Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI): The Power of the Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson (Second Edition) 9781506337517

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Praise for Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) by John R. Hollingsworth and Silvia E. Ybarra

I flagged page after page. I had been a classroom teacher for ten years and was unaware of many of the EDI strategies. —Peter Whitmore, Collaborative Coach Menifee Unified School District Menifee, CA Before EDI, our school was a ship adrift at sea with everyone rowing in different directions. EDI has provided us with a framework for instruction and a common language that allowed us to all row in the same direction. By doing so, we exited program improvement within the first two years of implementation, after having been in sanctions for the previous ten years. Additionally, using the framework and common language of EDI we were named a 2015 honor roll school by the Educational Results Partnership. —Benjamin Luis, Principal Liberty Middle School Lemoore, CA Gansevoort was one of the first schools in our district to get off the focus list. I attribute a lot of that to the EDI strategies. —Kathy A. Bragan, Director of Support Services Rome City School District Rome, NY Once teachers experienced EDI, they saw the value. Many teachers have told me they can’t remember how they taught before. —Dr. Wesley Severs, Principal Washington Elementary Sanger, CA EDI makes students accountable. They see now that school is a place to work and learn and play, and they love it. Because even though it is hard, they are doing well. —Trudy Cox, School Instructional Coach St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic School Carnarvon, Western Australia Fast-paced, interactive, and highly useful! Thanks! —Tami Francis, Vice Principal Gallatin Elementary School Downey, CA

This was so practical, informative, and inspiring! I loved the modeling and being able to see how to do this kind of teaching. So much to love! —Brielyn Flones, Eighth-Grade ELD Teacher Vista Charter Middle School Los Angeles, CA Thank you for giving us real strategies that I can take to my classroom and use right away! —Darla MacDonald, Second-Grade Teacher Fenton Primary Center Los Angeles, CA EDI keeps students engaged throughout the lesson! It gives students the opportunity to speak and listen to each other during the lesson. Students discuss vocabulary and read aloud during EDI which gives them practice in Reading, Speaking, Listening, and Writing. Students do all the work during a lesson! Pair-Share is a great strategy to help English Learners with speaking and practicing the vocabulary! —Yvette Mezzanatto, Fifth-Grade Teacher Crestmore Elementary School Bloomington, CA EDI training has helped our teachers develop lessons that are more rigorous and engaging for our English Language Learners. —Fidelina Saso, Assistant Superintendent Lost Hills Union School District Lost Hills, CA One of our specialties is research on instruction and training. In both K–12 education and in higher education, we find that the features of the DataWORKS program fit all of the research that we think is the best evidence right now. You owe it to yourself and to your students to at least give it a try. —Dr. Richard Clark, Director Center for Cognitive Technology University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education Los Angeles, CA I would like all teachers in our district to be exposed to DataWORKS. Only then will there be systemic change for our students. —Gloria Evosevich, Principal Nichols Elementary School Lodi, CA Students in an EDI classroom share the teaching responsibilities. They eagerly participate during Pair-Share and remind the teacher if s/he has forgotten “their time.” It is a very non-threatening environment and students are prepared for success. —Katey Hoehn Retired K–8 Administrator EDI totally transformed my teaching of both children and adults. It is research-based, easy to use, and rewarding for both the teacher and the students. Most importantly, it works! —Dr. Christopher J. Quinn Associate Professor Emeritus, School of Education Azusa Pacific University

EDI is a difference maker for all students. High achievers are given the opportunity to explore the curriculum in depth and at the highest level. Challenged students are provided scaffolds and support so they can access what is being taught. —Allan Waterman Retired Principal, Nicolas Junior High School, Fullerton, California Senior Adjunct Professor, University of LaVerne Instructor, Chapman University EDI and the DataWORKS model of school improvement made a dramatic impact on classroom instruction in the schools of South Carolina. The delivery of instruction using this program provided clarity and a focus in addressing state standards and the learning environment in classrooms. —Danny Shaw Past President of the South Carolina Association of School Administrators National Distinguished Principal What is the best way to teach students? The answer is Explicit Direct Instruction. I am a retired principal, director, and adjunct professor in California. I have been using the model of EDI published by DataWORKS for the past 10 years. I have taught it to teachers and future administrators. I have also used it in teaching my own adult students. —Alice Rodriguez, EdD Retired Administrator

This book is dedicated to all teachers who are working hard every day to improve learning for students, especially for struggling students.

Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) The Power of the Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson Second Edition

John R. Hollingsworth Silvia E. Ybarra

FOR INFORMATION: Corwin A SAGE Company 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 (800) 233-9936 www.corwin.com SAGE Publications Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom

Copyright  2018 by John R. Hollingsworth and Silvia E. Ybarra All rights reserved. When forms and sample documents are included, their use is authorized only by educators, local school sites, and/or noncommercial or nonprofit entities that have purchased the book. Except for that usage, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All trademarks depicted within this book, including trademarks appearing as part of a screenshot, figure, or other image, are included solely for the purpose of illustration and are the property of their respective holders. The use of the trademarks in no way indicates any relationship with, or endorsement by, the holders of said trademarks. Explicit Direct Instruction®, EDI®, TAPPLE®, Curriculum Calibration®, and Instructional Calibration® are registered trademarks of DW Educational Research, Inc., dba DataWORKS Educational Research. All rights reserved. DataWORKS Educational Research, 116 S. Seventh Street, Fowler, CA 93625

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Names: Hollingsworth, John, author. | Ybarra, Silvia, author. Title: Explicit direct instruction (EDI) : the power of the well-crafted, well-taught lesson / John R. Hollingsworth, Silvia E. Ybarra. Description: Second Edition (Revised Edition) | Thousand Oaks, California : Corwin, A SAGE Company, [2018] | Previous edition: 2009. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017022418 | ISBN 9781506337517 (Paperback : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Teaching. | Effective teaching. | Learning, Psychology of. Classification: LCC LB1025.3 .H645 2018 | DDC 371.102—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022418

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Acquisitions Editor:  Ariel Bartlett Senior Associate Editor:  Desirée A. Bartlett Senior Editorial Assistant:  Katie Crilley Production Editor:  Melanie Birdsall Copy Editor:  Deanna Noga Typesetter:  C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader:  Sally Jaskold Indexer:  Marilyn Augst Marketing Manager:  Anna Mesick

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DISCLAIMER: This book may direct you to access third-party content via web links, QR codes, or other scannable technologies, which are provided for your reference by the author(s). Corwin makes no guarantee that such third-party content will be available for your use and encourages you to review the terms and conditions of such third-party content. Corwin takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for your use of any third-party content, nor does Corwin approve, sponsor, endorse, verify, or certify such third-party content.

• Contents • Preface to the Second Edition: What’s New in EDI

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Acknowledgments xiii About the Authors Chapter 1 • Students Say, “I Can Do It!” The Day I Saw the Breakthrough in Classroom Instruction Where Our Research Began: Student Achievement Where Our Research Led: Classroom Instruction Chapter 2 • Are Some Approaches Better Than Others? What Is Effective Instruction? Why Are Children Sent to School? Talent Discovery Versus Talent Development The Teaching/Learning Dilemma: Speed Up or Slow Down Criteria for an Instructional Approach Two Philosophies About Education High-Stakes Testing What to Do? EDI Is Not Lecturing EDI Is Not Scripted Research Supports Direct Instruction When to Use Group Work Chapter 3 • Good Instruction Is Always Good Instruction: An Explicit Direct Instruction Overview What Is Explicit Direct Instruction? Explicit Direct Instruction Lesson Design Explicit Direct Instruction Lesson Delivery How to Use EDI in Your Classroom Chapter 4 • Creating Engaged Students: Use Engagement Norms! Student Engagement Is Created When You Ask Your Students to Do Something History of Student Engagement Norms Student Engagement Norm 1: Pronounce With Me Student Engagement Norm 2: Track With Me Student Engagement Norm 3: Read With Me Student Engagement Norm 4: Gesture With Me Student Engagement Norm 5: Pair-Share Student Engagement Norm 6: Attention Signal

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Student Engagement Norm 7: Whiteboards 34 Student Engagement Norm 8: Use Complete Sentences (Public Voice, Academic Vocabulary) 37 Training Students in the Engagement Norms 39 Summary 40 Chapter 5 • Is Everyone Learning? Checking for Understanding

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What Is Checking for Understanding? 42 TAPPLE—Checking for Understanding the EDI Way! 45 Teach First 45 Ask a Specific Question 47 Pair-Share 48 Pick a Non-Volunteer 53 Listen Carefully to the Response 56 Effective Feedback 56 Summary 57 Chapter 6 • Everyone Learns: Corrective Feedback and Whiteboards

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Listen Carefully to the Response 59 Effective Feedback 59 Whiteboards, the Best Way to CFU! 64 Summary 70 Chapter 7 • Establishing What Is Going to Be Taught: Learning Objective

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Part I: Well-Designed Learning Objectives 74 Part II: Writing Standards-Based Learning Objectives 79 Part III: The Learning Objective Must Be Presented to the Students 85 Summary 88 Chapter 8 • Connecting to What Students Already Know: Activating Prior Knowledge

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Part I: What Does It Mean to Activate Prior Knowledge? 90 Part II: How to Activate Prior Knowledge 94 Summary 103 Chapter 9 • These Are the Big Ideas: Concept Development

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Part I: Concept Development Design 105 Part II: Concept Development Delivery 121 Summary 129 Chapter 10 • I’ll Work a Problem First: Rule of Two— Skill Development and Guided Practice

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Skill Development (Teacher) 132 Guided Practice (Students) 132 How to Design Skill Development and Guided Practice 134 How to Teach Skill Development/Guided Practice 141 Summary 152

Chapter 11 • This Is Important to Learn: Relevance

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Relevance 154 When Do You Teach Lesson Relevance? 154 How Do You Provide Lesson Relevance? 154 How to Design Lesson Relevance 155 How to Teach Lesson Relevance 158 Summary 161 Chapter 12 • Making One Final Check: Closing the Lesson Closing the Lesson How to Provide Lesson Closure When Closure Is Complete, Initiate Independent Practice Chapter 13 • Planning for Success: Differentiation and Scaffolding

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Differentiating and Scaffolding to Increase Student Success 172 In-Class Interventions and Out-of-Class Interventions 175 Response to Intervention (RTI) and EDI 176 Summary 176 Chapter 14 • Having Students Work by Themselves: Independent Practice and Periodic Review

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Starting With the End in Mind: The Independent Practice Must Match the Lesson 178 Periodic Review 180 Summary 181 Chapter 15 • Creating Well-Crafted Lessons: Putting It All Together Creating EDI Lessons From a Textbook Creating Your Own EDI Lessons DataWORKS Enters the Classroom to Teach Chapter 16 • Looking at All the Components: Analyzing a Sample Lesson

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Use educeri.com for EDI Lessons 193 EDI Lesson Layout 193 Summary 204 Resources: What the Research Says

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References 211 Index 217

• Preface to the Second Edition • What’s New in EDI

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t’s been several years since we wrote our first Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) book. Yet our knowledge and experience in curriculum and instruction has continued to grow every year, and we knew these new ideas could help teachers in the classroom. Our experience has been gained in several ways. We have worked with thousands of teachers in the United States and around the world. We’ve personally taught students from pre-school through high school, so teachers could see EDI in action with their own students. Our company, DataWORKS Educational Research, has written a complete pre-K to 6th grade curriculum that includes 2,500 original EDI lessons. Our ongoing work with English Learners inspired us to write Explicit Direct Instruction for English Learners (Hollingsworth & Ybarra, 2013). More recently, our company published two ELD (English Language Development) programs, Launch to Literacy and Link to Literacy.

EDI Updates Even if you have read the original book, there are many additional practices in this new edition that will enhance your teaching. This edition fine-tunes and extends EDI so that it is even easier to use and more effective. Here are seven major changes:

1. Systematized Student Engagement One of the biggest updates in EDI is the Student Engagement Norms. They’re used continuously throughout EDI lessons to keep students academically engaged while at the same time supporting literacy. Although individual Engagement Norms, such as pair-share and whiteboards, were included in the first book, the consistent use of a single set of eight strategies to teach any part of a lesson is new.

2. Checking for Understanding Feedback Strategies Checking for Understanding continues to be the bedrock of instruction, but in this edition we have greatly expanded how to provide corrective feedback to students when they’re unable to answer Checking for Understanding questions. Our goal is 100% correct answers through the use of effective, corrective feedback.

3. Clearer Alignment to Standards The Learning Objective chapter and the example lessons used throughout the book have been updated to reflect our experience in using the latest content standards, including Common Core State Standards.

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4. Simplified Concept Development Concept Development has been simplified with the focus on written definitions, labeled examples, and Checking for Understanding questions.

5. Rule of Two The Skill Development and Guided Practice chapters underwent a major revision to incorporate our new teaching strategy: Rule of Two. Using the EDI Rule of Two, teachers provide mirrored problems: one for them to work and then a matching problem for the students.

6. Planning for Differentiation and Scaffolding Explicit Direct Instruction has always included extensive differentiation and scaffolding. In this edition, we added a separate chapter on how to plan for success before the lesson, during the lesson, and after the lesson using differentiation and scaffolding.

7. Online Lesson Bank The final change in this book is the use of sample lessons taken from our online lessons at educeri.com. This website has over 1,000 ready-to-teach EDI lessons for teachers to use.

Research EDI has always been based on best practices in education. In the years before the first edition and between editions, we have pioneered our own research in tens of thousands of classrooms around the world. We have also drawn on recent research from John Hattie, Robert Marzano, David Sousa, Dr. Dick Clark, and others. We are pleased to say that most relevant educational research validates the principles of EDI. Buzzwords in education change frequently, but the core of what works in the classroom remains consistent.

Dive In! If you are familiar with EDI, then you’ll appreciate all these refinements, and you’ll be able to put them to work right away in your classroom. If you’re new to EDI, then this edition will bring you up to speed with all the strategies that have been proven to work in the classroom. The comments from the educators at the beginning of the book tell you one thing—EDI works! Happy teaching, and e-mail us ([email protected]; silvia@dataworks-ed .com) if you have questions.

• Acknowledgments •

W

e wish to thank all those who gave us the insight, inspiration, and knowledge to write this book. Without them, we could not have completed it. We would like to thank DataWORKS consultant Dr. Arlene Simmonds for her detailed reports on classroom observations. Her repeated assertions that she was not seeing research-based strategies being used in multiple classroom observations alerted us to the need of focusing on classroom practices and ultimately to writing this book. DataWORKS consultants, including Gordon Carlson, Joe Ybarra, Cynthia Kampf, and Larry Federico, have helped implement our vision of effective classroom practices while training and supporting thousands of teachers across the United States and around the world. Many school and district administrators have helped us, too. Adolfo Melara was one of the first principals who really understood the importance of supporting implementation in the classroom. He even taught classes himself for his teachers to see Explicit Direct Instruction in action. He is the principal in the “I Can Do It” chapter and is described again in the Periodic Review observations. We would like to thank our teams at DataWORKS. Our dynamic programming team processed literally millions of pieces data from schools across the United States. Many of our insights about lessons and instruction came from this data. Our tireless production team has provided on-time collections, organization, and mailings of materials to and from thousands of schools. Our curriculum development team, led by super-organizer Katie Burchfield, has analyzed millions of student assignments. They have worked indefatigably to design and write thousands of powerful EDI lessons. They have written two complete English Language Arts curriculums, one for Australia and one for the United States. They have written a six-level English Language Development (ELD) curriculum used for designated ELD instruction. Katie also led the development of our new online digital resource site for teachers called educeri.com. Kudos also to the entire innovation team, which included Alex Chavez (consultant, resident math expert, and Director of Innovation), Carlos Luna (Marketing Analyst and IT Manager), and Elias Ibarra (Art Director and Web Designer). We are also pleased to have the marketing insights and energy of Client Relations Manager Joel Soto. Thanks also to Mike Neer, who has served as the editor not only of our books but also of all our lessons for many years; to Chris Jones, who has been the expert of lesson analysis in multiple subjects and served as voice talent on some lessons; to Trish Bogdanovich, who has spearheaded our new Launch and Link to Literacy curriculums; and to Traci Banks, our longtime accounting and purchasing manager who makes sure the office continues to run smoothly. Many other staff members, past and present, have contributed to all our efforts, and we are grateful for their help to make the DataWORKS school vision—All Students Successfully Taught Grade-Level Work Every Day—a reality. A final note for administrators reading this book: It’s not a relentless focus on improving test scores that raises test scores. It’s a relentless focus on optimizing the effectiveness of how students are taught before the tests are given that raises test scores. And that’s what this book is all about.

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Publisher’s Acknowledgments Corwin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following reviewers: Julie Frederick, Kindergarten Teacher Broadview Thomson K–8 Seattle, WA Dr. Virginia E. Kelsen, Secondary, Executive Director Chaffey Joint Union High School District Ontario, CA Louise O’Donovan, Principal Beeliar Primary School Perth, Western Australia

• About the Authors •

T

he authors, husband-and-wife team of John Hollingsworth and Dr. Silvia Ybarra, are cofounders of DataWORKS Educational Research. The information in this book is based on their experiences in education and their 20 years of field work with DataWORKS working with teachers and students across the United States and around the world, most recently in Australia and China.

John R. Hollingsworth is president of DataWORKS Educational Research, a company focusing on optimizing effective and efficient classroom instruction that helps students learn more and learn faster the first time they are taught. In his work at DataWORKS, John trains teachers and administrators throughout the United States and around the world. He and his wife, DataWORKS cofounder Dr. Silvia Ybarra, live on their organic vineyard in Fowler, California, along with their four rescue farm dogs Ulysses, Virgil, Athena, and Pandora.

Dr. Silvia E. Ybarra began her career in education as a physics and chemistry teacher at Roosevelt High School in Fresno, California. She next became principal of Wilson Middle School in Exeter, California, which under her leadership became a prestigious Blue Ribbon school. Silvia then was named assistant superintendent of CoalingaHuron School District. Her focus progressed from helping one classroom, to helping one school, to helping an entire district, finally to helping teachers everywhere. Silvia cofounded Data­ WORKS Educational Research to improve learning for low-income and minority children.

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John Hollingsworth and Silvia Ybarra are coauthors of Explicit Direct Instruction: The Power of the Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson (2009), Explicit Direct Instruction for English Learners (2013), and along with Joan Ardovino, Multiple Measures: Accurate Ways to Assess Student Achievement (2000). John Hollingsworth can be reached at [email protected]. Silvia Ybarra can be reached at [email protected].

1 Students Say, “I Can Do It!” The Day I Saw the Breakthrough in Classroom Instruction A few years ago, a principal and I (John) were making classroom observations. We were providing feedback and coaching to teachers, and we were measuring implementation of my training on effective lesson design and lesson delivery. By the end of the day, I knew I had the solution for increasing student learning for all students. I held my jacket collar tightly as the middle school principal held the door open against a chilling wind. Two quick steps and I was glad to be inside the warm, portable bungalow. I looked around to see students stuffed like sardines, sitting shoulder to shoulder at cafeteria tables that served as desks. Squeezing past the students, we edged toward the back of the classroom. At first glance, the facilities did not appear to be conducive to learning. Mrs. B stood at the side of the classroom chatting with her students. She was a new teacher, and I was wondering how well she would implement the Explicit Direct Instruction strategies I had provided during the school’s recent staff development training. Suddenly, Mrs. B stepped to the front of the classroom and began teaching by telling her students exactly what they were going to learn. It was a great start, and we watched with eager anticipation as the lesson began to unfold. It would turn out to be more than a great lesson. It was a superb lesson and one that permanently changed my views on education. We watched as she skillfully pulled together strategy after strategy. All her students were engaged and learning. After about 40 minutes, Mrs. B began closing the lesson. She wrote a problem on her overhead, projecting it onto a screen behind her. She looked out at her students and announced, “Students, before I assign tonight’s homework, I want you to show me one final time that you know how to do these types of problems.” Pointing to the screen, she continued, “Work this problem for me on your whiteboards. Be ready to show me your work when I ask you to hold up your boards, and cover your boards so your neighbors can’t copy your work.” A wave of pops and clicks went through the room as the students uncapped their erasable marking pens and started working on their individual 12" × 12" whiteboards. Mrs. B walked slowly back and forth across the front of the classroom waiting for the students to finish. After a few moments, she asked the students to hold up their whiteboards. She started scanning from one side of the classroom to the other, looking carefully at 1

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the whiteboards. Her eyes lit up because she could see her students had the correct answers. Then the most amazing thing happened. The students in the back of the room started swiveling in their seats, swinging their whiteboards away from the teacher and aiming them directly at the principal and me instead. They started pointing to their answers while excitedly whispering, “I can do it! I can do it!” I almost melted in my chair. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t say anything. I just sat there. The principal had a big smile on his face as he slowly lifted his right hand and gave a big thumbs-up to his students. “You can do it,” he replied. The bell rang, signaling the end of class. Mrs. B quickly gave the homework assignment as we gathered our observation forms and clipboards in our arms. As soon as we stepped outside, the principal blurted out, “Did you see how excited the students were at the end of the lesson when they held up their whiteboards? They could do it, and they knew that they could do it!” Clutching my coat against the cold air, I replied, “Think carefully about what you and I just saw. No one would ever again say, ‘These kids can’t do it,’ not if they had just seen this lesson. It was a perfect example of showing that kids can be taught to do it.” I hesitated a moment, thinking about the cramped room, the cafeteria tables serving as desks, and Mrs. B in the front of the class delivering content to her students. I turned and looked the principal right in the eye and said, “You know, we have just witnessed something very important today. All over the country, educators are working hard to increase student learning and student achievement, and we have just seen the solution to the educational problem. It’s the well-designed, well-taught lesson.” I have thought about that day many times since. We had observed what I call “the day the educational problem was solved”—a well-designed, well-taught lesson, and the kids got it. “I can do it” still rings in my ears. Later on I was talking with coauthor Silvia about what I had seen. She replied with a simple concept: “Students learn best from a skillfully executed lesson.” I thought about activities I see at schools, many in the name of school reform: afterschool tutoring, block scheduling, hiring a new superintendent, buying new buses, school modernization, parent bake sales, reorganizing the district office personnel chart, and buying program after program after program until there is no room left to store them all. What is the one thing that’s often missing from all these activities? A relentless focus on improving how students are taught in the classroom, the first time. That’s what is missing. And I knew we had just seen the answer. It’s the well-crafted, well-taught lesson.

Where Our Research Began: Student Achievement Silvia and I started our company, DataWORKS Educational Research, in 1997 with the single purpose of using real data to improve student learning, especially for underperforming students. In fact, that’s why we selected the name DataWORKS. At first, we thought that using real data meant disaggregating student achievement data, and that’s how we started. Our first disaggregations were for Silvia’s doctoral dissertation. Then, starting with one district’s state test results, we rapidly expanded, mostly through word of mouth, to analyzing student achievement data for over 600 schools per year. Schools and districts loved our colorful disaggregated data charts and graphs and our interpretations of what the data meant. DataWORKS was off and running. In 2000, 3 years after we started DataWORKS, Corwin published our book on assessments written

Chapter 1  •  Students Say, “I Can Do It!”  

with Joan Ardovino, Multiple Measures: Accurate Ways to Assess Student Achievement. However, when No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2002, the direction of education shifted. Educators were not talking about assessments in a gene­ ral way anymore. They were focused on mandated, annual state testing. Plus, it was no longer enough to analyze test scores; we had to improve test scores. This became crystal clear when a principal held up one of my reports and said, “Don’t show me the test scores. Show me how to raise the test scores.” This got us to thinking: Do you raise test scores by testing students or by teaching them? We realized this whole idea of looking at test scores is backwards. We measure students over and over, but rarely measure how they are being taught. At about the same time, I had been reading a business book on process improvement. The book said that businesses improve product quality by continuously improving the processes used to make them, not by improving the processes used to look for defects. In an instant, Silvia and I completely redesigned DataWORKS, knowing that we could improve education by focusing on how students are taught, not by furthering our ability to analyze test scores. We needed to look at teaching, not testing. We then broadly expanded the “data” in DataWORKS to include measurements of classroom teaching practices. We began collecting student work to see what students were being taught. We began going into classrooms to see how students were being taught. As we switched our focus from outputs (student performance) to inputs (teaching practices), we developed our own definition of school reform—improving how students are taught. We coined the phrase, “It’s better inputs that produce better outputs.” A teacher once told us, “Better teaching, better learning, better test scores.” We knew we had the secret to true school reform: Every time teaching improves . . . even a little bit . . . students learn more, and that’s how test scores go up. Or to put it another way, when students learn more, test scores soar. As we observed more and more classrooms and studied research on instruction, we realized that we could help teachers make classroom instruction more effective. Our goal was for students to learn more and learn faster. And the focus would be on the lesson itself.

