in a way, it's helping scaffold this for students very explicitly, and it's modeling exactly how I want them to answer so they can refer back to that during the lesson.
[On-screen text] Demonstrate and think aloud
Loren Sorgiovanni: So, we did this one last week. Let's have a go. We've got an example here. I've got 468 kilometres into hours and then metres per second. Our first step is we're going to make our kilometres to metres. All right? To make our kilometres to metres, we times it by 1,000 because there are 1,000 metres in a kilometre. How many metres are in a kilometre? There are a …
Class: Thousand.
Loren Sorgiovanni: Beautiful. So I times it by 1,000. I get 468,000. I then need to convert my hours into seconds. So I need to divide it by how many seconds there are in an hour. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour. How many seconds in an hour? There are …
Class: 3,600.
Loren Sorgiovanni: I think I said 360 before. 3,600 is correct. So I divide that, and my final answer is 130 metres per second. Again, we've got 4, so can you guys start it with another grid? Give as many of these a go as you can.
[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice
Loren Sorgiovanni: So, when students are doing independent practice or they're at a part in the skill development where it's a little bit more independent learning and I just need them to get through a couple more questions so I know that they are ready to go on to practice, I'll circulate the room while they're doing it. And it kind of gives me a little bit more data into what they're doing. So, obviously, with the whiteboards, I can see as a whole how they're doing as a class. But I can also watch them as I'm circulating and see what that process is like, and sometimes, I find even though their whiteboard work looks correct, their process – their thinking process – there is some misconception there. And then that gives me an opportunity to debunk that misconception before moving them on to practise.
Can you guys have a go at this one? It's his favorite conditioner now. It comes in half a litre for $16.80 or one full litre for $35.40. Which should he buy? Convert them both into price per litres.
Do you need another marker? All good?
[On-screen text] Move between guided and independent practice
Loren Sorgiovanni: [Whispering to students] What is 500 mls a litre? How many millilitres are in a litre? That might help as well. So it's half a litre. So you've got to divide that by 0.5.
Student: [Inaudible.]
Loren Sorgiovanni: [Whispering to student] Yeah, beautiful. Now keep going.
Student: 35?
Loren Sorgiovanni: [Whispering to student] Yeah. So 35 – yeah, so it'd be 35.4. That would mean $35.40.
So, in my own classroom, when I'm using an explicit teaching approach, I find it's much easier to measure student success, but also for students to feel that success in the classroom.
Tanya Judd: Explicit instruction is a pedagogy that meets the needs of all the students in my classroom. It allows me to cater for my students who need extension and challenge. But it also makes sure that my students who need scaffolding support are included in the lesson, and I can do that successfully using a familiar framework for all of my lessons. My students come to the lesson expecting that they're going to be successful, and that makes the whole day of school much more positive for our students.
I think there are some misconceptions that explicit teaching is hard or it's boring. And I would say it's actually fun. And for me, as a teacher, I feel far more successful at the end of the day because throughout my lesson, I'm checking that students are understanding and they're keeping up with me. I'm not leaving anybody behind. And I think, at the end of the day, you want to know that you've done the best that you can for your students and you're bringing them along on that learning journey. And that success and that positivity breeds continued success and positivity.
Keywords: student learning, science of learning, explicit teaching