Teaching, Learning and Inclusion
Sorry about the break in the information about Rosenshine’s Principles of Teaching . I really wanted to finish the series and hope it is helping make sense of some of the ways we support student learning in our classroom.
This week the two areas of focus are “Obtain a high success rate” and “Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks”.
- Obtain a high success rate
We aim for 80% success. What does that mean?
Tom Sherrington explains that when practising a skill or recalling knowledge correctly 80% pf the time then most of what students are doing is reinforcing error free, secure learning. This really improves fluency and confidence.
Imagine your child practising in their swimming lessons. If 80% (or more) of the time they are doing the strokes correctly then they are reinforcing that skill, hardwiring it into the brain.
Anything lower than this, students end up reinforcing the mistakes or incorrect skills andf knowledge. If the success rate is too low then we have to reteach, re-explain or remodel. Nothing new, just more practice. 80% is an overarching benchmark, not on every task, and we hope to see closer to 100% on something like a knowledge test at the end of unit of work.
- Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks
An excellent example of this is the wonderful parenting moment of teaching your child to ride a bike. You do not put them on a bike and walk away. You put strategies in place to support the steps in their learning. You adjust, adapt and practise the skills. You may use training wheels or run alongside them. You know they are going to fall and you are very aware and focussed on the wobbles that come just before the fall sideways. Mostly you are consistent and encourage resilience and persistence.
When we teach a new concept, we do the same thing. We break complex skills and knolwedge down into parts to provide structure.
A great example of this is in writing. Writing is a complex task, especially when students are older and writing more complex pieces. To teach students how to write a paragraph we use a 'scaffold' such as a 'single paragraph outline'. We model it, practise doing it together, then have them use it indepdenently (we call this I do, We do, You do). It really helps students to construct a paragraph. You can read more about it here. https://www.thewritingrevolution.org/
Stephanie Stewart