Where Our Research Led: Classroom Instruction This is a book about classroom instruction—designing and delivering effective lessons to students. We present what we have discovered about education and what is needed so students can be successful—and not just some students, but all students. The essential classroom instructional skills presented in this book are not all new strategies. Many are tried and true research-based strategies that have been around for a long time. I like to think that we “operationalized” 100 years of educational research into our own unique, easy-to-understand instructional model that we call Explicit

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Direct Instruction. In this book, we define what essential instructional skills are, show what they look like in the classroom, and describe why they are important to use. Reading the research-based literature and even teaching in the classroom was not what allowed us to be able write this book about classroom teaching. It wasn’t until we did our own classroom investigations that we really understood educational processes and were able to connect what research was saying to what should be happening in the classroom. We did this by going into thousands and thousands of classrooms to measure and quantify the actual strategies being used, to see how students are, in fact, being taught. What we found surprised us. Although most teachers know the words of instructional methodology, such as Modeling, Learning Objective, Guided Practice, and Checking for Understanding, there are many different interpretations and very little consensus of what each strategy looks like in the classroom. In addition, we discovered that there are wide variations in levels of implementation in different classrooms. Although Silvia and I originally started our company, DataWORKS Educational Research, to use real data to help students learn more, our unyielding focus on measuring, monitoring, and improving educational processes is turning into one of the largest educational research projects ever conducted. Prior to writing the first edition of this book in 2009, the DataWORKS staff had • Disaggregated four million state-level student test results •• Collected and analyzed 2.3 million student assignments to measure alignment to specific state content standards. This DataWORKS-developed process is called Curriculum Calibration and has been conducted in several states. One of our largest projects included analyzing 646,270 student assignments from 761 schools for the South Carolina Department of Education in 2004–2005 •• Observed 35,000 teachers. We developed a process called Instructional Calibration, where we sit in the back of classrooms to quantify classroom implementation (and sometimes lack of implementation) of 119 specific classroom practices, such as lesson design components, lesson delivery strategies, cognitive strategies, English Learner strategies, time-on-task, and use of higher-order questions •• Surveyed more than 100,000 educational stakeholders to collect perception data from students, parents, teachers, and administrators

Common Core In 2010, the Common Core State Standards were released. Most states have adopted these standards directly or created similar versions of their own. Today, Learning Objectives in English Language Arts (ELA) and math are taken from these new standards. Effective instructional strategies don’t radically change because of new standards. For example, teachers still need to define concepts, model their thinking, and Check for Understanding. In fact, the new standards don’t take any position on how they are to be taught. The standards describe what students should know by the end of each year in school. One effect of the new standards, however, is the new testing. This calls for new types of questions in the classroom, such as multiple correct answers, textual evidence, error analysis, and so forth. There are many more inferential questions. The new math questions focus more on concepts rather than mathematical computations, requiring EDI lessons to have a renewed focus during Concept Development. Daily lessons now need to reflect these new approaches to assessment.

Chapter 1  •  Students Say, “I Can Do It!”  

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Exciting New Projects We have worked on many large projects since the first edition of this book. Each of these projects has helped us fine-tune specific strategies teachers could use to help their students. Here’s a quick summary of our ongoing research and projects.

DataWORKS Focuses on English Learners In 2013, we partnered with Corwin and published Explicit Direct Instruction for English Learners. This book covers the strategies of Explicit Direct Instruction but with a major focus on the modifications needed for English Learners, including comprehensible input (strategies to make your speech more understandable), vocabulary development, and language objectives (listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English). We also started providing training in strategies for teaching English Learners. Note. Coauthor Silvia Ybarra is an English Learner herself, and this is one of her personal interests.

StepUP Academy Many people have summer school programs, but we developed our StepUP Academy with a specific goal: accelerate students by pre-teaching next year’s standards in the summer. This was originally designed for English Learners, but has been used by schools across the United States. The StepUP Academy is a turn-key program for ELA and/or math. The curriculum is taught directly from our online EDI lesson bank at educeri.com using a clickable pacing calendar for each day. Each day has EDI lessons from standards for the students’ upcoming school year. (Most schools choose to focus on informational text standards.) We also include other grade-level-specific activities such as sight words, reading fluency practice, flash cards, addition facts, multiplication facts, periodic review, quizzes, and so forth. Training and classroom coaching are a major part of an Academy. In fact, most schools consider it as an opportunity to have teachers practice EDI.

DataWORKS Goes Across Australia In 2014, we were invited to Australia to help teachers in remote schools. Within 30 days of the training, we were asked to be part of a national Australian Department of Education grant to improve literacy in remote primary schools across Australia. This developed into one of our largest projects ever, a 14-month lesson writing marathon to produce a complete English Language Arts curriculum for use in Australia. It was a race. As they were teaching one quarter, we were busy John teaches the life cycle of the crocodile in Australia. writing the next quarter. Lessons flew across the The EDI Student Engagement Norms poster is on the wall globe via the Internet. By the time we were done, behind him. The screen shows Concept Development. our curriculum included over 2,500 Explicit Direct Instruction ELA lessons that provided 2.5 hours per day of instruction for pre-K to sixth grade. (Note. This curriculum is taught using PowerPoint and includes matching student workbooks. The curriculum includes a pacing calendar that links to daily lessons, assessments, and periodic review. Teachers just click on the day and start teaching.)

6   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

We have been to Australia several times to train teachers and teach demonstration lessons for all grade levels. This included extensive seat time in small airplanes flying in and out of dirt landing strips, and even 4-wheeling to reach some schools. In the most remote areas, we slept in tiny rooms on school grounds and did not wander around at night since there were crocodiles in the surrounding woods. This project helped us expand well beyond writing individual lessons. Now we had created a complete 180-day paced curriculum, one that covered every standard, properly sequenced, and included periodic review, quizzes, and tests.

China Wants to Learn English In 2016, we were invited to China where we trained 1,500 Chinese teachers who teach English. We also observed and provided feedback on elementary, middle school, and high school classroom lessons. Educators in China are interested in Explicit Direct Instruction for teaching English. Right now, there are more Chinese students learning English in China than there are people speaking English in the United States, and Chinese educators are looking for more successful methods for teaching English.

Authors John Hollingsworth and Silvia Ybarra train teachers in China.

We had an awakening from our work in China. In the United States, we focus on English Learners. English Learners in the United States are students learning English as a second language in an English-speaking country. These students have native speakers around them at school and in media. Learning English in China is different. Three hundred million Chinese students are learning English in a country that does not speak English. They are not surrounded by native speakers. Chinese students are learning English as a foreign language for 45 minutes a day from a non-native speaker. Our new insights about the differences in learning English as a second language and learning English as a foreign language have helped us improve instruction for both types of students.

Going Online: Lessons With all the international interest, we now wanted to provide lessons that teachers anywhere in the world could use, and the Internet allowed us to do that. In 2016, we launched our online lesson service, educeri.com. This site has click-and-teach EDI lessons that are taught from any device connected to the Internet. Educeri grows every day and is already being used by thousands of teachers in 45 states and 18 foreign countries.

Chapter 1  •  Students Say, “I Can Do It!”  

Going Online: Complete Curriculum—ELD, ELA In 2017, we published our Launch to Literacy English Language Arts curriculum. It has two purposes: It serves as a complete K–2 English Language Arts program, or it can be used as a three-level English Language Development (ELD) program. It has a strong focus on learning to read and includes complete lessons for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. We also released Link to Literacy, third- through sixth-grade English Language Arts curriculum, which also provides three additional levels of ELD. Both Launch to Literacy and Link to Literacy are accessible through educeri.com. Teachers can select individual lessons or click on pacing calendars to access sequenced lessons, periodic review, flashcards, quizzes, and assessments. Enough about our new projects. Let’s turn the page and start thinking about how we apply this research to classroom instruction, so your students will say, “I can do it!” Photos courtesy of DataWORKS

7

2 Are Some Approaches Better Than Others? What Is Effective Instruction?

W

e begin with a short philosophical discussion about education and various educational approaches. Then we provide an overview of Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI). By the time you finish this book, you will be able to design and teach well-crafted EDI lessons that help students learn more and help students learn faster. If you are an administrator, you will be able to identify effective instructional strategies in the classroom and support teachers in using them. But you don’t need to read the entire book to come up with specific strategies that make teaching more effective. Here are two right now: 1. When asking questions, always present it to the entire class first before selecting a student to respond. Now, all students start thinking of an answer. 2. After asking a question, direct students to pair-share, explaining their answers to a partner. Now, all student are answering every question.

Why Are Children Sent to School? Talent Discovery Versus Talent Development Formal education is based on the idea that students learn as a direct result of classroom instruction. In fact, that’s why children are sent to school for 13 straight years—to be taught in an organized fashion by teachers in a classroom setting. From DataWORKS’ classroom visitations, we have observed that about 20% of students will do well independent of the effectiveness of classroom instruction. We call this talent discovery. Often, the exemplar essays stapled to school bulletin boards are talent discovery essays. However, in this era of high standards for all students, schools can’t just discover talent in some students. They need to develop talent in all students. Twentyfirst century schools are in the talent development business, where classroom instruction needs to be so effective and so efficient that virtually all students are successful due to classroom instruction. In talent development classrooms, there are essays from all students on the wall, and when we look closely, we see evidence of instruction in every essay. 9

10   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

Students are successfully practicing something they were taught, not just relying on their innate writing ability. Depending on the grade level and genre, we should see sensory details, consistent point of view, use of transition words, and so forth. This is talent development.

The Teaching/Learning Dilemma: Speed Up or Slow Down Teachers often tell us they feel trapped between two seemingly contradictory forces: (1) They’re told to speed up to cover all the content standards, yet (2) they feel they should slow down to help their students grasp the concepts and skills in the standards. As a result, schools need an instructional approach where students learn quickly and then remember what they’re taught. The quest to develop an effective educational approach has been a driving force behind DataWORKS’ research for the last 19 years. We needed a highly effective and efficient teaching method. The age of standards (and testing) has made this more important than ever.

Criteria for an Instructional Approach It’s not very often that a school staff sits down and really thinks about selecting or implementing any particular comprehensive instructional approach in the classroom. We have found that teachers pick up various instructional practices over the years from college, staff development, conferences, and personal experience. Once teachers lock into a teaching style, they generally stick to it day after day for years without thinking about it. As DataWORKS spent more and more time investigating classroom instruction, we realized that we needed some overarching criteria for selecting an instructional approach. Here are DataWORKS’ five guidelines:

INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH GUIDELINES 1. The instructional approach is effective (students learn) and efficient (students learn quickly). 2. The instructional approach is based on research, and the strategies can be used over and over again. 3. The lesson planning process is clear and well defined. 4. The lesson planning process is independent of grade level, content, and age. 5. The instructional approach produces a high percentage of successful students.

Now that we have established guidelines, how should we implement them? What approach should we use?

Two Philosophies About Education There are many different approaches to classroom instruction, but typically they can be grouped into two broad philosophies. The first is teacher-centered, direct

Chapter 2  •  Are Some Approaches Better Than Others?  

instruction, where the teacher designs or selects a lesson that will explicitly and fully guide the students so they can learn specific concepts and skills. The concepts and skills to teach are taken from state or national content standards, which list what students should know by the end of each grade level. The second educational philosophy is called progressive or inquiry learning. There are different definitions of this approach, but, in general, it is characterized by the teacher as a facilitator for student-driven learning where students often work on projects or in groups.

High-Stakes Testing Students have always taken tests in school. However, today’s testing reflects shifts in national educational goals from providing equal access to educational opportunities to attaining an equal outcome in learning for all students. It is no longer acceptable for only some students to do well in school. Now, all students must be successful, and success is determined by annual, standards-based state tests. Effective and efficient instruction where students learn more and learn faster is more critical now in the standards age than it’s ever been.

What to Do? From our experience of looking at millions of student assignments, disaggregating millions of test scores, observing thousands of classrooms, and teaching thousands of students ourselves, we came to a conclusion: Students learn more and learn faster when the teacher delivers a well-designed, well-taught lesson, using the most effective strategies to explicitly teach the whole class how to do it. This is teachercentered, direct instruction. We built on this approach, developing and refining our own specific version of direct instruction, which became Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), an approach that encompasses our goal of improving learning for all students and especially for low-performing students. We aren’t the only ones who have recognized that direct instruction is effective for students. Extensive research studies and meta-analysis studies (analysis of multiple research studies) have come to the same conclusion: Teacher-centered direct instruction is more effective and efficient, especially for struggling students. In fact, there is overwhelming research supporting teachercentered instruction in lesson design and lesson delivery where teachers directly teach their students specific concepts and skills usually taken directly from the content standards.

EDI Is Not Lecturing One of the arguments we hear about teacher-centered, direct instruction is that it’s the “sage on a stage”—all teacher talk without engaging the students. But that’s not EDI. EDI is very, very interactive. In fact, EDI’s goal is to engage students every 2 minutes. EDI teachers don’t talk longer than 2 minutes without directing the students to do something. A few years ago, a principal was debriefing a middle school math lesson John had just taught. He held up a sheet with tally marks all over it and said, “I counted the number of interactions. John did 95 interactions in 45 minutes. That’s over 2 per minute. And did you see how fast the lesson went. At the end, students couldn’t believe that the period was already over.”

11

12   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

EDI Is Not Scripted Some direct instruction programs are scripted where teachers are to read from scripts in the lesson. EDI is not scripted. In EDI, teachers “work the page.” They refer to pieces of information from various parts of a lesson page while they explain and elaborate. They have students read information from the lesson, but the lessons are not a script for teachers to read. There are some foundational EDI strategies like having students pair-share, modeling our thinking, and asking Checking for Understanding questions, but teachers teach EDI lessons using their own personalities. In a certain sense, EDI lessons are a reorganization of a textbook. Instead of jumping around to find the Learning Objective, Concept definition, examples, and Checking for Understanding questions, EDI lessons already have the information grouped for easy teaching.

Research Supports Direct Instruction John Hattie, author of Visible Learning (2009), reviewed over 300 research studies exploring the impact that direct instruction has on students. He found that direct instruction brought about above-average gains in both surface and deep learning for students of all ages and all abilities. Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller, three researchers from the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia, summarized their findings on instruction in 2012: Decades of research clearly demonstrate that for novices (comprising virtually all students), direct, explicit instruction is more effective and more efficient than partial guidance. So, when teaching new content and skills to novices, teachers are more effective when they provide explicit guidance accompanied by practice and feedback, not when they require students to discover many aspects of what they must learn. (p. 6) In his 2017 book, The New Art and Science of Teaching, Robert Marzano states, “Direct instruction is superior to discovery learning in most situations.” He elaborates, “Direct instruction is essential when teachers present new content to students.” In a study covering 100 years of educational research, Jeanne Chall (2000) found that the traditional teacher-centered approach: • produced higher achievement than the progressive approach among all students, and its effect was even stronger for students who were less prepared; •• was more effective for students with learning disabilities at all social levels; •• was more effective for at-risk students at all social levels; and •• was more effective for African American students. In the Handbook of Research on Teaching, researchers Rosenshine and Stevens (1986) coauthored a chapter that reviewed several empirical studies that focused on key instructional behaviors of teachers. The researchers synthesized all studies into teacher behaviors that characterize well-structured lessons: •• Start lessons by reviewing prerequisite learning. •• Provide a short statement of goals. •• Present new material in small steps, with student practice after each step.

Chapter 2  •  Are Some Approaches Better Than Others?  

•• Give clear and detailed instructions and explanations. •• Provide a high level of active practice for all students. •• Ask a large number of questions, check for understanding, and obtain responses from all students. •• Guide students during initial practice. •• Provide systematic feedback and corrections. •• Provide explicit instruction and practice for seatwork exercises and, where necessary, monitor students during seatwork. There is also extensive brain research supporting the compatibility of direct instruction strategies and the way the brain works. On pages 281 through 283 of How the Brain Learns (2011), David Sousa describes how brain research supports the components of direct instruction. Additional studies supporting direct instruction for various types of students and content areas are included in the Resources at the end of this book.

When to Use Group Work EDI lessons are mainly used to teach new content to students in a wholeclass setting. However, group work and projects can still be effective, just not as vehicles for new learning. Use them for students to practice or apply something they have already been taught or as a culminating activity after several lessons have been taught. Now, let’s turn the page to Good Instruction Is Always Good Instruction: An Explicit Direct Instruction Overview. It’s an overview of lesson design, lesson delivery, student engagement, and Checking for Understanding.

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3 Good Instruction Is Always Good Instruction

Assessment

Dif fer en Chec tia king tin for g Un St de Learning rs ta n Objective

n tio

nta

e res

P

EDI®

Homework

Explicit Direct Instruction

Teaching gies Strate Stra tive teg gni i e Co s: Ex for Understanding pla cking Che i n Ch ,D ec e k in g fo

Periodic Review

Activate Prior Knowledge

s gie te ra ng di

Preparation

An Explicit Direct Instruction Overview

Concept Development

Skill Development

Independent Practice

Guided Practice Relevance

l ode ,M ate ng str ndi on sta m er nd rU

Closure

English Learner Strateg ies Checking for Und e r s tan din g

The EDI Circle summarizes EDI lesson design components and EDI lesson delivery strategies.

T

he fundamentals of Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) have not changed since our last book. In fact, someone recently told me that the principles of effective teaching will never change. That is an interesting thought. Are effective teaching 15

16   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

strategies fixed like math formulas for area or volume? Or do they change? The basic principles of instruction have not changed, but we certainly do have many new strategies for helping students learn. Let’s start with an overview of EDI and what is new.

What Is Explicit Direct Instruction? Explicit Direct Instruction is a strategic collection of instructional practices combined together to design and deliver well-crafted lessons that explicitly teach content, especially grade-level content, to all students. Explicit Direct Instruction is a long phrase, so teachers have shortened it to EDI. EDI is composed of lesson design components and lesson delivery strategies. Lesson design refers to how you organize the new content to be presented to your students. For example, a Learning Objective is a lesson design component. Lesson design also includes the purposeful selection of problems for you and your students to solve during and after the lesson. Lesson delivery refers to how you present the content to your students. For example, you pre-read and then have your students chorally read the Learning Objective. Lesson delivery also addresses instructional decisions you make while teaching. For example, if two randomly selected students in a row cannot answer a Checking for Understanding question, you reteach.

The EDI Circle The figure at the beginning of this chapter shows a graphical representation of EDI. You can see the lesson design components of a well-crafted EDI lesson, starting with a Learning Objective and ending with lesson Closure. After Closure, teaching has ended, and students are ready for Independent Practice. On the outside of the EDI circle, surrounding the design components, you can see the EDI lesson delivery strategies such as Engagement Norms, Checking for Understanding, or English Learner strategies. The lesson delivery strategies are not specific to any design component and are used throughout the lesson.

Explicit Direct Instruction Lesson Design EDI lessons have seven design components. Lessons start with a Learning Objective. EDI Learning Objectives are derived from content standards. They are not the standard itself, but the specific part of a standard that you are going to teach your students to do right now. Here is a Learning Objective: Today, we will identify characters in a story (K). (https://teach.educeri.com/lesson/26) Note. Many of the lesson examples in this book are taken directly from our online EDI lessons located at educeri.com, and we often include links for you to see individual lessons. Activate Prior Knowledge. During this part of a lesson you activate some knowledge that students already know that is related to the new learning. For example, if your lesson is to add fractions with unlike (different) denominators, you start by reviewing how to add fractions with like (same) denominators. Then you have students work a similar problem, usually on whiteboards. You call on non-volunteers to explain their answers. Now you are ready to present the new content. During Concept Development you provide written definitions of the new concepts contained in the lesson. Then you show labeled examples of what the definition means. If appropriate, you present non-examples that clarify the meaning of the definition. After presenting

Chapter 3  •  Good Instruction Is Always Good Instruction   

concept definitions and labeled examples, you ask Checking for Understanding questions to verify that students understand the concepts. In a lesson teaching figurative language, for example, you present written definitions for similes and metaphors. Then you provide examples of similes and metaphors that illustrate what the written definitions mean. You include nonexamples of sentences that look like similes but are not. John runs like a deer is a simile. It uses like to compare John’s running to a deer. John likes ice cream is not a simile. Although it uses likes, the sentence is not comparing two things. You check for understanding by having students apply the new definitions to additional examples and non-examples. After you have defined the new concepts, you are ready to work problems. During Skill Development, you, the teacher, work problems while the students watch. Usually, they copy your problem onto their papers so they have worked examples. You model out loud your thinking process while working problems. To check for understanding, you ask students to describe the thinking processes you used to solve the problem. In our last book, we described how during Skill Development the teacher works problems and then during Guided Practice, students work problems step-by-step while the teacher checks each step. While teaching EDI demonstration lessons at schools, we started alternating problems: teacher, student, teacher, student. We then reorganized the problems in our EDI lessons into matching pairs. We gave this process a name, The Rule of Two, and it is as major part of EDI now.

The Rule of Two The Rule of Two is a new field-tested procedure. It means you work matched problems with your students. Select (or provide) matching problems for Skill Development and Guided Practice. For every problem students work, you work a similar one first, modeling the thinking required (Marzano, 2017). Students solve their problem using the processes you just modeled out loud.

For every problem students work, you work a similar one first, modeling the thinking required.

During EDI lessons you convince students that the lesson is important to learn. It’s done during Relevance. This lesson component used to be called Importance, but after the Common Core standards brought out the idea of college and career readiness, we felt that Relevance was a better term, so we changed the name. The teaching part of a lesson ends with Closure. During Closure, you have students work problems to verify that they are ready to successfully work by themselves during Independent Practice. We have added a new Summary Closure. During a Summary Closure, rather than asking specific questions, you have students describe what they learned. Although this can be done orally, we often have students write a few complete sentences describing what they learned and then call non-volunteers to report out.

Explicit Direct Instruction Lesson Delivery Delivery strategies are used throughout EDI lessons. They are not related to any specific lesson component. EDI lessons are taught using two major strategies: Student Engagement Norms and TAPPLE. Let’s take a look.

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18   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

Student Engagement Norms Student Engagement Norms is an important new addition to EDI. The ideas contained in the Norms have always been in EDI, but they have been formalized and clarified now. The norms, as shown on the poster, include practices such as tracked and choral reading, pair-shares, and holding up whiteboards to show answers to the teacher. You use the Norms to create engagement by asking the whole class to do something at the same time. But the Engagement Norms go beyond keeping students awake. The Norms help students learn, too. Norms focus on reading, vocabulary use, listening, speaking, and remembering. They provide great classroom management tools by guiding students when to pair-share, when to hold up their whiteboards, and when to pay attention.

