Learning & Teaching

Explicit Teaching at Mazenod

As part of a focus on Visible Learning, the Mazenod Learning and Teaching Policy advocates Explicit Teaching as the principle instructional approach. This document aims to explain what this approach means, what it doesn’t mean, and how it fits within the Oblate Charism. Teaching teams can use this document when planning units and lessons, as a ‘first principles’ guide. Importantly, the policy also states that: While Explicit Teaching is the principle teaching method, teachers are given autonomy to explore other teaching methods where pedagogically appropriate.

Explicit Instruction:

In the quest to maximise students’ academic growth, one of the best tools available to educators is explicit instruction, a structured, systematic, and effective methodology for teaching academic skills. It is called explicit because it is an unambiguous and direct approach to teaching that includes both instructional design and delivery procedures. Explicit instruction is characterised by a series of supports or scaffolds, whereby students are guided through the learning process with clear statements about the purpose and rationale for learning the new skill, clear explanations and demonstrations of the instructional target, and supported practice with feedback until independent mastery has been achieved.

Anita Archer

What Explicit Teaching requires:

Learning goals that are obvious and known

• Having clear lesson and unit learning goals that are known by teachers and students

• Students know when they have achieved these goals

• Teachers plan activities that allow them to know when students have achieved these goals

• Students are shown worked examples of finished work

• Explicit Instruction has a goal of 80% mastery in any lesson

Clear, unambiguous instruction

• Teachers structure direct instruction in clear, easily processed sections

• Teachers often use an ‘I do, we do, you do’ protocol

• Resources are selected that are at an appropriate reading level for the students

• Resources avoid distracting or off topic material

Feedback that is regular and used

• Each class involves feedback mechanisms that allow students to compare their performance against the learning goals

• Feedback from teachers is focussed on the learning goals

• Feedback is used by students to improve performance (and teachers create protocols by which this is achieved)

• Feedback is primarily formative not summative

Regular practice

• Each class begins with revision of previously learned knowledge or practising skills

• These revision moments go beyond the current unit, to revise material from previous units, terms, semesters and years.

Vertical curricular knowledge

• Teachers communicate why students are learning this skill or knowledge, and how it will be developed in future units

• Students appreciate the need for this skill or knowledge

• Lessons and units are planned with ‘constructive alignment’ in mind – lining up learning goals, learning activities, and assessments so that each activity contributes to the goal.

Learning is scaffolded

• Teachers provide scaffolds such as faded worked examples, literacy structures, and checklists

• Scaffolds are gradually removed to allow students to achieve self mastery

• Complex tasks are introduced through concrete examples, which gradually build to the abstract (see the SOLO taxonomy for a formal way of approaching this)