Checking for Understanding Using TAPPLE Checking for Understanding has not changed. You stop and ask questions every few minutes to verify your students are learning what you are teaching while you are teaching. TAPPLE is our acronym for remembering the steps of Checking for Understanding. Teach first before you ask a question. Ask a question about what you just taught to the whole class. PairShare. Have all students practice their answers with a partner. Pick a non-volunteer. Select random students to answer. Listen to the student response. Effective feedback. Provide feedback to student responses and correct errors. We cover Checking for Understanding in detail in Chapter 5. We also have greatly expanded our corrective feedback strategies with the goal of 80% to 100% correct answers for every question.

Vocabulary Development All students need to learn new vocabulary at school. EDI classifies vocabulary words into three categories that allow us to properly focus our efforts while teaching.

Types of Vocabulary Words Content Vocabulary refers to domain-specific vocabulary. These words are usually used in only one content area. In EDI lessons, they are formally defined during Concept Development with written definitions and labeled examples. Students need to understand Content Vocabulary to learn new content, participate in school lessons, and to do well on high-stakes tests. The Common Core State Standards refers to Content Vocabulary as Tier Three Words. Sample Content Vocabulary Words character, setting, characterization, theme, figurative language, sum, quadrilateral, denominator, exponents, inequalities, density, habitat, Solar System, photosynthesis, Newton’s law, Roman Empire, democracy, balance of powers, Civil War

Chapter 3  •  Good Instruction Is Always Good Instruction   

19

Academic Vocabulary refers to words that are traditionally used in academic texts, but they’re not specific to any domain. Academic Vocabulary can be used across content areas. These words are not generally used in informal conversation. Students need to understand Academic Vocabulary to do well in school, on assessments, and later in the workplace. In the Common Core State Standards, Academic Vocabulary is called Tier Two Words. Sample Academic Vocabulary Words accuracy, acquire, adapt, aiding, approach, appropriate, aspects, assigned, categories, clarify, coherent, comments, components, comprehension, conclude

Academic Vocabulary is not always well covered in textbooks. Textbooks usually teach Content Vocabulary for their domain. Support Vocabulary is our third category of words. We created this term after analyzing the vocabulary that was being taught in many English Language Arts lessons. Support Vocabulary refers to words students need to understand to be able to comprehend a piece of text they are reading. The intent is not to learn the meanings of the vocabulary itself, but to understand what is happening in the passage. Here is some sample Support Vocabulary we have seen defined in texts. Sample Support Vocabulary Words halibut, hammock, port, starboard, babushka, wedding huppa

As you can see, these are words students may not know, so just quickly define them or refer to footnotes and then move on in the lesson.

Vocabulary Development: Two to Seven New Words per Lesson All students need to learn new vocabulary. In EDI, we teach two to seven new vocabulary words in every lesson. The words come directly from the lesson itself and are taught in context as they show up during the lesson. Some new words are Content Vocabulary taught during Concept Development. Academic and Support Vocabulary can show up anytime during the lesson. In DataWORKS’ EDI lessons, we footnote these words and provide definitions in a vocabulary box at the bottom of the same page that introduces the word.

New Words to Teach in Each EDI Lesson K–1st

2–3 words

2nd–3rd

3–4 words

4th–6th

5–6 words

7th–12th

6–7 words

Suggested number of new vocabulary words to be taught at each grade level.

How to Use EDI in Your Classroom After training thousands of teachers around the world, we have found that you can use EDI in three ways. First, you can teach directly from pre-written EDI lessons such as those at our online service, educeri.com. (These lessons are ready to go. No prep. Click and teach.) Second, you can use your EDI knowledge and understanding to write your own lessons. Third, you can use the EDI strategies including the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE and your knowledge of lesson design to teach from your existing materials.

20   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

EDI Is Metacognitive Teaching The remainder of this book describes in detail EDI lesson design components and various EDI lesson delivery strategies and the importance of using them. We like to refer to EDI as metacognitive teaching. Metacognitive teaching means you know what all the instructional practices are, you know when to use them, you know why you use them, and you know the expected results of using them. By the time you finish this book, you’ll be teaching metacognitively! Throughout this book we provide scenarios that show what the various strategies look like in the classroom. We have included examples from various content areas, but the EDI lesson design components and lesson delivery strategies are independent of grade level and content. They help all students in all grade levels in all content areas. From John and From Silvia notes are interspersed throughout this book. They are extra thoughts that we feel are important. They’re derived from classroom observations and teaching EDI lessons in the classroom. So now let’s move forward and talk about Creating Engaged Students: Use Engagement Norms! You can use these next strategies tomorrow.

4 Creating Engaged Students Use Engagement Norms!

A

re you interested in student engagement? Who isn’t? Don’t you wish students would be engaged all the time? Well, there is a systematic way to create student engagement. And it doesn’t come from the students; it comes from you, the teacher.

Student Engagement Is Created When You Ask Your Students to Do Something Every time you tell the whole class to do something, they become engaged. And the way to keep students engaged is to keep asking them over and over again to do things while you teach. Class, look up here where I am pointing. Let’s read this together. I want the A partners to put their finger on the map in their partner’s book and show their partner the route of the early explorers. Students, explain to your partner how I identified the theme in the passage. Students, point to the exact words in the paragraph that show the setting, where the story is taking place. Write the setting on your whiteboards. Solve the next math problem on your whiteboards. Then explain to your partner exactly how you solved it, and be ready to tell me if I call on you. Highlight the definition of a noun on your worksheet.

These practices create student engagement because you direct the entire class to do something. This is whole-class student engagement. Students also learn more because they are participants in the lesson rather than just spectators.

History of Student Engagement Norms A few years back we partnered with a school district in California to develop an all-EDI summer school program to help their English Learners. Here’s the premise: 21

22   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

StepUP Academy: “Accelerate students by pre-teaching next year’s standards during the summer.” It was an instant success. We trained the teachers, provided lessons on PowerPoint, and printed workbooks for each student. Teachers used EDI for every lesson, every day. We also made videos and provided real-time teacher coaching every day. Some teachers were reluctant at first to have observers in their classrooms. However, after a few days, the teachers and students were so used to it that they didn’t know we were in the room. As part of the StepUP Academy, we created what we originally called Student Behavior Norms. They were such a stunning success that we refined them into our eight Student Engagement Norms. The Norms have become an integral part of EDI. You teach EDI lessons using the Student Engagement Norms. Let’s go over each one.

Student Engagement Norm 1: Pronounce With Me Our first Norm is Pronounce With Me. It’s easy to use. If you see a difficult-topronounce word in a sentence, you show students how to say the word. You pronounce it first. Be sure to cue students to look at the word when you say it so they connect the spoken word to how it’s written. Actually, you are teaching pronunciation along with reading at the same time. Here are the steps.

PRONOUNCE WITH ME 1. Cue students to look at the word so students will be learning to read the word at the same time. 2. Pronounce (enunciate) the word slowly and clearly. 3. Have students read the word chorally. 4. Optional. Have students say the word to their partners. Call on non-volunteers to read the word.

Note. Our book Explicit Direct Instruction for English Learners describes several strategies for reading and pronouncing new words. Many words in English do not follow basic phonics rules. To avoid misreading the word in the example below, the teacher is going to explain the pronunciation for the ending -mine. Let’s listen. Mrs. Bennett has her second grade Learning Objective on the screen. Determine the meaning of multiple-meaning words. She points to the word determine and says, “Students, look up here at this word.” She waits a few seconds. “Everyone should be looking right here.” She touches the screen. “This word is determine. Listen carefully, de-ter-mine. The last part of the word looks like you would say mine, like this is mine. Actually, it rhymes with pin. Listen carefully, de-ter-min. Please say determine.” The class responds, “Determine.” “One more time. Everyone, determine.”

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

“  Students, touch the word determine on the top of your handout. Read determine to your partner twice.” The students turn to their partners and pronounce determine twice. Mrs. Bennett glances at her iPad with the random name generator app. She points to determine on the board and says, “Mia, can you read this word to the class?” Mia responds, “Determine.”

Our first Norm addressed pronouncing and reading one word at a time. Now let’s see how we can help students, even beginning readers, to read entire sentences using our next two Norms.

Student Engagement Norm 2: Track With Me With tracked reading you always pre-read difficult text before asking your students to read it chorally. It’s amazing how everyone can read if you read first. The important part is that your students are touching—or at least looking at—the words while you read, so they can connect your oral words to the written representation. Beginning readers can track the words by physically touching them on the page while you read. More advanced readers don’t need to touch the words. Just cue them to look down at the words on the page or to look up at the words on the board or screen in front of the class. Beginning readers benefit from pointing to each word. As students become more proficient readers, they don’t need to track with their fingers. They can just follow with their eyes. But students must always be looking at the text while you pre-read it.

Student Engagement Norm 3: Read With Me After you read, cue your students to read chorally the same text you just read. Generally, you should read along with the students to set the pace and to keep everyone together.

Do I Need to Pre-Read Everything for My Students? Of course, you don’t need to pre-read every word for all students from kindergarten to twelfth grade, so we have three variations. Select the appropriate one, depending on the reading ability of the class and the reading difficulty of the specific text. During one lesson, you might use all three.

Three Variations of Tracked Reading 1. Full tracked reading. You first pre-read and then have students read chorally. This is for students who are learning to read or who could benefit from reading support. It is useful for teaching new content with new words to any grade level. You read first while students track with their fingers or look directly at the words while you read them. Then students read chorally.

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2. Pre-pronounce difficult words only, then read chorally. Sometimes sentences mostly contain words students can already read, but there might be one or two difficult or new words. In these cases, you pre-pronounce only the difficult words, have students read them, and then have students read the entire sentence chorally. 3. Choral read only. When you have easy-to-read text, just cue the students to read it chorally with you.

Warning: Don’t Read Too Fast When you pre-read, read at your students’ oral reading rate. If you read too fast, students cannot decode the text fast enough to keep up with what they are hearing. Below is a table of reading rates you can use as a guide for reading speed. For example, read orally at about 100 words per minute for fourth grade. First graders read at about 60 words per minute. Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

Grade 6

Grade 7

Silent

70–100

95–130

120–170

160–210

180–230

180–240

Oral

66–104

86–124

95–130

108–140

112–145

122–155

Weekly improvement = 1.5 to 2.0 wpm

Silent and Oral Words (WPM)

Here’s how to do tracked reading:

TRACKED READING 1. Provide text for students to read. EDI lessons are text-based lessons. You can use textbooks, handouts, PowerPoint, or just write key information on the board or on flipcharts. 2. Cue students where to look on the page or where to look in the classroom, such as a screen or a whiteboard. 3. Read the text by yourself while the students track with their fingers, or at least look at the words. Read at the proper speed for your students. For younger students use a laser or wooden pointer and point to each word as you read it. Break longer sentences into smaller chunks, if necessary. 4. Have students read chorally. Cue students when to start. Repeat the reading if all students do not participate. If necessary, repeat the reading for more practice or to emphasize something important.

Let’s look at a couple examples of tracked reading.

First Grade Track and Read In this example, the first-grade teacher breaks longer sentences into shorter chunks to make reading easier for his students. This can also be called echo reading. The first graders sit in rows facing Mr. Y. His lesson is projected onto a pull-down screen in the front of the class. Mr. Y points to the first word in the Concept Definition with his

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

laser pointer. “I’ll read, and then you read. And I might break down the sentence a little, so you’ll be able to read the whole thing.” He points his laser at each word as he slowly reads, “A category is a group of things . . .” “  Class, you read.” “ A category is a group of things . . .” He continues by himself, “. . . that belong together. You read.” “  . . . that belong together.” “  So now let me read it all at once. A category is a group of things that belong together. Can everyone read that?” The class responds chorally, “A category is a group of things that belong together.”

High School Track and Read From John: Improving reading fluency is important at many of the high schools we work with, so Silvia and I both put an extra emphasis on reading in high school. High school students sometimes balk at choral reading, but they need to practice reading, too. Listen to my approach with this class.

I am teaching from a PowerPoint presentation. The students have matching handouts. The Learning Objective is projected on the screen at the front of the classroom. It contains some words that students might misread or even mispronounce, so I read first. “  Students, look at the top of your handout where it says Learning Objective. Follow along with your eyes while I read, and then we’ll read together. Today, we will critique the logic of functional documents. Class, let’s read together.” Some of the students roll their eyes at the thought of reading aloud. I respond, “Some of you may not want to read, but it is important that you do. Look at some of these words.” I point while I read, “Critique, logic, functional. These aren’t the type of words you use in conversations when talking to your friends, but they are important for today’s lesson and in text you might read later on, so we’ll just read them for practice today. Let’s read.” The class joins in, “Today, we will critique the logic of functional documents.”

Use Tracked Reading to Teach Students How to Read Formulas and Mathematical Equations, Too Have you ever noticed students having difficulty reading formulas or equations? You can use tracked reading to help students read these also. Let’s look at an example. This math teacher has an inequality on the board. y < x4 “  Students, look up here where I am pointing. This inequality is read as y is less than x to the fourth power.” “  Let’s read the inequality together: y is less than x to the fourth power.”

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When teaching students to read equations, you can add pair-shares and Checking for Understanding. Let’s look at how Silvia did this during a science lesson. Silvia points to the image on the screen with her laser pointer and says, “Students, look up here.” She waits momentarily until all eyes are on the screen. 2H2 + O2 → 2H2O “ This chemical equation can be read in a couple of ways. One way is using the names of the substances. Two hydrogen molecules plus one oxygen molecule yields two water molecules.” She continues, “Let’s read together, two hydrogen molecules plus one oxygen molecule yields two water molecules. Chemical equations can also be read using the atomic symbols, the abbreviations of the elements.” She points her red laser to each part of the equation while reading, 2H2 + O2 → 2H2O “  2H2 plus O2 yields 2H2O. Students, point to the equation on your page and read with me, 2H2 plus O2 yields 2H2O.” Silvia continues, “Now, let’s practice with our partners. I want the A partner to read the chemical equation using the names of the substances and the B partner to read using the names of the elements. Point to the parts of the chemical equation on your handout as you read it. Check that your partner reads correctly. Go ahead.” After the students pair-share, Silvia calls on non-volunteers to read the chemical equation in both ways.

TEACHER TIPS: CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT We have a phrase at DataWORKS regarding classroom management: The teacher never yields. It’s best to be consistent. If the teacher starts giving in on classroom procedures, then students realize they don’t have to follow them. Let’s watch as Silvia, in a gentle way, repeats the task until all students participate.

“Let’s   look at the definition of a chemical reaction. Let’s read it together, please.” Silvia starts the choral read, “A chemical reaction is . . .” but only a few students join in. She stops and turns to the class, “Remember what I told you at the beginning of the lesson, I need you to read science content, so I am going to have to hear all of you reading because then you will be able to read your textbook.” Looking out at the students with a big, friendly smile, she pleasantly says, “Can we read it one more time? Let’s try it. Let’s read it.” The students join in, “A chemical reaction is a process in which atoms are reorganized into different combinations of molecules.” She points to a chemical equation on the screen and continues, “Let’s take a look at what that means.” Silvia’s scenario above is also a good example of why EDI uses text-based lessons. Go back and look at the vocabulary in that sentence: chemical reaction, process, reorganized, combinations, molecules. If Silvia presented this information orally, her students would not be practicing reading these words.

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

Modifications for Non-Readers and Beginning Readers From John: I looked out at my kindergarten class in Australia. They carefully moved their fingers across the page as I read the sentence. However, I noticed that some of them had the page upside down as they “tracked” the words on the page.

We have modifications for nonreaders and beginning readers. Nonreaders and beginning readers cannot read well enough to find and follow the individual words on the page on their own. For these readers, you should read from text on the board, a screen, or a flipchart that all students can see. Student heads should be up looking at your words, not down looking at a page. Read a few words at a time while physically pointing to each word. Then have students repeat the words chorally with you as you point to each word. You can use echo reading where you only read a few words at a time.

Air-Tracking When young students are not able to follow words on the page by themselves, have them raise their hands and point to the words on the board or flip chart as you point to them. We call this air-tracking. Students point in the air at each word. “  Students, raise your hands and point to these words as I touch them.” Mrs. Wilson waits a moment and cues a couple of students to raise their hands and point. “Read these words after I read them.” She uses echo reading. She reads very slowly, breaking the sentence into shorter phrases. “We will describe . . . we will describe . . . major events . . . major events . . . in a story . . . in a story.” Mrs. Wilson continues, “Now I will read it altogether. Point where I am pointing. We will describe major events in a story. Class, your turn. We will describe major events in a story.”

Use Letter Sounds to Help Beginning Readers Recognize Words You can help beginning readers recognize new words by referring to the sounds of individual letters in the word and then emphasizing these sounds when reading the word. Generally, you emphasize the beginning of the word, the first letter or the initial consonant blend (such as ch). Again, the students must be focused on looking at the word and the letters in the word. Here is Silvia using this technique.

Learning Objective: Today, we will extend patterns. (1st) Silvia points to the letter p, the first letter in the word. “Students, look at this letter. Let’s say the sound of this letter, /p/. One more time, /p/.” She points to the last letter. “Now, students, let’s all say the sound of this letter, /s/. Again /s/. So when we read this word, we say patterns. Let’s read: patterns. One more time: patterns.”

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Tracked Reading Is Important Tracked reading is an easy method for improving student reading fluency. When you use tracked reading during EDI lessons, students are reading all day long. With tracked reading, you are not actually teaching reading, but you are directing and helping students read content. Use tracked reading throughout the lesson. Have students read the text in the lesson itself—the Learning Objective, the Concept definitions, Skill Development steps, lesson Relevance, and so forth. Students can even read the Checking for Understanding questions. Imagine this amount of reading all day long, every day in all content areas. You can see student reading fluency improve.

From Silvia: We have taught hundreds of EDI demonstration lessons from pre-K to twelfth grade. When we debrief afterwards, one comment that often comes up is how much reading the students did during the lesson. “The students were reading constantly for over 50 minutes.” And this reading can happen all day in EDI lessons in all content areas.

Read to Increase Engagement: All Grade Levels Besides improving reading fluency, tracked reading instantly increases student engagement. When you are talking and you stop and ask everyone to read with you, the entire class perks up. Everyone, look up here. This is really important. Let’s read it together.

You can increase engagement and attention with older students by just asking them to read with you. Let’s listen to John describe how this can work.

From John: I was in the classroom coaching a high school history teacher. He had a list of bullet points about how the introduction of the automobile changed society. Houses needed garages. Cities needed parking lots. Gasoline distribution and gas stations needed to be built. Cars allowed development of suburbs far from the town center. He read each bullet point from a poster he had taped to the wall and then explained each point. As he started the third item, I turned and whispered, “Have the students read it with you.” He paused a second and then asked the class to read it with him and continued to do so for the rest of the bullet points. During the debrief afterwards he said, “I can’t believe how engaged my students were during that part of the lesson.” I replied, “Yes, I saw it, too. Each time you had the students read, it refocused their attention on you. It really worked and was easy to do.”

Reading Improves Remembering Another benefit of tracked and choral reading is that it helps students remember. Rather than just listening to your words, they are reading and speaking the words themselves. It’s multimodality teaching. We have described tracked reading. Now let’s talk about adding kinesthetics with our next Engagement Norm.

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

Student Engagement Norm 4: Gesture With Me Our next Norm is Gesture With Me. Gesturing is used to add a physical movement that conveys meaning. You use a hand, arm, or body motion that mimics what you are teaching. When you gesture, it’s important that your students do it and not just watch you do it. It’s whole-class engagement. You require all the students to lift their arms at the same time and do the gesture together. Here are some steps for our Gesture with Me Norm.

GESTURE WITH ME 1. Provide a gesture along with a verbal description, explaining what the gesture means. 2. Have the entire class repeat the gesture. 3. Check for Understanding (optional) •• Pair-share. Have students use the gesture and explain it to their partners. •• Call on random non-volunteers to use the gesture while explaining its meaning.

Gestures: Perpendicular Lines (4th) Mrs. Gonzalez is standing in front of her fourth-grade class with her arms held up in front of her crossed at a 90 degree angle. She says, “Students, my arms are perpendicular. They cross at a 90 degree angle. Everyone, put your arms up like mine. Show me perpendicular. I am waiting for two people.” She scans the room and continues, “Good, now everyone’s arms are perpendicular. OK. Turn to your partner and tell them why your arms are perpendicular.” After a few moments for both partners to talk, she calls on non-volunteers to explain perpendicular using their arms and a verbal description.

Gestures: Compare Two Texts (K) Silvia has kindergarten students use gestures during Concept Development. To compare texts, look for things that are the same or different.

Silvia and students gesture. They are the same.

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Silvia and students gesture. They are different.

Gestures: Plate Tectonics, Convergent Boundaries (High School Earth Science) John uses gestures while teaching plate tectonics. Convergent boundaries occur when plates come together and one plate dives under another. He has his students gesture to show convergent boundaries.

John uses gestures during a high school science lesson.

Use Gestures to Cue Students Gestures are also great for cuing students when answering questions. If students stumble while answering a question, you can raise your arms and provide the gesture, helping them retrieve the information from their memory. Mrs. Gonzalez is asking students to define perpendicular lines. She calls on non-volunteers. “Justin, can you tell me what perpendicular lines are?” Justin’s eyes roll up as he thinks. After waiting a few moments with no response, Mrs. Gonzalez raises her arms and crosses them. Justin responds, “Perpendicular lines are lines that cross at 90 degrees.”

Gestures Are Important Gestures can be used to convey information, but our main purpose here is to use gestures to help students remember new information. The movement actually provides an alternate pathway in the brain to retrieve the information. Humans can remember gestures very easily, and using the gesture later seems to cause the information to pop back into your brain. Gestures are hard to describe in a book. We have seen gestures for parallel and perpendicular lines, positive and negative slopes, keeping equations balanced, right hand rule for electromagnetic forces in physics, and syllabication rules (if two consonants are surrounded by two vowels, divide between the consonants). There are gestures for past, present, and future verbs; for context clues (nearby words that

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

give information about unknown words); for beginning, middle, and end of the story; and more. Gestures are extremely useful for emerging readers. These students cannot refer back to the text for information or an answer. The gesture helps them remember and allows you to cue students. From John: I must confess that gestures have saved me over and over. Here is an example I used in a third-grade class that included nonreaders. The next day the principal excitedly told me that even the nonreaders learned the new content. Notice that I include some repetitions. I don’t just have the students do it once. The pair-shares also provide repetitions for the students.

“  Students, I have been telling you how the beginning of a story must include the characters, the setting, and the problem. Here is how I remember that. Watch my hands and listen. The beginning of a story must have . . . the people (I use two hands and point to myself) . . . the place (I point around the room) . . . and the problem (I put one hand on my face with a confused look). Let’s all say that together. Get your hands up. The beginning of a story must have . . . the people (gesture) . . . the place (gesture) . . . and the problem (gesture). One more time, all hands moving. The beginning of a story must have . . . the people . . . the place . . . and the problem. Turn to your partner and tell them the three things we need at the beginning of a story. And I want to see your hands moving. Partner A, go first.”

Gestures to Visualize Text Gestures can also be used strategically to act out parts of a text. For example: Students, the word bat has two meanings. Bat can mean a baseball bat used to hit a ball. Show me your arms like you are hitting a baseball with a bat. Good. The word bat can also mean the small animal that flies as shown in the picture. Flap your arms like you are a bat flying.

Student Engagement Norm 5: Pair-Share Pair-shares are covered in more detail for their instructional purposes in the Checking for Understanding chapter. Here is the basic information about how to do them. •• Pair-shares are included in the Engagement Norms. •• Pair-shares are easy to do. You merely direct your students to explain something to their partners. The pair-shares should focus on higher-order thinking where students have to come up with their own information, not restate information. Don’t direct your students to tell their partners, “The answer is six.” “The answer is six.” Instead, ask them to explain how they got the answer six or what the six represents in the problem. Here are some techniques to use for pair-shares:

Label Partners To make pair-shares more effective, label the partners. Generally, this is done as A and B partners. However, you can use anything: peanut butter and jelly, yellow and green.

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32   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) From John: You can even allow students to make up their own names. I saw students select dogs and cats for their groups. The teacher then continued, “Dogs, explain to cats how to . . .”

Pair-Share With Pairs Pairs of two maximize talking and thinking for each student. Groups of four are less effective for pair-shares because not all students are talking.

Move Desks Together Have students slide their desks together in pairs. This facilitates interaction between students and allows students to be close enough to see each other’s materials.

Students Face the Teacher Be sure all desks are aimed toward you and the screen or board you are teaching from. This is a problem with groups of four desks when two students have their backs to the teacher.

Active Listening The partners should be talking to each other during the pair-shares. Young students sitting cross-legged on the carpet can rotate their bodies “knee to knee” into “sharing position.” When the pair-share is completed, they move back to “listening position” with knees aimed at the teacher. Students at desks need to be talking to each other and not talking out into space.

State Which Partner Should Go First If you don’t state which partner should talk first, often one student ends up doing most of the talking. It’s best to direct which partner should start talking during the pair-share. Students, slide your desks together. I need you to be closer to your partner. Let’s check the partners. Point to your partner. The person on the left is the A partner. Write A on the top of your whiteboard. The person on the right is the B partner. Write B on the top of your whiteboard. Raise your hand if you are an A partner. Raise your hand if you are a B partner. Partner B, explain to Partner A how I found the main idea. Students, how did I identify the character trait? B explain first. OK. Switch. The other partner should be talking now. A’s explain to B’s which of the three figures is a quadrilateral and why.

If you don’t think both students are talking, you can cue during the pair-share with a statement such as, “Switch, I want the other partner to talk now.”

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

Repetitive Tasks Can Be Split Among the Partners Partner A, solve problem number 3. Partner B, solve problem number 4. When you are done, show your partner how you solved it. Partner B, identify two similarities in the passage. Partner A, identify two differences. Write them on your whiteboards and explain to your partner.

Point and Explain Pair-shares can include explaining something while physically pointing to it. Students, solve the math problem on your whiteboard. Now, Partner A, point to your whiteboard and explain to Partner B how you solved it.

An engaging variation is having students point and explain something on their partner’s materials. The reaching over adds a kinesthetic activity, and the pair-share can become “teach your partner.” Partner B, point to problem number 4 in Partner A’s textbook and explain how the inequality was solved. Teach your partner. Partner A, point to the figurative language in the second paragraph of your partner’s textbook and explain it to your partner. Partner B, point to Partner A’s handout and locate the clue words that show sequential order text.

Pair-shares where students “teach their partners” are also an effective cognitive strategy that helps students clarify their thinking and remember information. Partner A, teach Partner B how to solve problem number 2.

Strategic Partners Don’t partner the two lowest students or the two highest students. Mix up the students. In theory, in a class with 20 students, student 1 pairs to student 11, student 2 with 12, student 3 with 13, and so on. Generally, just mixing up the students works fine.

Rotate Partners Periodically rotating partners allows students to work with different people throughout the year. This can help balance out strong and weak partners. Rotating partners can be very useful to improve discipline in a class. Have all the A partners stand up, move over two desks, and sit down with their new partner.

Student Engagement Norm 6: Attention Signal During pair-shares you want your students to talk. But you also need them to quickly stop talking when the pair-share is over. To accomplish this we use an attention signal. At the signal, students stop talking and turn to you ready to listen. There are many variations of attention signals, including oral commands, hand signals, bells, claps, and so forth. In EDI we generally use call and response. The

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teacher gives a statement, and the students have an immediate oral response. Attention signals with a response are more effective because they force students to stop talking to make the response. Some possible attention signals are shown below. The teacher command is shown first with the student response following. Eyes front. Back straight. One, two. Eyes on you. School names and mascots can be used. Lincoln. Panthers. Banning. Bengals. Attention Signals can be personalized by the teacher or be uniform for the entire school. When all students know a common Attention Signal, it can be used during school assemblies or in the school yard. At the classroom level, you can have several signals and rotate them or change them periodically. The specific signal you use is not critical, as long as you have one and the students are trained to respond quickly.

When to Use the Attention Signal If you listen carefully during the pair-shares, you will often hear the noise increase as the students start to talk. Then you will hear a dip in the noise level followed by an increase. The dip is when the students have completed exchanging information. The increase in noise is often when the students start talking among themselves. So, in general, if you listen for the dip in noise level, you can give the Attention Signal then. Also, if you let pair-shares last too long, lessons drag and can become boring. Train students to quickly turn and start pair-sharing. Then use your Attention Signal to quickly regroup the class.

Student Engagement Norm 7: Whiteboards Whiteboards is another activity that engages the entire class to do something at the same time. We discuss whiteboard strategies more during the Checking for Understanding chapter. For now, we’ll focus on the commands for whiteboards. Whiteboards are small boards that students write on and then lift to show the teacher. A long time ago they were actually small blackboards. Most whiteboards today are dry-erase boards with a white plastic side to write on with an erasable marker. Several years ago at DataWORKS, we started using clear plastic sheet protectors— with a piece of stiff paper inside—as whiteboards. These are lightweight and easy to replace. One advantage of the sheet protectors’ version is that different inserts can be used. For example, you can make inserts for graphing using the coordinate plane. You can have inserts with multiplication facts or the Periodic Table of the Elements. Generally, schools have class sets of whiteboards. However, some high schools issue a sheet protector whiteboard to each student, and the students are expected to carry it from class to class.

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

Chin-It When you have a whiteboard question, don’t have students show their boards until you give the command, chin-it. Then all students raise their whiteboards with one hand on each side and hold it just under their chins. This places all the whiteboards at a uniform level where you can see them all at once, and none are blocking the students in the back. Students should aim the boards toward you, even if you are standing in the back of the room or at the side of the class. Chin-it is the command most often used, but you can use other commands such as show me. The important thing is that you have a command and students know it and respond quickly.

Park Your Boards To prevent students from playing with the whiteboards or doodling on them, tell students to park their boards after you have reviewed their answers. Students should place their whiteboards on the front edge of their desks with their marker and eraser on top of the board. If students draw on their boards when they are supposed to be parked, just walk by and take the marker. Tell the student that they can have it back during the next question. If necessary, take both the marker and the whiteboard. In more difficult cases, keep the whiteboard and marker and tell the student to write their answer on a piece of paper and hold it up.

Divide the Desktop From John: I saw a teacher who divided the student desktops using a strip of masking tape. Above the tape was the parking lot for the whiteboards and unused materials. Below the line, students had only the worksheets and the materials they were working on at that moment.

Use Papers as Whiteboards Sometimes, you can just have students lift a paper or worksheet to show their work. For young students, who are circling information on a worksheet, have them hold up the worksheet to show their answers. Students, work problem number 3 on your worksheet. Be ready to show me. Chin-it. Students, circle all the quadrilaterals on page one of the handout. Chin-it. Hold up your handout. Students, find helium on the Periodic Table of the Elements. Circle it. Ready? Chin-it. Show me how to divide the pie into four equal parts so each person gets the same amount.

Whiteboards for Nonwriters Whiteboards can even be used for students who cannot write. Using sheet protectors as whiteboards, just make inserts with yes, no and A, B, C. Students can circle the correct answer on the plastic cover. For preschool classes, we use whiteboards with a red circle on one side and a green circle on the other side. Students “vote” by showing the correct color. They don’t write anything.

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Students hold up worksheets for Silvia after they divided a pie into four equal parts. (3rd)

Students, do you hear the /t/ sound in ten? Show me green if you can hear the /t/ sound in ten. Show me red if you cannot hear the /t/ sound. Show me your whiteboards. Students, do you hear the /t/ sound in sun? Show me your whiteboards. Green is yes. Red is no.

From John: I recently saw a teacher in Australia with her students sitting on the carpet. The students all had whiteboards flat on the floor in front of them. As soon as they wrote their answers, the teacher could see all the answers. She called individual students to explain but did not have students raise their whiteboards. I also saw a teacher with students at their desks. When she had a whiteboard question, she had her students get their boards out of their desk drawers, write on them, and then show answers. After they were done, they placed the boards back into the drawer. The students were so well trained and so fast that it took almost no time, and no students were playing with the boards between questions.

Silvia has kindergarteners circle S for same or D for different while comparing texts.

Whiteboard Apps Nowadays, there are apps that allow students to use tablets as whiteboards. The teacher calls for students to hold their tablets up. With a quick glance around the room, the teacher can determine whether all students are learning. There are also apps that will send student responses to the teacher via Wi-Fi. The teacher can

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

select a student to respond and have his tablet projected on the screen in front of the class. The student can then explain his response to the class. We’ve found that students of all ages love to use whiteboards, and everyone is engaged when an answer is called for. In addition, lifting the boards provides a kinesthetic activity for students when they show their answers.

Student Engagement Norm 8: Use Complete Sentences (Public Voice, Academic Vocabulary) Our last Student Engagement Norm addresses the use of complete sentences. Students (and especially English Learners) are learning new vocabulary every day at school, yet they often don’t practice using the new words enough to internalize them. Having students pair-sharing and responding in complete sentences provides practice in saying new words, using them in meaningful context, and hearing them being used by others. In EDI lessons, you direct your students to respond in complete sentences that include the new vocabulary contained in the lesson. A complete sentence such as My answer is 14 is not enough. The complete sentence must contain new vocabulary from the lesson. For example, students could say: The perimeter of the polygon is 14 centimeters.

Sentence Frames In EDI, you use sentence frames or sentence starters to cue students how you want them to respond. Let’s look as some examples. Students, I want Partner A to identify the setting in the passage. You should say the setting in the passage is _______. Then tell your partner how you know it is the setting.

Here are some more sample sentence frames. Students, you should answer like this . . . The setting in the narrative passage is ____. Example ____ is a hexagon. An equivalent fraction of

1 2

is ____.

The first step in solving a system of linear equation is ____. The first step in the lawmaking process is ____. To balance a chemical equation, ____.

EDI questions require students to justify, interpret, or explain their answers. This can be added into the sentence frames. Example ____ is an equilateral triangle because _____. Paragraph ____ is compare-and-contrast text because _____.

Sentence Frame Before Pair-Share You can always cue students to use complete sentences while they respond to your questions. However, it is best to provide the sentence frame before directing

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students to pair-share. This way all students say the complete sentence during the pair-share, not just those students you call on to respond. From John: In part of an elementary school lesson, I asked students to write a vowel on their whiteboards. I cued them, “I want you to point to your whiteboard and say, ‘The vowel I wrote is . . .’” This immediately improved the lesson. It was so much better than students just responding with the name of the vowel, “e.”

Public Voices Another part of answering in complete sentences is using a public voice when responding. This means students should speak up in voice like they are the teacher or they are a public figure giving a speech. They should be loud enough for the entire class to hear. Cue students to speak up. In general, avoid walking toward them to hear their answers. Stay at the front of the room and ask them to respond loud enough so you can hear. You can also ask students around the room if they can hear the answer. Have students speak so everyone in the room can hear the answer. Loud voices are only used when reporting out an answer. Have your students use quieter voices during pair-shares and choral reading.

Stand and Deliver We are also having students stand up while providing their answers. Having students stand to respond has some clear benefits. First of all, students are becoming at ease with speaking and expressing their thoughts before a group. (Humans’ greatest fear is often said to be public speaking.) It also focuses the rest of the students to look over and pay attention to the answer. Standing and delivering takes a little training. Young students will quickly learn to stand. At DataWORKS we did not always have high school students stand. However, we are changing our minds after working with high school students recently. From John: I spent a month working with middle school and high school math teachers. We started having the students stand when responding to Checking for Understanding questions. It worked very well because students stood to explain how they solved their problem. Recently, in Australia we started the stand and deliver using complete sentences for high school students also. It was amazing to see the improvement in students in just a couple of hours. It worked very well, and the school decided to have students stand more often.

Stand and deliver can be used for all questions in elementary school. For secondary, it can be used all the time or reserved for the more sophisticated higher-order questions that require more analysis and explanation.

Students Create Their Own Complete Sentences Over time as you use sentence frames, students will start to use complete sentences on their own. However, you can also train students how to come up with their own

Chapter 4  •  Creating Engaged Students  

complete sentences. The complete sentence actually comes from the question itself. This is easiest to show when using pre-written questions. Students, let’s read the question. Which figure shows equal groups? And we have three figures—three drawings, A, B, and C. Your complete sentence should use words from the question. Look up here. You should respond, “Figure (blank) show equal groups.”

Training Students in the Engagement Norms Train your students in the Norms starting the first day of school. Have them practice tracked reading. Use a hand signal or verbal cue for when you read and when they read such as “my turn, your turn.” Train your students to use whiteboards and complete sentences. Students, I want you to write your name on your whiteboards. Just your first name. Now I want you to pair-share with your partner. Turn and show your board to your partner and introduce yourself in a complete sentence, “Hello, my name is _____.” Partner A, go first, then Partner B.

(Stop and show students how to hold whiteboards. Explain the command chin-it.) I want to see your boards. Ready? Chin-it. Hold your boards chin high aimed to me. Now I am going to call on some of you to tell me your name in a complete sentence. When I call on you, I want you to stand up and speak in a loud voice so we can all hear. Erase your whiteboards. Write your favorite food on your whiteboard.

(Provide a sentence frame. Pair-share. Chin-it. Call random students to stand up and respond in a complete sentence.) Write your favorite color on your whiteboard.

(Provide a sentence frame. Pair-share. Chin-it. Call random students to stand up and respond in a complete sentence.)

Engagement Norms Are Important Student Engagement Norms are important for several reasons. The Engagement Norms make teaching more effective (students learn more) and more efficient (students learn faster). When students are trained in the Norms, they respond quickly to your directions, following classroom procedures. And teachers in following years spend less time establishing classroom procedures since the students already know them. The Norms have academic benefits. They systematically support literacy in the classroom every day, all day. The Norms implement Language Objectives for listening, speaking, and reading. This is extra important if you have English Learners in your classes. The Norms were originally designed to support academics as students read, answer in complete sentences, and so forth. However, the Norms are also great classroom management tools. Less time is spent addressing discipline problems when students are engaged.

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Your use of the Norms also makes teaching more engaging for students because they are constantly doing things. We have students say, “The bell rang already? Wow, time went by fast!”

ADMINISTRATOR TIP From John: Go into classrooms and count the number of engagements in 5 minutes. Two or more engagements per minute is quite possible. An engagement every 2 minutes is a minimum. This is an easy way to measure and monitor schoolwide implementation of the Student Engagement Norms.

Summary We have covered a lot in this chapter: Pronounce With Me, Track With Me, Read With Me, Gesture With Me, Pair-Share, Attention Signal, Whiteboards, and Complete Sentences. These Engagement Norms are important because they are used over and over all day long while teaching. You teach EDI lessons through the Engagement Norms. Photos courtesy of DataWORKS

Now we’re ready for the next chapter, Is Everyone Learning? Checking for Under­standing. Let’s see how to measure if students are learning while we’re teaching, or if we need to reteach.

5 Is Everyone Learning? Checking for Understanding

Assessment

Dif fer en Check tia ing tin for g Un St d er Learning st an Objective

Activate Prior Knowledge

e

Pr

EDI®

Homework

Explicit Direct Instruction

ion

tat

n se

Teaching gies Strate Stra tive teg gni i e Co s: Ex g for Understanding pla ckin i Che n Ch ,D ec e k in g fo

Periodic Review

s gie te ra ng di

Preparation

“Students, I want to make sure you’re learning what I’m teaching.”

Concept Development

Skill Development

Independent Practice

Guided Practice Relevance

l ode ,M ate ng str ndi on sta m er nd rU

Closure

English Learner Strateg ies Checking for Unde r s t a nd ing

Checking for Understanding questions are interspersed continuously throughout a lesson.

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What Is Checking for Understanding? Continuous Checking for Understanding (CFU) is the backbone of effective instruction. Most educators are already familiar with the words “Checking for Understanding.” In fact, almost every observation, coaching, or evaluation form ever written con­tains words such as “Teacher ensures that students are learning” or “Teacher monitors student learning.” Sit down with any group of teachers and ask them if they Check for Understanding. All heads will nod up and down in affirmation. Now, go around the room and ask some of them individually, “How do you Check for Understanding?” You will get many different answers: “I check students’ answers on their homework the next day.” “I look at the annual state test results to see if my students learned.” “I call on volunteers who raise their hands.” “I review the grades on the weekly quizzes.” In Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), we have a very specific method of Checking for Understanding that will make your teaching even better because you measure student learning in real time. Here’s the EDI definition: Checking for Understanding is the teacher continually verifying that students are learning what is being taught while it is being taught. To say this in another way: Checking for Understanding is explicitly verifying students are learning while you are teaching, not after the lesson is over. Checking for Understanding confirms that students are learning, or it uncovers misunderstandings that can be rectified right away during the lesson.

Checking for Understanding is the teacher continually verifying that students are learning what is being taught while it is being taught.

Checking for Understanding goes beyond verifying if students can repeat factual information you have just presented. In fact, almost all CFU questions measure if students can execute the processes you are teaching—for example, analyze themes or main ideas in passages, solve math problems, solve math word problems, write paragraphs, and so forth. Students, how did I determine the main idea in the first paragraph?

Conceptually, CFU is easy to do. You simply stop and ask questions of your students every few minutes to make sure they understand what you just taught them. Teach and check. Teach and check. Teach and check. Although CFU sounds simple, there are many nuances and strategies that make it even more effective. But before we discuss how to Check for Understanding, let’s go over why it’s so important.

From John: One thing you need to take out of this book is Checking for Understanding. The use of this one strategy alone could truly revolutionize education across the country and around the world, helping students everywhere.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

Why Is It So Beneficial for the Teacher to Continually Check for Understanding? There are several reasons why CFU is so important and why it can make your teaching more effective. First of all, if you look at the independent practice, homework, quizzes, or state tests to measure if your students have learned, it’s too late to modify your instruction. The lesson is already done. The power of CFU is the real-time information it provides you for making instructional decisions during the lesson. It tells you when to speed up, slow down, or reteach (Marzano, 2017). In reality, your students’ ability to successfully answer CFU questions determines the pace of the lesson.

Your students’ ability to successfully answer CFU questions determines the pace of the lesson.

Second, CFU guarantees high student success because you provide additional examples and reteaching in direct response to your students’ ability to answer your questions. Third, CFU allows you to confirm that your students know how to do the homework before being asked to do it. You don’t want your students to reinforce misconceptions. There is an old saying, “Practice makes perfect.” Actually, this is not correct. The correct statement is “Practice makes permanent.” The brain remembers what it repeats, right or wrong. Always Check for Understanding so students are not practicing their mistakes into permanence. Fourth, CFU improves classroom dynamics. Your CFU questions break up lectures, making the classroom more interactive. When you present questions every few minutes, students are more engaged and they pay more attention. In addition, when they pay more attention, discipline problems are reduced. In fact, the best discipline strategies are those that prevent problems from happening in the first place! Fifth, CFU is a cognitive strategy that helps students learn and remember. Interacting with the information by thinking of answers, pair-sharing with partners, and even hearing other student responses all help provide additional repetitions to help the brain learn.

When Do You Check for Understanding? That’s a good question. Just how often should you stop to verify that your students are learning what you are teaching them? The answer is easy. You need to check all the time, every time you teach something: a rule, a definition, a step, a strategy. But if you want a simple, easy-to-follow rule, here it is: Check for Understanding after you present a chunk of information. This will average out to be about every 3 to 4 minutes. EDI lessons can have about 15 questions per lesson. And each time you ask a CFU question, you usually call on two to three students to respond, so this averages to 30 to 45 responses per lesson. Following this simple rule will make all your lessons better. You will be continuously monitoring student learning and uncovering possible student misunderstandings throughout the lesson. Plus, all your lessons will become more engaging. They automatically become interactive lessons because you are

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interacting with your students every few minutes. No one will ever accuse you of just lecturing all the time. Everyone will be saying, “Wow, what a great teacher! Look at all the interaction with the students. And the students are so successful; they can answer the questions.” Of course, your students know the answers because, as you are going to see in a few minutes, you always teach first before asking questions. Here are some examples of when to Check for Understanding: • At the start of a lesson, pre-read the Learning Objective. Have students chorally read the Objective. Ask students to pair-share and read the Learning Objective to each other. Call on random students to read the Learning Objective to the class. Note. This is checking to see if the students can read the new words contained in the Learning Objective. You will teach the meaning of the Objective over the course of the lesson. •• After teaching a new concept definition and giving examples, provide another example and non-example. Ask students to explain to their partners which one is an example and why. Call on random, non-volunteers to explain. •• After modeling out loud your thinking while solving a problem, ask students to describe to their partners the strategies you used. Call on random students to explain how you solved the problem. •• During Guided Practice, ask students to write answers on their whiteboards and explain their answers to their partners. Call for a show of boards. Call on random, non-volunteers to read and explain their answers. •• For math problems, have students solve problems on their whiteboards and explain their solution to their partners. Call for a show of boards. Call on students for their answers. For word problems, have students interpret and explain what their numerical answer represents in the word problem. •• After presenting reasons for the Relevance (importance) of the lesson, ask students to select which reason is the most important to them, or they can come up with a new reason. After they have explained to their partners, call on non-volunteers to report out. •• During lesson Closure, ask students to solve one more problem or to summarize what they learned. Call on random, non-volunteers for answers. When you prepare EDI lessons, you also prepare CFU questions to use during each component of the lesson. As you practice teaching using EDI, you will develop a feel for when a CFU question is appropriate even if you didn’t have one prewritten. Here is an example. Suppose you are presenting a history lesson on how a bill becomes a law. You explain that a bill is a written proposal for a new law and that a law is a rule that people must obey. You give examples of each. Can you feel the need for a CFU question? You’ve taught a chunk of information. Stop right now and ask your students, “In your own words, what is the difference between a bill and a law?” Or you could ask an application question, requiring students to apply the definitions to a scenario. “When we see a sign on the freeway that says we can only drive 65 miles per hour, are we talking about a bill or a law? How do you know?”

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

TAPPLE—Checking for Understanding the EDI Way! Now let’s go over how to Check for Understanding. CFU has a lot of components, so we created an easy way to remember. Teachers are using it all over the country and around the world: TAPPLE. Pretty soon you won’t be saying, “I’m going to CFU my students.” You’ll be saying, “I’m going to TAPPLE my students!”

Checking for Understanding With TAPPLE

TAPPLE lists the steps for Checking for Understanding.

Now, let’s go over each step, one at a time.

Teach First

Teach First before you ask a question so students are equipped to respond. In EDI, when you Check for Understanding, you always, always teach first. This is one of the fundamental EDI rules: Teach first. Remember, the purpose of CFU is to verify that your students are learning what you are teaching while you are teaching. How

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can you verify if your students are learning before you teach them? You can’t. You verify after you teach them. Remember: Teach and check. Teach and check. Teach and Check.

From Silvia: In many classrooms, students are continually interrogated as if teaching has become asking questions to students who do not know the answers. For example, I observed a teacher urging his students to think of anything they knew about the philosophers during the Renaissance. No amount of pleading, exhortation, or encouragement was able to improve his students’ ability to respond. Students need to be taught the content first. After teaching, then, absolutely, ask questions to verify that your students now know. Educators claim that what they are doing is Activating Prior Knowledge. This is a misinterpretation of Activating Prior Knowledge when you ask students to come up with knowledge they don’t have. Activating Prior Knowledge is asking students about something they already know that will help them learn the new information. When you ask questions before you teach, you are not really measuring the effectiveness of your teaching. Instead, you are assessing the existing background knowledge of your students. Later on in this book, we go over the specific techniques used to activate students’ prior knowledge of something they already know about the upcoming lesson.

Where Do Students Come Up With the Information to Answer a CFU Question? That is a good question. Where do the students come up with the information to answer CFU questions? And what about students who are performing below grade level or those with little background knowledge? Here’s one of the big secrets to being successful and having your students learn new, grade-level content every day . . .  When you Check for Understanding, your students can answer correctly because they are applying the information you just taught them. This is so important that we are going to say it again. When you Check for Understanding, your students are able to answer correctly because they are applying the information, definitions, rules, procedures, or steps you just taught them. Let’s add a clarification here: During Checking for Understanding, students are not mindlessly repeating the information you just said. They are using or applying that information in new ways or in new situations.

When you Check for Understanding, your students can answer correctly because they are applying the information you just taught them.

A wise old lawyer once said, “I never ask a witness a question unless I already know what he will say.” Well, EDI is the same. When you ask students CFU questions, you already know what they are going to say because you have carefully and skillfully laid the groundwork for them all to be successful. You did the T in TAPPLE. You taught first. You’re probably thinking right now that there will be times when, heaven forbid, even though you’ve taught your students, they don’t have the correct answers. We go over the exact steps to follow in a few minutes when we get to the “E” in TAPPLE, Effective Feedback. And our goal will be 80% correct answers after whole class instruction, and then providing Effective Feedback to get 100% correct answers.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

Ask a Specific Question

The A in TAPPLE stands for Ask a Specific Question. When you CFU, always ask specific questions about what you are teaching. Students, how did I solve problem 31? Students, work problem 32 on your whiteboards. Be ready to show me. Students, explain the text structure in paragraph 4.

No Opinions Don’t ask students if they think they are learning, or if they think they understand. That’s just their opinion. Often, students’ opinions of their learning does not match reality. In fact, it’s difficult for learners to know what they know or do not know when learning something new, so ask specific questions. Don’t ask students if they think they are learning. Ask specific questions.

At DataWORKS we often see lessons with opinion questions, such as in this example. Mr. Markarian leans against his dark wooden podium, rocking it slightly, and concludes by saying, “So that’s what a prime number is. Does everyone understand what a prime number is?” He looks around the room. Seeing no reactions from the students, he pleads, “Are there any questions? Is it perfectly clear? Raise your hand if you don’t understand what a prime number is!” No hands go up. Mr. Markarian is thinking that since no hands went up, all students know. He makes a final check. He says, “OK, then, thumbs up if you understand and thumbs down if you don’t.” He looks out into the room once more and says, “Good, since all of you understand what prime numbers are, we can turn the page and start on composite numbers.”

If you look carefully at this example, Mr. Markarian asked his students for their opinions of whether they had learned or not. The students, feeling that they understood, or perhaps not wishing to identify themselves, all declared that they understood. Tomorrow, he’ll be looking over the homework. If he sees wrong answers, he’ll be shaking his head thinking how just yesterday all his students swore they knew what prime numbers were. What would have been the EDI approach? It’s this: To measure if students can identify prime numbers, ask a question requiring them to identify prime numbers. For example, Mr. Markarian could have written some numbers on the board and asked his students to identify which ones were prime numbers. Then he would know right away if they understood.

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So don’t ask students their opinions of whether they are learning. Ask them specific questions about what you just taught. That’s the A in TAPPLE. From Silvia: I watched a high school teacher ask her students every few minutes, “Any questions? Any questions?” No students asked any questions for the entire period.

Pair-Share

The first P in TAPPLE stands for Pair-share. Originally, we included Pause. The idea with Pause was to provide think time so all students could process the question and think of an answer even if they aren’t called on to answer. If you select students too quickly, or if you only call on volunteers, it’s possible that many students never think of an answer, possibly for the entire year. However, after teaching hundreds of EDI lessons, we found that lessons flow much better and are more engaging if you skip the silent moment for the pause and go directly to the pair-share. Pair-shares provide plenty of time for students to compose a response and to orally state it to their partners. Let’s analyze pair-shares. They are such an important strategy in EDI that they’re included in both TAPPLE and the Engagement Norms. Pair-shares are in TAPPLE because students are preparing to answer a CFU question. Pair-shares are in the Engagement Norms because all students are engaged in an academic activity. We already introduced pair-shares in the Engagement Norms chapter. We review some of that information now and provide some additional strategies, too. Pair-shares are so important that they’re included in both TAPPLE and the Engagement Norms.

When you pair-share, you direct your students to explain their answers to their partners. The pair-share provides wait time. The students have plenty of time to think of an answer. Actually, the pair-share is better than just a pause. The pause is used to provide think time for all students to think of an answer. Pair-shares provide time for all students not just to think of an answer, but to actually say the answer, out loud. Pair-shares are super important for multiple reasons. Here are 15 reasons. Each one of them justifies the use of pair-shares.

Pair-Shares Are Important   1. Every student orally answers every question. Pair-shares go beyond having students think of an answer. Now, they are all actually saying the answer out loud. Think about it. Every single student answers every question for the entire year.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

  2. Automatic wait time is embedded. The pair-share provides the wait time for all students to prepare an answer.   3. Listening and speaking is included. Pair-shares are the primary method of including listening and speaking strategies in every lesson. It’s especially effective because pair-shares include practice of academic vocabulary from the lesson. The listening, speaking, and use of new vocabulary is important for all students, especially English Learners.   4. Student engagement improves. During pair-shares all students are engaged.   5. Students remember more. Pair-share is also a cognitive strategy. As students discuss the information, they are also facilitating remembering the information. Pair-shares can even be in response to directions such as “Explain to your partner how to . . .” or “Teach your partner . . .”   6. Increases the student-talk to teacher-talk ratio. Consistent use of pair-shares adds student talk to any lesson.   7. Students practice their answers. During pair-shares, all students, including English Learners, are practicing putting together the sentences they are going to use to respond.   8. Language translation time. When a beginning English speaker is strategically paired with a student who is able to translate, the pair-share provides the mechanism for the translations to occur. The CFU question cues the translator what to talk about. From John: I have used pair-share translations several times from elementary school through high school. It allows non-English speakers to learn and participate in the lesson. The translators can be other students, parents, or classroom aides. You need to include lots of pair-shares for this to work.

  9. Short attention spans addressed. Teachers have reported how pair-shares help students with short attention spans. This is because the frequent talking with a partner breaks up the length of time students must sit quietly listening to the teacher. 10. Provides first reteach. Pair-shares provide the first reteaching during a lesson, and the students do it for you. During pair-shares you ask students to explain their answers to each other and to check for errors if they have different answers. 11. Classroom management improves. Having students pair-share improves classroom management because they actively participate in a directed, whole-class, academic activity. 12. Instruction is more interactive and interesting for the students. Teachers are often told to be more interactive with their students. Pair-sharing is a great way of creating student interaction. And lessons are more interesting for students when they do something rather than sit quietly for the entire lesson. 13. Academic socialization increases. Students are interacting with each other, speaking in academic English rather than conversational English.

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14. Instructional aides can be utilized. Pair-shares provide time for paraprofessionals to help students. 15. Affective filter is reduced. Students’ reluctance to use language in front of others is reduced because they practice answering questions with one person first before being called on to answer in front of whole class.

From Silvia: At DataWORKS we have trained over 60,000 teachers. We have found during our trainings that all teachers can describe that they need to use pair-shares. However, when actually doing Checking for Understanding, they forget to pair-share, often calling a name before asking the question. One day a teacher stated that she needed to “rewire” her brain to ask CFU questions correctly. That is true. You need to practice Checking for Understanding until it is part of your regular teaching practices.

When you ask a CFU question, always, always, always have the students pair-share before selecting anyone to respond.

Pair-Share Strategies Pair-shares sound really simple to do, but there are a lot of nuances and strategies that can make them even more powerful. We already talked about how to do pairshares in Engagement Norms chapter. Here’s a quick summary. Teach students to be active listeners looking at each other when they pair-share. Create strategic partners. Don’t put the highest or lowest students together. Rotate the partners occasionally so students work with different people during the year. Pair-share with two students. This maximizes the amount of talking time for each student. Label the partners. Alternate between the two partners by telling which partner should start the pair-share. Arrange desks in groups of two facing the board or screen you are teaching from. Desks need to be close together so students can talk to each other. Also, pair-shares often require students to explain a solution or point to textual evidence, so be sure that students are close enough to share documents. If the desks are spaced in rows, direct students to slide their desks together during the lesson. They can move them back when the lesson is over.

Complete Sentences (Public Voice, Academic Vocabulary) Complete Sentences is one of our Engagement Norms, and answering Checking for Understanding questions is where students practice using complete sentences. But answering in complete sentences is not enough. We want students to answer in complete sentences and to practice the new content and academic vocabulary they are learning in the lesson. Here are some examples of one word answers, complete sentences, and then complete sentences with academic vocabulary. The third one is what you want to hear from your students. •• twelve The answer is twelve. The perimeter of the polygon is twelve centimeters.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

•• Compare and contrast I selected compare and contrast. The text structure of the passage is compare and contrast. •• E I picked E. The vowel I identified is E. •• 6 It’s 6. The coefficient of the x-squared term is 6. •• Jupiter Jupiter is one. Jupiter is a planet in the solar system. •• Presidential veto The presidential veto is an example. The presidential veto is an example of a check and balance in the U.S. Constitution. •• controlling I wrote controlling on my whiteboard. The Duke’s character trait in the dramatic monologue is controlling. Do you see the difference between one word answers, complete sentences, and complete sentences with vocabulary from the lesson? It really makes a difference. From John: I taught an EDI demo lesson in a high school language arts class. I pushed my students to use complete sentences. I used the sentence frame, “The Duke’s character trait in the dramatic monologue is _______ because _______.” The teachers were amazed when hearing their students. At the end of the lesson they said, “Today, our students sounded like academic scholars.”

Provide Sentence Frames Your students can sound like academic scholars every day. You do this by providing a sentence frame with the academic vocabulary you want them to use. It’s important that you provide the sentence frame before the pair-share. Then all students will practice the complete sentences and vocabulary, not just the specific students you call on to respond to questions.

Label Partners and Cue Who Should Talk First To ensure maximum participation in pair-shares by both partners, label the partners and direct who should talk first. What is the lesson learned in the narrative? How do you know? Students, you should answer, “The lesson learned in the narrative is_______?” Partner A, go first. Which sentence is the best topic sentence for the paragraph? Multiple-choice A, B, C. Students, you should answer, “Sentence_______ is the best topic sentence for the paragraph.” I want Partner B to go first this time.

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What is the coefficient of the squared term in 3x2 + 4x + 5? Students, you should answer, “The coefficient of the squared term is _______.” Yellow partner, go first.

Students Create Their Own Complete Sentences As you use complete sentences more and more, students will start to use complete sentences on their own. In fact, you can teach students to create their own complete sentence answers using words taken from the question. What is the meaning of the figurative language in the second stanza? Answer in a complete sentence. Students, you can use the words in the question to start your answer. The meaning of the figurative language in the second stanza is . . . 

Limit Teacher Time Spent Helping Students During Pair-Shares This sounds counter-productive. Don’t you want to walk around and help individual students during the pair-shares? Yes, but be careful. Generally, what happens is that you spend too much time with a couple of students, and the pair-share gets too long for everyone else. The rest of the students are ready to move on. If you end up walking around reteaching several students, one at a time, then it would have been better to reteach the entire class. Actually, you know to reteach the entire class when students cannot correctly answer your CFU questions.

Divide Problems Among the Partners Sometimes, if you have very similar problems, you can assign different problems to each partner. Then during the pair-share, each partner explains to the other how he solved his problem. Students, use your whiteboards. I want the yellow partner to solve problem 2 and the green partner to solve problem 3. When you are done, turn to your partner and explain how you solved the problem. Green partner shares first.

Point to the Answer In the Engagement Norms chapter, we mentioned how pair-shares can include students explaining information on their partner’s paper. This has a great kinesthetic aspect because students reach over to explain information on their partner’s materials. “Point to the answer” is especially useful for showing textual evidence in a passage to support an answer, explaining how a math problem was solved, or explaining a graphic or illustration. Students, I want you to explain how the text structure organizes the information in paragraph two. Partner A, point to the paragraph in your partner’s book and explain it. Partner B, point to the graph in your partner’s book. Explain how the graph shows the information from the table.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

How Long Should the Pair-Share Be? Listen for It. The amount of time needed for a pair-share can depend on the sophistication of the question and the amount of time needed to explain it. However, we mentioned before a useful trick that works much of the time. When you direct students to pairshare, you will hear the noise level of the students talking go up as the students start pair-sharing. But in a few moments you will hear the noise level drop and then go back up. What happened was that the noise dropped when the students were done pair-sharing, and then they just started talking on their own. So generally, you can wait for the dip in volume and use your attention signal to call the students’ attention back to you.

Follow-Up Questions Need Pair-Shares, Too A warning about follow-up questions. If you ask a follow-up question to a student who just answered a question, you are not requiring the other students to think or prepare a response. And you have not provided think time for the first student. Follow-up questions should be presented to the whole class along with a pair-share. Then you can call on the same student or call on other random students. Yes, you are correct. Cinderella is a character in paragraph one. She talks and does things. Now I want some textual evidence. I want you all to identify something Cinderella says or does. Use your textbook. Point to the words. Now explain to your partner what you identified that shows Cinderella is a character. Be ready to tell me.

Pick a Non-Volunteer

You taught first, asked a CFU question about what you just taught, and provided a sentence frame with vocabulary from the lesson. Both partners have explained during the pair-share. Now you are ready to call on a student. But before you call on a student, you use your Attention Signal to cue all students to stop pair-sharing and to look at you. You can use one of the call-and-response signals such as “Eyes Front! Back Straight!” or “Class! Class! Yes! Yes!” or one of your own. Now we’re ready for the next step in TAPPLE. The second P in TAPPLE stands for Pick a Non-Volunteer. Actually, this really means Pick a Random Student. You pick random students to respond because you are going to use the responses of a few students to represent the learning for all the students (Marzano, 2017). When teachers call on students with their hands up, they often call on the same students over and over, and these students don’t statistically represent the learning for the entire class. You have a sampling error. Your sample is not representative of the entire class. Your random selection of students will provide equal opportunity for all students to answer questions. Over time, you will call on students from the front of the class, from the back and sides of the class, males and females, all ethnic groups, high performing, and low performing. Everyone. If you think about it, when you Check for Understanding, you really want to find out if there are students who don’t know the answer. You can easily be fooled when

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you call on volunteers who give correct answers, thinking that all your students have learned. You need to find out if there are students in your class who don’t understand. To do this, call on random students. Note. Later in this chapter, we’ll go over using individual whiteboards where you can see every single student’s answer. There is no sampling error with whiteboards. You see all the answers at once. And we have a special strategy for selecting students.

How Do You Select Students Randomly? We have found that the only way you can truly call students randomly is to have some sort of randomizing system. There are several ways to do this. In the past, the most popular method of randomizing has been Popsicle sticks with student names on them. You put the sticks in a cup and pull one out to select a student. This has also led to the phrase “pull a stick,” meaning select a random student. Randomizing is more high tech now with apps for computers, tablets, and cellphones that generate student names or numbers randomly. Whether you randomize students using an app or by using sticks, be sure you allow names to come up again Popsicle sticks with student names written on before going through the entire list. For example, if you lay them used for selecting random non-volunteers. each student stick aside after you call on someone, students will soon know that they won’t be called on again until all the rest of the students have answered. This could be 20 to 30 student responses before being required to answer another question. From John: Since I work at so many different schools, I just number everyone and use my randomizer app. One time I tried to call random numbers on my own. Everyone complained that I was calling the same numbers. It’s best to use some sort of randomizing method.

Can Volunteers Ever Be Called On? Yes, volunteers can be strategically used occasionally. First, volunteers can be called on after random student answers have confirmed that the class is learning. This allows time for eager students to present their ideas. But don’t call volunteers because the non-volunteers couldn’t answer correctly. In this case, you need to reteach. Second, you can use volunteers to expand on an answer. For example, Does anyone have a different example? Does someone want to add something to what we are talking about? Does someone have a different way of solving the problem? This is also a way to differentiate for high-performing students. An interesting method of adding a few volunteers is to have a couple of sticks labeled as “Volunteer” or “Teacher’s Choice.” When these come up, you can make your own choice. This adds fun to the class. Also, you can occasionally have a student pull the stick for you. From Silvia: In our observations of thousands of classrooms, teachers typically select hand-waving volunteers or let students shout out the answers. Over time, we notice that the same students are answering all the questions. The teacher is not monitoring if the whole class is learning.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

We have found that about 20% of students can answer questions independently of the effectiveness of the lesson. We call this talent discovery. These students give a false impression to the teacher that all students are learning. Checking for Understanding using non-volunteers allows teachers to monitor the 80% of students who need to be taught the content. This is the talent development group, the students who improve as a direct result of teaching.

Notice that the rule here is to teach first, present the question to the whole class, and then to pair-share, giving everyone time to practice their answer. Don’t slip up by calling a student name before asking the question. If you call on a student first before giving the question, the other students tune out. They’re off the hook. They don’t need to think of an answer or even listen carefully to the question.

How Many Students Should You Call On? A general guideline is to call on at least two students for simple questions and at least three students for more complex questions. If these random students can respond correctly, it’s likely that all students are understanding. If two or three random students in a row can’t answer correctly, you don’t need to call on more students. The class hasn’t learned yet. Time to reteach. You can call on more students than three. Usually, you call on more students when you have a difficult question that requires a detailed explanation from students. Also, call on more students when responses require a significant use of language or vocabulary. Calling on additional students can also reinforce learning new information because it is restated or paraphrased by additional students. When you have a very literal, factual answer, you don’t need to call on several students. The factual information is revealed by the first answer and other students tend to just repeat it. Note, however, that EDI questions do not ask for simple one word answers. EDI questions require students to answer in complete sentences, justifying their answers and explaining how they determined their answers.

Answer in a Public Voice Have students answer questions in a loud, public voice that everyone can hear. Try to avoid walking up to individual students to hear a soft voice. When you do this, the other students stop paying attention. Instead, ask students to speak up in a voice you can hear across the room and that all students can hear.

Stand and Deliver Experiment with having students stand and deliver when they give their answers. After you select them, they stand up and use their public voice to give their answer. Principals report that the standing to answer questions develops confidence in individual students to respond in front of others. Remember, in EDI, you have taught first, and your students are well prepared to answer questions successfully. You are not putting students on the spot. You are providing opportunities for them to be successful.

Justify or Explain Answers Students should justify or explain all their answers. Even simple answers can be higher order when students justify their answers or are asked to provide textual evidence to support their answers. Justifying the answer should be part of your question and included in student pair-shares.

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Who is the character in the first paragraph, and how do you know? You should say, “The character in the first paragraph is _____ because_____.” Explain to your partner. Partner A goes first.

Student responses after pair-shares could be: The character in the first paragraph is Cinderella because she is a person, and she is talking and doing things.

Random Checking for Understanding Improves Discipline Schoolwide At DataWORKS we have found that the best solution for discipline is effective instruction that prevents discipline problems from occurring in the first place. Many principals have told us that the DataWORKS method of Checking for Understanding, especially calling on random non-volunteers, has changed the attitude of students across the entire school. Students are paying more attention in class, students are learning more, and discipline problems are greatly reduced. One vice principal laughingly stated that he was worried about his job since the discipline referrals were down so much. At DataWORKS we have found that the best solution for discipline is effective instruction that prevents discipline problems from occurring in the first place.

Listen Carefully to the Response Effective Feedback

Now we’re ready for the last steps of TAPPLE, which address student responses. Listen carefully to each student response because you are going to make instructional decisions and then provide Effective Feedback, depending on the student’s answer. Originally, Effective Feedback in EDI included three strategies: Echo, Elaborate, and Explain. You would Echo answers so all students could hear. However, we now have students answering in complete sentences, using a public voice, and even standing to respond. So our new strategy is to cue students to speak up using their public voice rather than you restating their answer for them. Elaborate means you paraphrase and add to a student’s correct response. You do this when an answer is correct but could use some additional information or clarity. The third feedback strategy, Explain, means reteach when students are unable to provide correct answers. Over the last few years, however, we have developed several new strategies for providing Effective Feedback to students that work much better. We’ll go over these new strategies in the next chapter. So for now let’s just look at the ideal situation first. Students have the correct answers. Your instructional decision when students have the correct answers is to move forward with the lesson.

Chapter 5  •  Is Everyone Learning?  

TAPPLE Example: Students Have Correct Answers Let’s look at a classroom example. See if you can identify the TAPPLE strategies that will be used. (1) Teach first. (2) Ask a question about what was just taught. (3) Pair-share. Provide a sentence frame that includes the new vocabulary from the lesson. Have students explain and justify their answers with their partners. (4) Pick random students. Have students respond using a public voice in complete sentences and justify their answers. Optional: Students stand up when answering. Here is a Checking for Understanding example. Ms. Nguyen is teaching a third-grade lesson on using coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, so) to write compound sentences. She has been teaching the students that the coordinating conjunctions show relationships between ideas. It’s time to Check for Understanding. Ms. Nguyen projects two sentences on the smartboard. Mason can walk to school. Mason can ride his bike to school. She says, “I want you to combine these two sentences into a compound sentence. Which coordinating conjunction should be used and why? Explain to your partner. Partner A goes first. You should say something like this, ‘The correct coordinating conjunction for the compound sentence is ________ because ________.’” The students start pair-sharing. As the noise of the pair-share drops, Ms. Nguyen calls out, “Eyes front.” The students respond in unison, “Back straight.” She touches the app on her tablet and calls on Emily to answer. Emily stands up without hesitation and responds, “The correct coordinating conjunction is or because Mason has a choice. He can walk or ride.” Ms. Nguyen says, “Yes, the sentences show a choice. Class, let’s give Emily a round of applause.” The class claps for Emily who sits down. Ms. Nguyen calls on a second random student who provides a similar correct answer and receives a short applause. The students have the correct answer. She is ready for the next problem.

Summary We’ve just covered most of Checking for Under­standing using TAPPLE. Ideally, students will always have the correct answers to your Checking for Understanding questions, but sometimes they won’t. In these cases, you

Photos courtesy of DataWORKS

provide Effective (Corrective) Feedback and/or reteach to generate correct responses. We’ll look at these strategies in the next chapter, Everyone Learns: Corrective Feedback and Whiteboards.

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6 Everyone Learns Corrective Feedback and Whiteboards “Let me help you.”

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n the last chapter we described Checking for Understanding (CFU) using TAPPLE. In the first part of this chapter we’ll focus on strategies to use when students are unable to answer CFU questions. Then we’ll describe strategies and modifications for using whiteboards.

Listen Carefully to the Response Effective Feedback

Teach for 80% Success, Then 100% In Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), we teach the whole class to at least 80% student success. Then we provide Effective Feedback to individual students so we can get 100% correct answers for every CFU question. It seems like we should aim for 100% in the first place. However, it takes too much instructional time to reteach the entire class over and over for the benefit of a few students, so we take a different approach. We provide Effective (corrective) Feedback so students can successfully answer CFU questions. Later, when the lesson is over or when other students are working on Independent Practice, identified students can be pulled out for additional help, if needed.

Whole-Class Errors vs. Individual Student Errors When a student is not able to correctly answer a question during a lesson, you need to distinguish between whole-class errors (the class has not learned yet) and 59

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individual student errors (a specific student has not learned yet). This is important because when the whole class has not learned, you need to reteach the whole class. When an individual student has not yet learned, you provide Effective Feedback to support that student. Let’s look at the strategies.

Students Are Never Allowed Not to Know the Answer We have a saying: Students are never allowed not to know the answer. This means the teacher provides support until the student can successfully answer. It also means students can’t just say, “I don’t know,” and get out of answering the question. Now let’s look at specific strategies to use when students can’t answer CFU questions or they have an incorrect answer. Of course, before every question, you have already taught first, provided a sentence frame, and had students pair-share and explain their answers. Then you selected a random student to answer.

Strategies to Use When Students Cannot Answer 1. Two Wrong Answers, Reteach Our goal is 80% correct answers. Unless you are using whiteboards, this is hard to measure directly, so we have our basic reteach rule: If you have two wrong answers in a row, stop and reteach the entire class. After reteaching, ask the question again, and have students pair-share. Call on students to answer, including the original students. When you’re teaching and random, non-volunteers can’t answer CFU questions correctly, you might be tempted to call on a volunteer to get the correct answer out. Avoid this. A correct response from a volunteer does not guarantee that the class has learned. Checking for Understanding is not just calling on a string of students until a correct answer pops up. You’re trying to determine if your students are learning what you are teaching them.

2. Provide Cues and Prompts When students cannot provide an answer, you can provide hints to help them. Your hints should refer to something specific you have already talked about. You are providing a trigger to help students recall information. An effective cue is to physically repeat a gesture you used during instruction. The gesture will often trigger an answer. You can also cue students to look at a table, graphic organizer, or related information on the board. Providing cues and prompts and hints should be limited to 30 seconds or less. If students don’t know the answer, no amount of cuing will retrieve information that is not in their brains to be retrieved. Avoid using sounding out as a cue. When you provide the sounds of the first few letters, the students can recognize the word, but they are not thinking strategically. Teacher: What evidence do we have in the passage that the Duke is optimistic? Jackson. Jackson: Hmmm, hmmm. Teacher: Look in the passage for something that the Duke said or something he did that shows he is optimistic.

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3. “I’ll Come Back to You” This is a great strategy to use when students go blank and are unable to come up with any response. Sometimes, they weren’t paying attention. Don’t get mad at them, just say, “I will come back to you” or “Would you like me to come back to you?” Then you call on one or two other students. The original student hears the responses of the other students and can usually provide an answer by the time you get back to her, without you needing to stop and reteach the class. The first few times you use this, you can say, “Listen carefully to the other students, and I will come back to you.” Teacher: So how did I calculate the volume of the rectangular prism? Sophia. Sophia:

Hmmm, hmmm.

Teacher: I’m going to call on some other students. Listen carefully, and I’ll come back to you.

You can also cue a student to do a specific action before you come back to them. Teacher: Which is worth the most, a penny, a nickel, or a dime? And how much is it worth? Student: Hmmm, hmmm. Teacher: Look over the coins in Table A at the top of the page. I’ll come back to you in a minute.

From John: The other day I was observing a physics class. The teacher would ask a CFU question and then select a student who would invariably say, “I don’t know.” The teacher then continued by going down the rows of desks, asking student after student until he came to one who would answer. Often he called six or seven students before an answer of any sort was given besides “I don’t know.” As I watched from a backless stool in the rear of the physics lab, I squinted my eyes trying to send him a message by mental telepathy, “Please, go back and ask the students who said they didn’t know.” Think how different this class could have been if the teacher had told the first “I don’t know” student to listen very carefully because, “I’m going to call on someone else, and then I’m coming back to you.”

4. Pair-Share Again Here is a strategy you can try when you think the class needs a little help. Just have the students pair-share again. You can provide a cue such as looking at a table or specific part of a text. You can emphasize that students should compare their answers and analyze any differences. Teacher: I see different answers on your whiteboards. I want everyone to pair-share again. Explain carefully to your partner how you got your answer, especially if you have different answers. Partner B explain first.

5. De-Escalate the Question. Rephrase as Multiple-Choice In this strategy, you rephrase an open-ended question into multiple-choice, usually with two options. This strategy changes the question from a “retrieve from memory” question to a “recognize the answer” question. It’s an effective differentiation

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strategy that allows struggling students to participate successfully. It can be used to cue students how to do something you just taught. 23 + 12 Teacher: Lily: how do you solve this addition problem? Lily:

Hmmm, hmmm.

Teacher: Let me ask you this. Do you start by adding from the right or from the left? Lily:

You add from the right.

Teacher: Good, so what is 3 plus 2? Lily:

5.

Teacher: OK. Write 5 on your whiteboard as the sum in the ones column.

Keep in mind that if you are de-escalating for every student, you actually need to reteach. The students aren’t ready yet.

6. Explain How You Got Your Answer Justifying your answer is already part of CFU, but it’s especially useful to hear students’ reasoning when they have an incorrect answer. Don’t just say, “That’s wrong,” and select another student. Instead, ask students to explain or justify how they arrived at their answer. You will learn a lot about student errors from these explanations, all the way from misunderstanding of the content to misunderstanding of the question. From Silvia: Explaining answers is important when working with English Learners. Sometimes, errors are related to language and not to the content.

There’s another benefit of having students explain incorrect answers. Quite often they will recognize their errors and self-correct in the middle of their explanations. For example, they realize they worked the wrong problem, misunderstood the question, made a math error, and so forth.

7. Have Students Read the Answer. Tell Them the Answer So far our strategies are aimed at supporting individual students in coming up with their own answers. If you have tried everything and students still can’t answer, you are ready for our last strategy. You are going to give them the answer. Yes, just give them the answer. They can read it or repeat after you. Be sure the student physically says the answer, not just listens to you say it. The reason that you give an individual student the answer is because you can’t stop and go into an extended one-on-one tutoring session in the middle of a lesson. So, to keep the lesson moving, you provide the answer. The student can read the answer with you, read it after you, or just say it after you. Here is an example. Mr. Rodriguez is part way through a middle school science lesson. He is asking for a definition of mitosis. He is now coming back to Logan for a second time. He says, “Logan, can you give me the definition of mitosis in your own words?” Logan gives a stare but no answer. Mr. Rodriquez wanders over to Logan’s desk. There are difficult words in this

Chapter 6  •  Everyone Learns  

definition so Mr. Rodriguez decides to use echo reading. He says, “Let’s read the definition together. Look at the words right here.” He points to a sentence in Logan’s textbook. “I’ll read. Then you read after me. Ready?” He looks at Logan. Logan nods. “  Mitosis is the process . . . mitosis is the process . . . of cellular division . . . of cellular division . . . that produces . . . that produces . . . two identical daughter cells . . . two identical daughter cells.” Mr. Rodriguez continues, “Good job. He knows the answer. Mitosis produces two identical cells. Let’s give him a round of applause.” The class claps. Mr. Rodriguez clicks his mouse to advance his slides and continues teaching.

8. Fake the Stick We’ve said over and over that you call on random non-volunteers to Check for Understanding. However, there are times when you may want to call on a specific student for a strategic purpose. That’s OK. You can do that. You can call out a student name any time, or you can look at your Popsicle stick (or app) and call out a different name. Here are a few specific times when “faking the stick” can be strategic. Often teachers call on specific students as part of their classroom management. Students who get off task or aren’t paying attention get called on. Sometimes, even though you are using a randomizing system, the same names keep coming up. You want occasional repeats during a lesson to keep everyone engaged, but if the same name comes up too often, select someone else. Here is one of the best uses of faking the stick. It’s used to successfully integrate challenged and struggling students into classroom questioning. One strategy is to call on a struggling student as the third or fourth student. In this way, they get to hear the other students and are more likely to be able to create a correct response. You can also monitor whiteboards or eavesdrop on pair-shares to know when struggling students have the correct answer. Then specifically call on them to provide their answer.

From John: Recently, I used this strategy with a Down Syndrome child. Part way through my lesson I looked in the back of the classroom and could see that she had the correct answer on her whiteboard. I called on her to stand up and read her answer to the class. I then asked the class to give her a round of applause for her nice answer. She broke into a broad smile. I imagine her going home and saying, “Mommy, they called on me at school today. I had the right answer.” I was in tears as I listened to her response. I almost couldn’t teach.

CFU Is a Great Cognitive Strategy In education, there has been a trend away from memorizing things. However, as educators, we do want our students to remember what we teach them. We want the information and processes we teach to be transferred into their long-term memories so they remember and can retrieve the information later. Well, it turns out that constant Checking for Understanding is a very effective cognitive strategy helping transfer information into students’ long-term memories. When students pair-share, they are talking about the new information. If you call on two students, your class has just heard the answer and justification two times.

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And the new learning has been analyzed through different angles because of the students’ varied responses. The information is already starting to transfer into their long-term memories, into permanent storage. The general rule is that it takes about 27 exposures to something new to learn it and transfer it to long-term memory. With EDI, we ask a variety of questions that generate pair-shares and elicit multiple responses from the students. In this manner students are learning the new content through multiple exposures. From Silvia: One time during teacher training, a science teacher was in front of the group practicing how he would do a CFU regarding the location of metals and nonmetals on the periodic table of the elements. At the end of the session, some teachers “complained” that they had learned metals and nonmetals even when they didn’t want to, that the CFU questions had “forced” the information into their brains.

Whiteboards, the Best Way to CFU! Check Everyone at Once So far, we have been Checking for Understanding by calling on a few random students, but there is an even better way to check answers. Use whiteboards to check everyone at once. An extra benefit is that your Effective Feedback can be more insightful as you look at all the responses. We have already talked about whiteboards. They are part of our Student Engagement Norms. Now let’s go into more detail about using them.

Whiteboard Advantages There are several advantages to using whiteboards. All students physically write and answer the question. When the boards go up, you see all the answers at once. The kinesthetic activity of raising the boards breaks up time spent sitting and listening. Whiteboards improve classroom management and create engagement because the whole class does something together. Seeing all the answers allows you to quickly monitor the class and also to uncover errors. Have you ever called on a student to come up to the board to solve a problem in front of the class? After the student was done, you only verified if one student knew how to do one problem. When you use the individual whiteboards, you verify the ability of EVERY student to solve every problem, not just one student.

When Do You Use Whiteboards? You can use whiteboards for Checking for Understanding whenever the answer is short, including multiple-choice answers. Whiteboards are ideal for math problems because students can show you their step-by-step calculations. You can occasionally have students write longer answers in complete sentences, but usually this takes too long. However, students still need to respond orally in complete sentences and justify their answers. Here are some questions suitable for whiteboards. There is an error in this paragraph. Which sentence does not support the main idea? Write the sentence number on your whiteboard. Solve problem 4 on your whiteboards. Then explain to your partner how you did it. Be ready to show me.

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When possible, have students use the new vocabulary from the lesson in their written responses. Students, I have a government scenario on the board. Is this an example of “a. separation of powers” or “b. checks and balances”? Which is it? Don’t write “a” or “b.” I want you to write “separation of powers” or “checks and balances” on your whiteboard. Be ready to justify your answer.

A great technique to use on whiteboards is to have students vote yes or no on their whiteboards. It’s also a great scaffolding strategy that makes text easier to analyze. Students, does the second paragraph contain any information that could reveal a theme, a message about life that could apply to anyone, not just the characters in this story? Write yes or no on your whiteboards. Be ready to explain your answer.

Students can even analyze sentence by sentence, voting with their whiteboards to indicate if a specific sentence matches some criteria. Students in a high school math class “chin-it” and show Students, does sentence 4 contain any words or their answers to the teacher. phrases showing that the character is optimistic? Write yes or no on your whiteboard and be ready to explain your answer. Does sentence 2 have any information about the setting? Write yes or no on your whiteboards and be ready to explain.

Using this method, even the sentences or paragraphs that don’t match the criteria provide good higher-order thinking opportunities because students justify which ones match and which don’t. Usually, voting with your whiteboards applies to inferential information although literal information could be used for beginning readers. This technique can be applied to multiple choice questions in any content area. Have students vote on each possible answer and then justify each answer orally. Their board might look like the photo on the right. Also, as we described in the Engagement Norms chapter, beginning readers can use whiteboards with pre-written answers such as yes, no; A, B, C; or even red and green circles on opposite sides. You can look at the boards to easily monitor student learning.

How to Use Whiteboards Questioning for whiteboards is slightly different from questioning without whiteboards. Let’s look at the technique.

Student whiteboard responses for multiple-choice questions. They must be ready to justify each answer.

1. Teach first. Ask a specific question. Ask for justification of the answer. Provide a sentence frame for the response. 2. Have students write their answers on their whiteboards.

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3. Direct students to pair-share, explaining and justifying their answers using your sentence frame. Tell which partner should go first. Notice that we have students write their answers before pair-sharing. This forces each student to process the question and create an answer. If you pair-share first, some students are writing what the other student told them rather than thinking about it on their own. Also, if you see many errors, you can just stop and reteach before having the students pair-share incorrect responses. 4. Chin-it. Call for students to show boards. You can use your Attention Signal first, but usually the call to show boards is enough. 5. Look carefully at the responses on the boards.

Reteach, if Necessary If you see several errors, direct your students to put their boards down and look at you, and then reteach. Re-ask the question. If the bulk of the responses are correct, you are ready to call on students to explain their answers. 6. Call on students to read and justify their answers to the class. As you look at the whiteboards, you will see mostly correct answers and possibly a few incorrect answers. Now this next part is very important. We are not going to just call on random students. We want to reinforce the correct answers and provide Effective Feedback to any students with incorrect answers.

Call on Correct Answers First With whiteboards always call on correct answers first. Ask students to explain and justify their answers. Note. Don’t use your randomizer because you might call on students with incorrect answers. Always call on students with correct answers first because you want all students, especially those with incorrect answers, to hear the correct answer and the justification.

Allow Students to Change Their Answers You only need to announce this a few times. Students, you can change your whiteboard answers. We are all learning. If you think you made a mistake, you can erase your answer and write a new answer.

Allowing students to change their answer is important. When students have incorrect answers, they are confused about what to do. They will try to hide their whiteboards, cover their answers, or try to justify an answer they know is wrong. Allowing them to change their answer removes these problems and lets students focus on learning.

Call on Incorrect Answers After you have called on two or three correct answers, call the students with incorrect answers, students who changed their answers, and students who you think just copied the answer. Ask each student to read their answer and then to explain and justify their answers.

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Go for 100% Correct Answers The EDI Checking for Understanding process has many steps that allow you to generate 100% correct answers on whiteboards. First, during the pair-shares, students will correct each other. Second, some incorrect students will have an aha moment when they hear other students respond and will change their answers. (Remember, you are watching for students who change their answer so you can call on them to justify and explain their new answer.) Third, some students with incorrect answers will self-correct while they are explaining their thinking for their incorrect answer. Fourth, you have the Effective Feedback strategies (Pair-share again, Cues and Prompts, I will come back to you, De-escalate to Multiple-Choice). Fifth, use the last Effective Feedback strategy: Tell students the answer or have them read the answer. And sixth, our general strategy: If less than 80% correct answers, reteach the class and re-ask the question.

Sub-Skill Errors Occasionally, you can identify sub-skill errors on whiteboards, especially in math. In these cases, just correct the error and move on. For example, if you see addition or multiplication fact errors, just correct the error. Don’t reteach. From John: I was teaching an algebra lesson that included an equation with 6 squared (62). I saw 12 on a few boards. I reminded the class that 6 squared was 6 times 6. I then told my students to recheck their work. The errors were quickly corrected.

Multiplication Facts Errors Multiplication fact errors are tricky. Teachers can cue and prompt almost any concept to help students except for these math facts. Multiplication facts must be memorized. There are no cues that can help a student recall them. Memorization requires sufficient repetition until the brain creates a permanent (chemical) connection between a pair of factors (such as 6 times 7) and their product (42). In the meantime, students can refer to multiplication tables or use calculators for larger numbers.

Whiteboard Summary • Teach first. Ask a specific question. Direct students to use whiteboards to record their answers. Provide a sentence frame for pair-sharing. Cue which student should talk first. Ask all students to lift their whiteboards together. Look around at the boards. •• If all the students have the correct answer, select two or three random students to read their whiteboards in complete sentences and to justify their answers. •• If there are only a few incorrect answers, select two or three students with the correct answer first. Then, select students with incorrect answers (and those who changed their answers) to explain their answer. Provide Effective Feedback, if necessary. •• If the majority of the students have incorrect answers, reteach. Then re-ask the question. Note. The general rule is to reteach. However, if students continue to have wrong answers you can gain insight about misperceptions by listening to explanations of incorrect answers.

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Whiteboard Example Ms. Armstrong is teaching first graders to write addition number sentences. She has a question on the screen.

1. There are five birds on a branch. Then some more birds land on the branch. Now there are nine birds on the branch? 2. What is the correct number sentence? a. 5 + 9 = ? b. 5 + ? = 9

She has the students read the scenario, the question, and the two possible answers with her. “ OK, students, write the answer on your whiteboards.” She pauses a moment and then adds, “I want you to write the correct number sentence on your board, not just A or B.” The students write their answers. She says, “Now turn to your partner and explain your answer. You should say, ‘The correct number sentence is ____ because ____.’ Partner B goes first this time.” As the noise goes down, Ms. Armstrong calls, “Chin-it.” The boards come up aimed at her to see. She looks around. One student has the incorrect answer. She will call on students with the correct answer first. “  Olivia, which number sentence is correct and why?” “  The correct number sentence is five plus question mark equals 9.” Ms. Armstrong adds, “And how do you know?” “  You started with 5 birds and ended with 9. The question mark is the birds that landed on the branch.” “Very good, Olivia,” says Ms. Armstrong. She then calls a second student who gives a similar correct response. Ms. Armstrong has been eyeing Edward who is quietly changing the answer on the whiteboard. “Edward, help me understand why you are changing your answer,” she asks. Edward replies, “At first, I added 5 plus 9, but the answer is B.” “  Can you say that in a complete sentence, ‘The correct number sentence is . . . ’?” Edward says, “The correct number sentence is 5 plus question mark equals 9, because . . .  because . . . uh . . . there are 9 birds altogether.” “ Great,” says Ms. Armstrong. She then reminds the class that they can always change their answers to show that they now understand.

• • •

From John: I was at a middle school, training administrators how to do classroom observations. Along with me were the district’s assistant superintendent of instruction, the school principal, and four other principals from neighboring schools. In exactly 5 minutes, this episode convinced me and everyone else that effective Checking for Understanding could single-handedly revolutionize education. Here’s exactly what happened.

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We entered the classroom in the middle of a math lesson. As we walked quietly to the back of the room, the teacher was writing a problem on the overhead. She then asked all her students to solve the problem on their individual whiteboards. After the students completed the problem, she told them to raise their whiteboards so she could see their solutions. I leaned over to the assistant superintendent and whispered, “The whiteboards really improve the effectiveness of the lesson, allowing the teacher to monitor all her students at once.” In just a few seconds, the teacher had scanned the entire room, checking to see that all students could solve the problem. I moved in a little closer and raised my clipboard to my face trying to shield my voice so as not to distract the students. I continued, “Think back to the last class we were in. Remember how the teacher called one student to come to the board to solve a problem while the rest of the students watched? In the end, the teacher only knew if one student could solve the problem. In this classroom, when the whiteboards went up, the teacher knew that every student could solve the problem.” The assistant superintendent nodded her head and whispered, “And I can see how this improves classroom management, reduces discipline, and improves time on task. Here, all students are engaged in solving the problem. In the other classroom, many students were off task while that one student worked out the problem at the board.” The teacher then continued by putting a second example on the smartboard. The approach to solving this problem was similar, but not exactly the same as the first problem. After explaining how to solve this example, she wrote another problem for the students to solve on their whiteboards. This time when the students raised their whiteboards, the teacher’s eyes opened wide, startled as she saw that the students did not know how to solve this problem. She told the students to put their boards down and to watch her. She then proceeded to reteach how to solve the new problem, working it out carefully step-by-step. As she was working it out, the most amazing thing happened. Suddenly, in the middle of the teacher’s explanation, students let out a collective gasp, “Ohhhhhhhh, I see how to do it.” The administrators and I looked at each other in amazement. We could actually hear students learning. The teacher then wrote a new problem on the smart board and asked her students to solve it on their whiteboards. This time they solved it correctly. The assistant superintendent pointed to her watch and then pointed to the door. It was time to go. In the hallway, we discussed what we had just witnessed. I said, “We have just seen a perfect example of the power of Checking for Understanding. The students could solve the first problem but not the second. As soon as the teacher looked at the whiteboards, she knew to reteach the second example.” “ And she retaught in ninety seconds!” said the assistant superintendent excitedly. “If the teacher had not done that second Checking for Understanding, she would’ve never known if the students could do that problem or not.” “ And it might be the one on the state test in May,” added the principal. I nodded my head in agreement as we walked down the wide corridor toward our next class. From Silvia: I am continually amazed by the ability of Checking for Understanding to make a lesson work, and there is nothing more inspiring in the classroom than seeing students “get it.” Here are two lessons that I observed where students were successful as a direct result of Checking for Understanding that led to reteaching.

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I was observing a science class on plate tectonics. During the lesson, the teacher asked her students to describe the three types of plate movement she had been covering. The students couldn’t. I mouthed from the back of the room, “Reteach.” The teacher stared at me a moment and then went over the plate movement again. She then asked the students to describe the plate motions. This time a few students could. I waved my hand in a circular motion and again mouthed, “Reteach.” “  Not again,” she whispered to me as small beads of perspiration rolled down her face. I continued my circular hand motion indicating reteach. By the end of the second reteaching, the students could describe the types of plate tectonics motion. Right after the lesson, the teacher was exhausted, but she was overtly surprised that her students learned the information. I told her that they learned not by accident but because they were taught. A few days later I heard my name called in the corridor. I stopped and turned. It was the science teacher. She came over to me with a big smile on her face and blurted out, “Silvia, I have been here for seventeen years. Until you made me do all that Checking for Understanding, I never really had checked that my students were learning while I was teaching. But I have something even more interesting to tell you. The day after you were here, when you had me reteach after all the Checking for Understanding, I had several students turn in homework for the first time in the entire year!” I replied, “That’s because they knew how to do it.” Later, as I walked down the corridor rubbing elbows with scurrying students, I was smiling and thinking that Checking for Understanding truly is the backbone of effective instruction.

We’ve invested a lot of time covering the techniques used to Check for Understanding, but it was time well spent. You should be able to use TAPPLE and whiteboards in your classroom tomorrow. As you practice CFU, it will become second nature. You’ll get better and better, and your students will learn more as a result. We’ll conclude by repeating John’s comments from Chapter 5.

From John: One thing you need to take out of this book is Checking for Understanding. The use of this one strategy alone could truly revolutionize education across the country and around the world, helping students everywhere.

We have covered a lot about Checking for Understanding, TAPPLE, and in a previous chapter, Engagement Norms. Now we’re ready integrate everything we’ve learned into a well-designed EDI lesson. We’ll start in the next chapter, Establishing What Is Going to Be Taught: Learning Objective. It’s really important because it’s the foundation of a great lesson. Your students, and you, too, need to have a clear understanding of what is being taught. Photos courtesy of DataWORKS

Summary Here is a summary of Checking for Understanding the EDI way using TAPPLE.

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Checklist: Checking for Understanding Using TAPPLE Teach First • You taught the information that students need to use to answer your Checking for Understanding question.

Ask a Specific Question About What You Just Taught • You asked a specific question. • You asked students to justify their answers.

Pair-Share • You provided a sentence frame with Academic Vocabulary. • You directed which partner talks first. • You asked students to point to the page while justifying or explaining an answer (optional). • You used Attention Signal to end pair-share.

Pick a Non-Volunteer • You used a randomizing system such as Popsicle sticks or randomizer app to select random students.

Listen to the Response • • • • • •

Students stood to respond (optional). Students had correct answer. Students used complete sentence with academic language. Students justified the answer. Students spoke in a public voice. All students could hear. You made instructional decisions depending on the student responses.

Effective Feedback (correct answer) • (optional) Students had correct answers so you added some excitement by asking the student to give you an air high-five or asked the class to applaud for the student. • Students had the correct answers so you are ready to move on to the next part of the lesson.

Effective Feedback (incorrect answer) 1. Two wrong answers, reteach. 2. Provide cues and prompts. 3. “I’ll come back to you.” 4. Pair-share again. 5. De-escalate the question. Rephrase as multiple-choice. 6. Explain how you got your answer. 7. Have students read the answer. Tell them the answer. 8. Fake the stick.

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Assessment

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All EDI lessons are based on a clear Learning Objective.

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Part I: Well-Designed Learning Objectives You have probably been told that a well-crafted lesson should have a Learning Objective describing what students will learn. In the classroom, you will often hear what seems to be a Learning Objective, but careful analysis shows the intended learning is missing. Have you ever heard “Objectives” such as these? Students, it’s time to do math. Students, where did we finish yesterday? Page 77? OK, today’s lesson is page 78 in our math books. Students will study history. It’s one o’clock, time for science. Let’s start reading the next story in our literature book, and then you can answer the questions at the end of the story.

In Part I of this chapter, we describe how to design a Learning Objective, EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) style. It may seem like we spend a great deal of effort in writing a Learning Objective, but it will be worth it! Correctly designed Learning Objectives drive the whole lesson, ensuring grade-level instruction all the way through to Independent Practice and Periodic Review. But it’s not enough to just have a well-designed Learning Objective. It also needs to be presented to the students. In Part II of this chapter, we’ll show you exactly how to present the Learning Objective to your students. Correctly designed Learning Objectives produce great lessons where you know exactly what is being taught, and your students know exactly what they are learning. In addition, the instruction and Independent Practice are synchronized so students are properly prepared to do the Independent Practice, and more students turn in their homework. More students learn more. Test scores go up. By the end of this chapter, you will know how to turn content standards into Learning Objectives, laying the foundation for great lessons. You’ll also be able to design Objectives that you know are on grade level. Get ready. Here we go!

What Is a Learning Objective? A Learning Objective is different from a content standard. Content standards describe what students are to be taught over the course of a year. A Learning Objective is a statement that describes what students will be able to do successfully and independently at the end of a specific lesson as a result of your classroom instruction. A Learning Objective describes exactly what you will teach your students to do during one lesson. Here are some sample Learning Objectives in different content areas: Isolate initial sounds. (K) Determine the main idea and explain how it is supported by key details. (3rd) Write an opinion piece. (5th) Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports inferences drawn from the text. (8th) Analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance a point of view. (9th–10th) Memorize addition facts. (1st) Compare three-digit numbers using symbols. (2nd)

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Classify two-dimensional figures based on lines and angles. (4th) Represent proportional relationships using equations. (7th) Fit a linear function for a scatter plot that suggests a linear association. (Algebra) Describe weather patterns. (K) Compare animal life in different habitats. (2nd) Explain the function of internal and external structures of animals. (4th) Describe the atomic composition of simple molecules. (Middle school) Describe the changes in the energy released during fission, fusion, and radioactive decay. (High school) Describe physical geography by identifying local geographical features. (3rd) Discuss the connections between geography and the development of city-states in Ancient Greece. (Middle school) Analyze the major battles of World War II and their significance. (High school) Analyze supply and demand elasticity. (High school) Create a fitness plan. (Middle school) Use perspective to draw structures. (High school) Draw the human face. (Art)

Notice how clear these Objectives are. There is no confusion about what the teacher will teach or what the students will do for Independent Practice or homework. After a teacher creates a Learning Objective, the entire lesson is then carefully designed and delivered to teach the information and procedures necessary for students to be able to successfully complete the Independent Practice that matches the Learning Objective.

Where Do Standards-Based Learning Objectives Come From? Standards-based Learning Objectives come right from the content standards. Countries and states around the world publish content standards that list what students should know by the end of each year. Some examples of standards are the Common Core State Standards, the Australian Curriculum: English, and the Ghana National Syllabus for English Language. Many states have their own standards or standards based on the Common Core State Standards.

Standards-based Learning Objectives come right from the content standards.

Generally, however, content standards are not written as Learning Objectives. Many standards contain multiple Learning Objectives. In fact, some standards have multiple Learning Objectives in each sentence! Standards also include directions, definitions, examples, and even notes to teachers. The Learning Objective contained in the following standard is shown in bold. The remainder of the standard provides additional information about how to teach the Objective.

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3.OA.3 Use multiplication and division within 100 to solve word problems in situations involving equal groups, arrays, and measurement quantities, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem. (3rd)

What Are the Components of a Properly Designed Learning Objective? Properly designed Objectives that produce great lessons are not just thrown together. They are carefully written using specific components. A Learning Objective contains Concepts (big ideas, nouns), Skills (measurable behaviors, verbs), and sometimes Context (restricting conditions). Let’s look at these three components.

All Learning Objectives Contain a Concept (Big Idea) The concept is the big idea in the Learning Objective. It is usually, but not always, a noun. In the Objective Analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance a point of view, the concept is rhetoric. In an EDI lesson, teachers define rhetoric (the skillful use of language, such as figures of speech, to persuade others) and provide examples during the Concept Development portion of the lesson. Occasionally, the verb can be the concept in the lesson. This occurs generally in early grades when a concept is first introduced. For example, in the kindergarten standard, “add within 10 using objects,” the concept is “add.” Students are taught that adding means finding out how much we have altogether.

All Learning Objectives Contain a Skill (Verb) The skill is the verb in the Learning Objective. In our example, Analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance a point of view, analyze is the skill. During Skill Development, the teachers will analyze text to show students how an author advanced his point of view using rhetoric. During Guided Practice, students read a different piece of text to analyze how the author used rhetoric to advance his point of view. Skills in Learning Objectives must be measurable verbs such as solve, write, compute, identify, describe, evaluate, and so forth. Avoid vague, nonmeasurable verbs such as learn, learn about, understand, really understand, know, or appreciate because it’s hard to determine if students have successfully achieved the Objective when the verbs are not measurable. From Silvia: Skills need to be defined and taught to students. For example, students need to be taught to analyze, to compare and contrast, to critique, to evaluate, and so forth. Skills are usually taught when they first occur in standards.

The skill used in a lesson must match the skill in the standard. There is a big difference between identifying, analyzing, and evaluating. The increasing rigor of standards between grade levels is often due to the increase of the sophistication of the skill. The skill in the Learning Objective must always exactly match what the students will be asked to do on the Independent Practice. For example, if the Objective is to Determine the relationship in compound-complex sentences, then the homework should require the students to determine the relationship between the independent and the dependent clauses. Students should not be asked to merely identify which sentences are compound-complex sentences. If the Objective is Write compoundcomplex sentences, then the Independent Practice should have students writing their own sentences, not analyzing prewritten sentences.

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As a final note, when the skill taught during a lesson doesn’t match the skill required in the Independent Practice, students often struggle while they attempt to practice something they were not taught. For example, if the lesson is adding fractions, then the Independent Practice should be problems adding fractions, not word problems that use fractions.

Some Learning Objectives Also Contain Context (Conditions) A context is any specific condition under which the Objective will be executed. Often the context describes the resources or specific methods to be used. In our Objective, Analyze how a writer uses rhetoric to advance a point of view, the context describes how the students will analyze rhetoric—to analyze how it advances a point of view. Here are some more examples of Learning Objectives that have a context. The context is shown in bold. Compare three-digit numbers using symbols. (2nd) Classify two-dimensional figures based on lines and angles. (4th) Publish writing using technology. (6th) Solve systems of linear equations by graphing. (8th) Solve systems of linear equations using the elimination method. (8th)

Context Can Include Directions and Examples Content standards often include examples and directions of what or how you should teach. The Learning Objective for the kindergarten standard below is Represent addition and subtraction. The standard describes nine ways you should do it. Represent addition and subtraction with [1] objects, [2] fingers, [3] mental images, [4] drawings, [5] sounds (e.g., claps), [6] acting out situations, [7] verbal explanations, [8] expressions, or [9] equations. (Kindergarten)

The context in the standard below provides samples and lists the types of literature to use. 4.RL.9 Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics (e.g., opposition of good and evil) and patterns of events (e.g., the quest) in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures. (4th)

This math standard includes four methods for representing functions and a sample comparison. 8.F.2 Compare properties of two functions each represented in a different way ([1] algebraically, [2] graphically, [3] numerically in tables, or by [4] verbal descriptions). For example, given a linear function represented by a table of values and a linear function represented by an algebraic expression, determine which function has the greater rate of change. (8th) From John: Make sure you completely understand the specific examples that are provided in your content standards. We have found that high-stakes assessments often test a concept similar to how it was shown in one of the examples.

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Check for Reversed Concept and Context in Content Standards Learning Objectives are generally written in skill, concept, context order. For example, Identify figurative language in narratives. However, sometimes standards are written with the concept and context in reverse order. The objective Cite textual evidence to support inferences can be rewritten to show the concept more clearly: Support inferences by citing textual evidence. The primary purpose of any lesson is to teach the new concept. You can locate the concept by analyzing what needs to be taught. The focus of the lesson is supporting inferences. Here is another example. Represent numbers using scientific notation. The concept being taught is scientific notation, not numbers This objective can be written more clearly as Use scientific notation to represent numbers. Before we start to deconstruct content standards by breaking them down into specific Learning Objectives, let’s look over some additional characteristics of content standards that are important to understand.

Content Standards May Contain Multiple Learning Objectives Most content standards actually contain more than one Learning Objective. Look at this example. 6.RI.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text. (6th)

Two different concepts are addressed in this standard. Point of view is the position or perspective conveyed by an author. Author’s purpose is to persuade, inform, or entertain. How many Learning Objectives are there in this standard? Determine an author’s point of view in the text. Determine an author’s purpose in the text. Explain how an author’s point of view is conveyed in the text. Explain how an author’s purpose is conveyed in the text. From Silvia: Knowing that standards have more than one Learning Objective is important when you are trying to improve student test scores because test writers can assess any Learning Objective contained in the published standards.

Breadth of Coverage of the Standards Many schools think they are teaching all the standards because they have a pacing calendar identifying standards in their textbooks. The publisher has even printed the standards on the page. However, the pacing calendars are tracking at the standard level and not verifying that all the Learning Objectives contained in each standard are being taught. Test makers can assess any Learning Objective contained in the standards. So make sure you teach lessons covering all the Learning Objectives in the standards before test day. We just saw above that Objectives for point of view and author’s purpose were both in the same standard. Teach your students all the Learning Objectives contained in the content standards before the test date.

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Standards-Based, Grade-Level Lessons Must Match All Parts of the Standard Standards are designed to advance students’ knowledge each year. To be on grade level, lessons must match the standard’s Concept, Skill, and Context. Since many concepts are repeated over several grades, the grade level of many standards is determined by the skill (the verb) or the context, not the concept. Here is an example. Notice how the skill advances from identify to compare and contrast to analyze for the same concept, point of view. First grade: Identify who is telling the story in various points in a text. Fourth grade: Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated. Seventh grade: Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.

First graders can meet the content standard by identifying who is telling the story. Fourth graders must compare and contrast points of view from different stories. Seventh graders must analyze author’s development of point of view and contrast among different characters in a text. From John: Years ago when we started analyzing student assignments, we often found that the skill levels were too low in many of the student assignments. For example, students were identifying figurative language instead of analyzing its meaning or the effect of its use in a passage.

Standard’s Context Contributes to Grade Level of Standard A Standard’s context also determines grade level. Remember, Context in a standard is a specific condition under which the Objective will be executed. Let’s look at the point of view standard for eleventh and twelfth grade. Analyze a case in which grasping point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).

The Learning Objective is Analyze point of view. However, the rigor in this standard is from the context, by distinguishing what is directly stated from what is really meant. The standard also includes specific literary elements to explicitly teach and use: satire, sarcasm, irony, and understatement.

Part II: Writing Standards-Based Learning Objectives We have looked at content standards and their components: concepts, skills, and context. We have discussed how many content standards actually contain more than one Learning Objective. Now let’s look at how to convert individual standards into specific Learning Objectives for lessons to teach students. To write a standards-based Learning Objective, there are three steps.

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HOW TO WRITE STANDARDS-BASED LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Select a grade-level content standard. 2. Identify all the skills, concepts, and context in the standard. 3. Deconstruct, or break down, the standard into specific Learning Objectives.

This might look difficult, but it is very important for your students to be taught the correct content for each grade level. You need to deconstruct correctly so you don’t miss any of the objectives contained in each standard. You don’t want to teach your students only part of a standard and find out later that another part was tested. Note. When writing Learning Objectives, stick with the vocabulary contained in the standards. If you start simplifying the language used, students are not learning the correct academic and content vocabulary that might be used in textbooks and test questions. From John: We have analyzed the vocabulary used in released questions from high-stakes tests. We have found that the questions often use the same words used in the standards, so don’t simplify the vocabulary. Teach it during the lesson. If you teach students to “calculate the distance around the box,” they might miss a question that asks “What is the perimeter of the rectangle?”

Let’s write some Learning Objectives by deconstructing some standards to identify all the possible Learning Objectives they contain. This is also called “chunking the standards.”

Example 1 Step 1. Select a Content Standard.  Math geometry strand. Draw points, lines, line segments, rays, angles (right, acute, obtuse), and perpendicular and parallel lines. Identify these in two-dimensional figures. (4th)

Step 2. From the Content Standard, Identify the: skill(s) (measurable behavior, verb) concept(s) (big idea, noun) context(s) (conditions, restrictions, definitions, directions, notes) We start with the skills. They are easy to find. This standard contains two skills, draw and identify. Now we look for the concepts. The concepts are the geometric terms: points, lines, line segments, rays, angles (right, acute, obtuse), and perpendicular and parallel lines. Next we look carefully to see if the standard contains any context that places a condition or restriction on how the concepts and skills are to be taught. We also look for examples, directions, or notes for teaching. This standard includes the context (restriction) that students should be identifying the geometric features in two-dimensional figures. For example, students could identify line segments in a parallelogram but not in three-dimensional figures such as a cube.

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Step 3. Deconstruct, or Break Down, the Standard Into Specific Learning Objectives.  Here are the Learning Objectives from this standard with related concepts grouped together by skill:

Draw points, lines, line segments, and rays. Draw right, acute, and obtuse angles. Draw perpendicular and parallel lines. Identify points, lines, line segments, and rays in two dimensional figures. Identify right, acute, and obtuse angles in two dimensional figures. Identify perpendicular and parallel lines in two dimensional figures.

The Learning Objectives could be rearranged by combining skills for the same related concepts. Draw and identify points, lines, line segments, and rays. Draw and identify right, acute and obtuse angles. Draw and identify perpendicular and parallel lines.

We have just deconstructed the standard into Learning Objectives. Now is a good time to think ahead about teaching. We must make sure the Learning Objective, the lesson itself, and the Independent Practice match. In this case, when you select or prepare Independent Practice, make sure the students draw and identify the same geometric features you just taught. Use twodimensional figures only. From Silvia: We have done many trainings on lesson writing. Sometimes after completing a lesson, it was found that the homework did not match the lesson. Now we locate or prepare Independent Practice problems as soon as we have a Learning Objective, before writing the entire lesson.

From Silvia: EDI lessons teach one Learning Objective. As you develop expertise with EDI, you will be able to judge when to combine closely related concepts and skills into one objective. Usually, when lessons become too long, it’s because you’re trying to teach too much at once.

Example 2 Step 1. Select a Content Standard.  ELA informational text. Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/ solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text. (4th)

Step 2. From the Content Standard, Identify the: skill(s) describe concept(s) the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) context(s) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text

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Step 3. Deconstruct the Content Standard Into Specific Learning Objectives.  This

could be written as one Learning Objective that would cover a lot of content when taught. Describe the structure of information in text.

But most likely this standard would be taught in a series of lessons, teaching each text structure listed in the standard one at a time Describe the structure of information in chronological text. Describe the structure of information in comparison text. Describe the structure of information in cause/effect text. Describe the structure of information in problem/solution text.

In each lesson you would teach a specific structural relationship between events, ideas, concepts, or information. Graphic organizers could be used to visually show relationships between ideas in the texts being analyzed. You also teach how text structure applies to an overall text, or to parts of a text. Most texts have an overall text structure, but many different text structures can be used for parts of a text at the paragraph or even sentence level. During culminating lessons, use passages with various text structures and teach students how to differentiate between them.

From Standards to Learning Objectives It’s a lot of work to go through standards and create all the related Learning Objectives. At DataWORKS we have already done this for many standards, including Common Core State Standards in English and Math, Australian Curriculum: English, TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), ELD (English Language Development), and Next Generation Science Standards. Please refer to our DataWORKS website (data works-ed.com) for information, or go to our Educeri lesson site (educeri.com) to see online copies of the standards deconstructed into Learning Objectives.

More Tips for Good Learning Objectives for Good Lessons Keep Learning Objectives Conceptual Standards describe the concepts and skills to teach your students. They are not connected to any specific resource. When creating Learning Objectives, you don’t need to include the specific resources, passages, or activities you will use to actually teach the lesson. In addition, you don’t need to add achievement goals. All EDI lessons already have a goal of 80% to 100% student success. This doesn’t need to be added to every Learning Objective. Below are some Learning Objectives showing strikeouts of information that is not needed for a concept-driven Learning Objective. Identify themes in literature by reading The Catcher in the Rye. Identify place value using base-ten blocks. Identify pronouns correctly in 8 out of 10 sentences.

Let’s look at another example.

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Example 3 Step 1. Select a Content Standard.  ELA vocabulary acquisition and use. Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text. (9th and 10th)

Step 2. From the Content Standard, Identify the: skill(s) interpret, analyze concept(s) figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) context(s) their role in the text

Step 3. Deconstruct the Content Standard Into Specific Learning Objectives.  The objectives could be

1. Interpret figures of speech. or 2. Interpret euphemisms and oxymorons. 3. Analyze the role of figures of speech in text. or 4. Analyze the role of euphemisms and oxymorons in text.

Euphemisms and oxymorons could be done in one lesson, which would allow for differentiating between the two. Most likely, during the same lesson you would teach students how to interpret the figurative language (explain what it means) and also how to analyze the role in the text (How does the figurative language contribute meaning to the text? Why was it used?). The Independent Practice would match the specific figurative language you taught and apply the same analysis.

Example 4 Step 1. Select a Content Standard.  Middle school physical science. Develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved.

Step 2. From the Content Standard, Identify the: skill(s) develop, use concept(s) Law of Conservation of Matter context(s) none This standard actually provided the definition of the Law of Conservation of Matter (the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved). The standard did not include the name. When standards provide definitions only, you need to add the name.

Step 3. Deconstruct the Content Standard Into Specific Learning Objectives. Develop the Law of Conservation of Matter. Use the Law of Conservation of Matter.

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Example 5 Step 1. Select a Content Standard.  Middle school history—social science. Know about the life of Confucius and the fundamental teachings of Confucianism and Taoism. (6th)

Step 2. From the Content Standard, Identify the: skill(s) describe The skill in this standard, know, is one of those vague, unmeasurable verbs, so we provide a new verb. We replace know with describe. concept(s) Life of Confucius Fundamental teachings of Confucianism Fundamental teachings of Taoism context(s) none

Step 3. Deconstruct the Content Standard Into Specific Learning Objectives. Describe the life of Confucius. Describe the fundamental teachings of Confucianism. Describe the fundamental teachings of Taoism.

You could combine the life and teachings of Confucius into one lesson and then present a separate lesson on the fundamental teachings of Taoism. During Independent Practice, students could read passages and organize information into a graphic organizer.

Writing Learning Objectives for Pre-Existing Work We’ve just described how you start with a content standard and deconstruct it into specific Learning Objectives. Often, however, lessons are designed the other way around. You already have the student Independent Practice in your existing instructional materials. Instead of finding matching materials for a standard, you must find the matching standard for the materials. And you must determine if the materials even match a standard for your grade level.

Aiming for Student Success Teach on Grade Level Let’s stop here for a minute and discuss two critical educational principles that we developed at DataWORKS to help students and to improve their education: First, we believe that to provide equal opportunity to learn, all students must be taught on grade level. This means teaching all students the standards called for in their grade level each year. Students should receive the same rigorous education whether they enrolled in your class, the class across the hall, or a class across the state. This is how schools and teachers operationalize “equal opportunity to learn” and “high expectations.” You can’t provide equal opportunity unless you provide equal access to grade-level content. Second, to improve student achievement, you must teach the exact same content that high-stakes tests assess. Some people call this teaching to

Chapter 7  •  Establishing What Is Going to Be Taught  

the test. We have a better description: teaching students the grade-level concepts and skills that will be assessed on the test. This is another way of saying teach on grade level. If a standard calls for calculating volume, students cannot be taught area instead. If the standards call for students explaining how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text, students cannot be answering recall questions about the story. If the standards call for twentieth-century U.S. history, students cannot be taught the Revolutionary War. To support your students, you must continuously monitor and verify that your assignments are on grade level matching the content standards. One more thought on the importance of teaching on grade level: Schools that allow students to be taught below grade level become remedial schools, and students taught below grade level perform below grade level. In fact, when students are continually taught below grade level, they are, in reality, prevented from doing well on grade-level state tests. From John: I can’t emphasize this enough. We may sound like we are a broken record, but students must be taught on grade level. At DataWORKS we developed a process of collecting and analyzing student work for alignment to state standards. We call this Curriculum Calibration— collecting assignments and looking them up in the standards. Over the past several years, we collected over 2 million assignments from 48,000 teachers across the United States. We compared the assignments to state standards to see the exact grade level being taught. Unfortunately, we discovered that many students, especially low-income students, were being taught two to four grades below grade level, essentially preventing them from doing well on state tests.

From Silvia: The introduction of the Common Core State Standards (and revised standards from individual states) has increased the rigor of many state’s standards. Existing materials need to be reexamined closely to see if they still match the grade level they were once in. Some standards have been moved to lower grades. Some standards have been eliminated. Other standards have had the skill increased such as “compare and contrast” instead of “identify.” Be sure to check your existing materials if your school has adopted new standards. Alignment of instructional materials is usually done one time at the school or district level.

This seems like a lot of work—deconstructing the standards into multiple Learning Objectives, making sure Objectives are on grade level, and checking that all the Objectives are taught, but this attention to detail is exactly how you generate high success for students. It’s how you improve student achievement, raise test scores, close the achievement gap between groups of students, and produce well-educated adults. Selecting “what to teach” is the first step. “How to teach” is next. Let’s continue.

Part III: The Learning Objective Must Be Presented to the Students Presenting Learning Objectives to students is important. One reason is to ensure that your students know how to pronounce and read the new words, but there is another reason. When you present a Learning Objective and then have your students read it and re-read it to their partner, you displace whatever the students were thinking about before the lesson with the words and phrases of the new Objective. Think about this. Since students don’t always have their working memories full of academic content, you are going to put some there. They may not know the meanings of the words yet, but they are thinking about them instead of something else such as what they did at recess or before school.

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How to Present a Learning Objective to Students Let’s look at how we present the Learning Objective to students, EDI style. 1. Teacher Reads 2. Students Read 3. Pair-Share 4. Pull a Stick (Call on a Random Student) All components of EDI lessons are taught using the Engagement Norms. Let’s see how the Norms fit in for an Objective.

1. Teacher reads.  The Engagement Norms call this “Track with me.” You start by

reading the Learning Objective to your students. “Tracking” means the students are following along while you read. If you have handouts containing the Learning Objective, direct students to look at each word as you pre-read. Direct emerging readers to touch each word as you read. If there are no handouts, have students look up at the board or screen while you point to each word as you read it. You can use a physical pointer, but most teachers use a laser pointer.

2. Students read.  The Engagement Norms say “Read with me.” Cue your students to read chorally with you. 3. Pair-share.  Direct your students to read the Learning Objective to each other. 4. Pull a stick.  This is a cute way of saying “call on a random non-volunteer” to read the Objective to the class. Teachers usually randomize by pulling Popsicle sticks with student names written on them from a cup, hence, “pull a stick.” Actually, many teachers are now using apps or software to generate random names. At this point, your goal is for students to be able to read or tell you the Learning Objective, not that they understand the content contained in the Objective that you’re about to teach. Suppose your Objective is “Isolate initial sounds in words.” When you pull a stick, the selected student should be able to state that they will “Isolate initial sounds in words.” They aren’t expected to know what initial sounds are or what isolate means. You haven’t taught these yet. Let’s look at some examples. Even though these Objectives address specific standards, the techniques apply to all grade levels and all content areas.

Elementary School In this example, take careful note of how Mr. Rubinstein skillfully incorporates the four steps of presenting a Learning Objective. Teacher reads. Students read. Pairshare. Pull a stick. The students are quieting down as they return to their seats following morning recess. Mr. Rubinstein stands at the front of the class. An LCD projector shines the Learning Objective on the screen behind him. “Students, all eyes up here. I want you to look at each word while I read first.” He pauses momentarily waiting for his students and adds, “Keep your eyes on the words while I read. Don’t look at me.” The students look up. He points to each word as he slowly reads. “Today, we will write compound sentences.” Next, he asks his students to read the entire Objective with him, “Now, students, read with me as I point to each word. Ready? Read!” He points, and the students read. “Today, we will write compound sentences.”

Chapter 7  •  Establishing What Is Going to Be Taught  

The reading was a little hesitant. He continues, “Good, now let’s read it together one more time. Keep your eyes on the words. Here we go.” “Today, we will write compound sentences.” “Now I want you all to read to your neighbor what we are going to do today. A partner, go first, then B.” He waits while the partners take turns reading the Learning Objective to each other. Mr. Rubinstein grabs a cup containing Popsicle sticks. He pulls a stick and looks at the name on the stick. “Anthony, can you stand up and read the Objective to the class?” Anthony stands, thinks for a moment and says, “Today, we will write compound sentences.” Mr. Rubinstein calls on one more student who successfully reads the Objective. He now knows that his students can read and pronounce the words in the Objective. He hasn’t taught the students how to write a compound sentence yet, but they will learn that in a few minutes. Right now he just wants his students to know how to read the new words in the Learning Objective and to refocus their attention away from recess and toward the new lesson.

Middle School Let’s look at another Objective. Mr. J has the Learning Objective on the board. Solve systems of linear equations He looks over at his Student Engagement Norms poster. He remembers that last year some students mispronounced linear with a long -i as line-e-ar. The top line of the Norms poster says, “Pronounce With Me.” “Students, look up here,” he says, pointing at linear. “This word has the word line in it, but is pronounced as linear, not line-e-ar.” He says it again, “Linear.” He continues, “Students, point to linear and read linear twice to your partner.” He waits for the students to read. “OK, now look up here while I read. My turn.” He points his red laser pointer at the words while he slowly reads. “Solve systems of linear equations.” “Students, your turn.” The students know this cue and read chorally as he shines the laser across the words. “Solve systems of linear equations.” “Partner A read to B and then B read to A.” He waits while the partners read the Learning Objective to each other. He calls two non-volunteers to read the Objective to the class. Analysis: Mr. J used a couple of additional strategies. He pre-pronounced a difficult word. He has signals for students. “My turn.” “Your turn.”

High School Now let’s observe a high school teacher present the Learning Objective to her class. Analyze the role of euphemisms and oxymorons in text. Mrs. Singh has the Learning Objective on the board. “Students, I want you to look at this word.” She points to euphemisms and says, “The beginning eu- is pronounced like you.

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The -ph is pronounced with an -f sound. Listen while I say euphemisms. Let’s say euphemisms together. Euphemisms. Let’s say it again. Euphemisms.” She points to oxymorons and continues, “This word is oxymorons. All together. Oxymorons.” She points to the board and reads the Objective, “Let’s read together.” “Analyze the role of euphemisms and oxymorons in text.” “Students, read the Objective to your partners. B’s go first.” Mrs. Singh calls on a non-volunteer student to read the Objective. He seems to be caught off guard and is not ready. Mrs. Singh says, “Listen carefully, I’ll call on another student and come back to you. She calls on two other students and then returns to him. This time he reads the Objective. From John: Even before you read any further, you can begin using Learning Objectives like these tomorrow. Prepare a Learning Objective, and present it to your students. Don’t forget the steps. Make sure it matches the Independent Practice. After a little bit of practice, you’ll be doing it like you’ve been doing it all your life.

Summary We have learned a lot about Learning Objectives. Be mindful of the time spent on the Learning Objective. It generally should be less than 3 minutes. •• Learning Objectives come directly from content standards •• Learning Objectives contain concepts, skills, and context •• Learning Objectives must match Independent Practice •• Lessons need to be on grade level

•• Present the Learning Objective to students 1. Teacher reads 2. Students read 3. Pair-share 4. Pull a stick Now we’re ready for the next chapter where we connect what students already know to what they are going to learn. Let’s turn to Connecting to What Students Already Know: Activating Prior Knowledge.

8 Connecting to What Students Already Know Activating Prior Knowledge

Assessment

Dif fer en Chec tia king tin for g Un St de Learning rs ta n Objective

e

Pr

EDI®

Homework

Explicit Direct Instruction

ion

tat

n se

Teaching gies Strate Stra tive teg gni i e Co s: Ex for Understanding pla cking Che i n Ch ,D ec e k in g fo

Periodic Review

Activate Prior Knowledge

s gie te ra ng di

Preparation

“Students, before we start, I want you to think about this . . .”

Concept Development

Skill Development

Independent Practice

Guided Practice Relevance

l ode ,M ate ng str ndi on sta m er nd rU

Closure

English Learner Strateg ies Checking for Und e r s t and ing

EDI lessons connect new learning to students’ existing knowledge.

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Part I: What Does It Mean to Activate Prior Knowledge? In an Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) lesson, Activate Prior Knowledge (APK) is used to reveal a connection between something students already know and the new content they are going to learn. Students have many things stored in their long-term memories that are related to a new lesson, but they’re probably not thinking about any of them at the beginning of the lesson. Activate Prior Knowledge explicitly retrieves pertinent information from students’ long-term memory and places it into their working memory so students are now consciously thinking about it. The teacher then explains the connection between the existing knowledge and the new learning.

Why Is Activating Prior Knowledge Important? When students’ prior knowledge is explicitly activated, it’s easier for them to learn new content. This is because the brain wants to integrate new information with what it already knows. In EDI lessons, you take advantage of this by always revealing some relevant linkages between what your students already know and what you are going to teach them. In essence, you facilitate what the brain already wants to do: integrate new information with what’s already known. So, when you APK, you are preparing minds to accept and retain new information. From Silvia: At DataWORKS we have observed that when teachers don’t provide the stimulus to help students retrieve pertinent prior knowledge, it may seem that some students have little or no prior knowledge when they, in fact, do. It just needs to be retrieved from long-term memory.

Two Ways to Activate Prior Knowledge Activating Prior Knowledge can be done in two ways: Universal Experience or Sub-Skill Review. When you Activate Prior Knowledge using a Universal Experience, you activate something from your students’ prior life experiences that is related to the new learning. Students, write on your whiteboards something that floats on water and something that sinks. Explain to your partners what you wrote. Be ready to tell me if I call on you. Students, you all know that some things float and some sink. Today, we will calculate whether an object floats or sinks. It’s called buoyancy.

The second method of Activating Prior Knowledge is Sub-Skill Review. A SubSkill Review is a review of something previously taught at school that is directly pertinent to the new lesson. It could be something you taught earlier in the year or something from a prior grade. In either case, Activating Prior Knowledge by Sub-Skill Review is the reteaching of a pertinent sub-skill used in the new lesson. For example, if the new lesson is to add fractions with unlike denominators (1 2

+

1 4

) then the Activate Prior Knowledge can be a review of adding fractions with

like denominators ( 1

3

+

1 3

).

So when you APK, you are activating something students learned from life experience or something academic they learned at school.

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

APK Universal Experience. Activate something students learned in life. APK Sub-Skill Review. Activate something students learned at school.

How Do You Select the Knowledge to Activate? To determine the knowledge to activate, look first at the Learning Objective. The Learning Objective already contains information you can activate—knowledge that is related to either the Learning Objective’s concept or the Learning Objective’s skill. Suppose the Objective is Compare and contrast characters from two stories. You can activate students’ prior knowledge of the concept, characters, or the skill, comparing and contrasting. Either one will meet the requirement of preparing student minds to integrate new information with something they already know. It’s difficult to make a hard-and-fast rule for when to activate knowledge of the lesson’s concept and when to activate knowledge of the lesson’s skill. Skills such as identify, analyze, and compare and contrast are used over and over in standards, so most lessons activate knowledge of the concept. Typically, math lessons review a math computation that will be used in the new lesson. For example, a lesson on calculating sales tax can start with an APK reviewing how to convert percentages to decimals. A lesson on subtracting with regrouping can start by reviewing subtraction without regrouping. Now let’s look closer at the techniques for Activating Prior Knowledge, and then we go step-by-step into “how” to do it.

Activate Prior Knowledge: Universal Experience “Attach a Label” to What Students Already Know “Attaching a label” is the technique used most often for Universal Experience. Attaching a label means activating something your students already know and then providing the new vocabulary word for it. It’s a great way to Activate Prior Knowledge for concepts. We just saw an example above. Students already know different things float and sink in water. The new label for this is buoyancy. All students, even young students, understand many concepts, but they usually don’t know the vocabulary word that labels it. You can take advantage of your students’ knowledge when you Activate Prior Knowledge. First activate the idea (the concept) they already know, then attach the label (the new vocabulary word) to it.

Activate the idea. Attach a label: There’s a name for this. It’s called ________.

Let’s look at some more examples. “Students, when you are sitting in the dark watching a movie, how do you know the scary part of the movie is coming next? Write on your whiteboard. Explain your answer to your partner and be ready to tell me.” Almost all students will write something like, “the music” or “the lighting.” After calling on a few students to share their answers, you connect to the new learning by attaching the new label to what they have already experienced.

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“Students, you all know that movies give you hints about what will happen next. Well, authors do the same thing in stories. They add sentences to give you hints about what will happen next. There’s a name for this. It’s called foreshadowing clues. And that’s what we’ll identify today, foreshadowing clues, hints in the story about what will happen next.

• • • “Students, I have two sentences on the board. Let’s read them.” 1. I told you five times to be quiet. 2. I told you 5 million times to be quiet. “Which sentence could not be true?” (whiteboards, pair-share, non-volunteer report out) “Yes, students, I could not have told you 5 million times to be quiet, but we talk this way all the time, using big exaggerated statements. There’s a name for this. It’s called hyperbole. And today we will analyze hyperbole in text, in what we read.”

• • • “Students, name three things in order that you did this morning. I will give an example first. I got up. I ate breakfast. I drove to school. Tell your partner three things you did this morning in order.” (pair-share, report out) “Students, you already know how to tell about things that are done in order. Well, when authors write about things done in order, there’s a name for this. It’s called sequential order text.”

Notice in the examples that you activate the idea first and then attach the label. If you start by asking students to write what they already know about the new vocabulary (buoyancy, foreshadowing clues, hyperbole, or sequential order text) on their whiteboards, you will get many confused faces. When you call on students, they will report out guesses or misinformation that other students hear. So for concepts, activate the idea. Provide the new vocabulary as the name of something your students already know. Now let’s look at the second method to Activate Prior Knowledge.

Activate Prior Knowledge: Sub-Skill Review Fill in Gaps of What Students Know Reviewing sub-skills can be used to activate or even to provide prior knowledge to prepare students for a new lesson. It’s a great technique to use for students who have gaps in their knowledge. First, you identify pertinent sub-skills needed in the new lesson. Then you review these sub-skills. In reality, you Activate Prior Knowledge by reteaching sub-skills. From DataWORKS consultant Gordon Carlson: In this era of rigorous standards for all students, many teachers are frustrated by how to teach grade-level content to students who have so many holes or gaps in their instructional backgrounds. The good news is that teachers do not have to fill all gaps that children have when teaching a grade-level lesson. They need only activate or explicitly review sub-skills that are directly pertinent to what is being taught during the new lesson.

Activating Prior Knowledge by reviewing sub-skills is effective for all levels of students. For those who already know the sub-skills, you have refreshed the terminology and steps necessary by retrieving them from long-term memory and

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

bringing them into working memory so they are readily available to use in the new lesson. For students who are weak in the sub-skills, you have quickly taught them. Even though these students may not be completely proficient in the sub-skill, they now have the methodology in their working memories. Then during the lesson, you reinforce the sub-skills within the context of the new learning. Activating Prior Knowledge by reviewing sub-skills is quite often used in mathematics. In the next examples, the APK is a simpler version of the new learning. LO: Add numbers using regrouping. (35 + 89) (2nd) APK: Review adding numbers that don’t need regrouping. (35 + 12) (1st) LO: Solve two-step linear equations. (2x + 4 = 12) (7th) APK: Review solving one-step linear equations. (x + 4 = 12) (6th)

Often in math you can review a sub-skill that is used as part of a computation in the new learning. LO: Use the Pythagorean Theorem to solve real-world problems. (In a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs, a2 + b2 = c2) (8th) APK: Review perfect squares and square roots. 32 = 9, 42 = 16, 52 = 25 (8th) LO: Calculate sales tax, markups, and discounts. (6th) APK: Review percentages and percentage to decimal conversions. (6th) LO: Tell time to nearest minute. (2nd) APK: Review telling time to the nearest quarter hour. (2nd)

Activate Prior Knowledge for History-Social Science For history you can review events leading up to the new lesson. LO: Describe post–World War II economic and social transformations. (High school) APK: Review participants and ending of World War II. (High school)

For science, you activate a concept, review something already taught, or review math that will be used for science computations. LO: Balance chemical equations. (Chemistry) APK: Review organization and layout of the Periodic Table of The Elements. (High school) LO: Calculate density (d = m/v) (Middle school) APK: Review manipulating an equation a = b/c to solve for any variable: a, b, or c. (6th)

Don’t Assess Prior Knowledge—Activate It When you Activate Prior Knowledge, make sure you are eliciting students’ existing knowledge. Don’t quiz students to see if they already know the new content before you’ve taught it. Don’t start out with “who knows” what foreshadowing clues are, or hyperbole, or sequential order text, or supply and demand elasticity. Start out with what students already know.

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Activating Prior Knowledge Should Not Take Over 5 Minutes Be mindful of the time spent Activating Prior Knowledge. It generally should be less than 5 minutes. The bulk of the lesson time should be spent teaching students the new grade-level content. If the APK is too long, the students don’t have enough instructional time or repetitions of the new content to learn and retain it. Then they struggle when they’re asked to work problems or do independent practice they really don’t understand yet.

Part II: How to Activate Prior Knowledge When you create EDI lessons, you use either a Universal Experience or a Sub-Skill Review to activate students’ knowledge of the lesson’s concept or of its skill. When writing your own lessons, it’s best to have the Concept Development and Skill Development/Guided Practice completed before you write the APK. If you create the APK first, you may find that it’s not the optimal one to use by the time you complete the lesson. All the components of EDI, including APK, are taught using the Student Engagement Norms. You use tracked reading, complete sentences, and pair-shares throughout the lesson. In fact, much of the literacy benefits of EDI come from the consistent use of the Norms.

Using APK to Start an EDI Lesson Can Be Effective for Student Learning EDI lessons don’t always have to start with the Learning Objective. Sometimes, lessons flow better if you start with APK instead and then slide into the Learning Objective after the students’ brains are activated. In the sample lessons following, you will see that some start with APK first.

Universal Experience Here are the steps for Activating Prior Knowledge using a Universal Experience. Each step is delivered using the Engagement Norms. If the Universal Experience is very obvious, just ask the students directly. If the Universal Experience is more sophisticated, then you should apply the Rule of Two and provide an example first.

HOW TO ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE USING A UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE Teach using the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE 1. Present a scenario. Give your own example first, if necessary. 2. Ask students to provide their own answer. (whiteboards) 3. Pair-share. Ask students to explain their answers to their partners. 4. Check for Understanding (CFU). Call on non-volunteers to answer from their background knowledge. 5. Explain the connection to the new lesson.

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

Let’s look into a class where the teacher is activating knowledge of a concept. The scenario in this case is a sick girl staying home from school. The students will be asked to explain the scenario. Then the teacher will “attach a label,” providing the new vocabulary for what the students already recognized.

Example 1: Describe the cause-and-effect structure of text. (4th) Mrs. Nakato clicks her mouse, and her lesson fills the screen at the front of the class. The students don’t have handouts for this part of the lesson. They will read directly from the screen. They have their whiteboards “parked” on the edge of their desks. Mrs. Nakato has been using the Student Engagement Norms since the beginning of the year so her students are quite familiar with the strategies, including choral reading, pair-shares, attention signal, and whiteboards.

Describe the cause-and-effect structure of text. (4th) Last night Mrs. Nakato looked over the lesson. The Learning Objective is mostly academic and content vocabulary. She will describe the cause-and-effect structure of text. The APK text, on the other hand, is conversational English including words such as why, what, school, because, sick. The girl’s name, Bethany, is the only word students might not be familiar with. Mrs. Nakato decides to pre-read this word only and then her students will read the APK text chorally.

1. Present a scenario. Give your own example first, if necessary. Aiming her laser pointer at the screen, she says, “Students, look at this word. It’s Bethany. Let’s read Bethany. Bethany is the name of the sick girl in the picture.” Her laser drops down to the photo of Bethany. “Now let’s read the entire sentence together. Ready? Go.” Bethany did not go to school because she was sick. The APK is set up with two matching questions on the screen. Using the Rule of Two, she normally answers number 1 and her students answer number 2. However, these are very

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easy questions. She doesn’t need to model first. She decides to split the question among the students as she has seen some other teachers do at her school. “Class, let’s read sentences one and two.” The students read from the board. What happened because Bethany was sick? Why didn’t Bethany go to school?

2. Ask students to provide their own answer. (whiteboards) Mrs. Nakato continues, “I want Partner A to answer question 1 and Partner B to answer question 2. Write on your whiteboards.” She waits for a moment while the students grab their whiteboards from the edge of their desks and write their answers.

3. Pair-share. Ask students to explain their answers to their partners. “OK, now read your question and explain your answer to your partner. Partner A, go first.” The classroom fills with student voices as the students turn toward each other, explaining their whiteboard answers. Mrs. Nakato listens. When she hears the noise level drop she gives her Attention Signal, “Class, class.” The students turn toward her and respond, “Yes, yes.” “Chin it!” She says.

4. Check for Understanding. Call on non-volunteers to answer from their background knowledge. The boards come up. She looks around the room at the answers and calls on a non-volunteer. “Mason, please stand up. Read your question and explain your answer to the class.” Mason stands up, “I had question 1.” He looks at the screen and reads, “What happened because Bethany was sick?” He looks down at his whiteboard and says, “Bethany did not go to school.” Mrs. Nakato then calls on a random B partner to stand and explain the answer to question 2.

5. Explain the connection to the new lesson. Now she is ready to make the connection to the new learning. The connection is written in the box on the lower right side of the screen. She paraphrases to the class. “Students, you can already identify when one event makes something else happen, like Bethany not going to school because she was sick. There is a name for this. It’s called cause-and-effect.” She clicks her mouse and says, “Look up here. We’re going to read the definition of causeand-effect text structure.”

Let’s look at another example.

Example 2: Assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th) Mr. Pepper has just completed presenting the Learning Objective to his students, Assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. The lesson is projected on the screen at the front of the classroom. The students have handouts. He’s ready for APK. Watch carefully for his use of the Engagement Norms. You will see reading and cueing for complete sentences.

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

Assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th)

1. Present a scenario. Give your own example first, if necessary. Mr. Pepper starts. “Students, look down on your page where it says Activate Prior Knowledge. Let’s read the sentence together.” When asked why he thinks that hot dogs are better than salad, Joey said, “Because they’re just better.” Mr. Pepper continues, “Let’s read the question.” Did Joey do a good job of proving his argument?

2. Ask students to provide their own answer. (whiteboards) “Get your whiteboards. Do you think Joey did a good job of proving his argument that hot dogs are better? Write on your whiteboards, yes or no.”

3. Pair-share. Ask students to explain their answers to their partners. “Now turn to your partner and explain your answer. Remember, class, we use words from the question to make our answers. You should say something like ‘Yes, Joey did a good of proving his argument because . . . ’ or ‘No, Joey did not do a good job of proving his argument because . . . ’ This time Partner B talks first.” He waits as students pair-share and then calls out, “Chin it.” The boards come up. He looks around the room.

4. Check for Understanding. Call on non-volunteers to answer from their background knowledge. He touches his cell phone where he has a randomizer app running and says, “Number 6, Hailey, explain your answer. Did Joey prove his argument?” Hailey stands up holding her board and says, “No.” Mr. Pepper responds, “Can you put that in a complete sentence?”

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Hailey looks down at her paper. After a pause, she says, “Joey did not do a good job of proving his argument because he has no reasons.” Mr. Pepper follows up, “What do you mean by that?” “Well, he didn’t say why hot dogs are better. He just said they are.” For more complex questions, Mr. Pepper typically calls on several students. But the point’s been made here with just one student. He moves on. “Thank you, Hailey.” She sits down.

5. Explain the connection to the new lesson. “Students, we all saw that Joey did not give any reasons why hot dogs are better. We can say that he didn’t give any evidence to convince us why they are better. If you look back up here at our Objective, you can see that we will do the same thing today. We will assess the evidence, the proof, an author uses to support his argument.”

Sub-Skill Review Now let’s look at Activating Prior Knowledge using a Sub-Skill Review. Since this is a reteach of something already taught, it will take a little more work than Universal Experience. A Sub-Skill Review quickly reteaches a concept or skill before presenting the new content. You use the Rule of Two. Work a problem first (modeling your thinking) to remind the students how to do it. Then have students work a similar problem on their whiteboards. Here are the steps.

HOW TO ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE USING A SUB-SKILL REVIEW Use Engagement Norms and TAPPLE throughout 1. Review a related concept, if necessary. 2. Work a problem. If difficult, pair-share and ask a CFU process question (How did I ______?). 3. Have students work a matching problem. (whiteboards) 4. Pair-share. Have students explain their answer to their partner. 5. Check for Understanding. Call on non-volunteers to explain their answers. 6. Explain the connection to the new lesson.

Example 3: Use pictures to add fractions. (3rd) In this example, watch carefully how the teacher integrates the Engagement Norms into APK. Remember EDI is taught using the Engagement Norms. You will see the teacher cueing students for complete sentences and providing corrective feedback for an incorrect answer.

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

Use pictures to add fractions. (3rd)

1. Review a related concept, if necessary. Mrs. Ruiz has the lesson projected on the screen for all students to see. She has already presented the Learning Objective. The slide includes concept definitions for fraction, numerator, and denominator that she has already taught in previous lessons. She will start with problem 1, and then use the definitions as a reference while solving it.

2. Work a problem. If difficult, pair-share and ask a CFU process question (How did I _____?). “Students, we have two pizzas. There is a question above them. Point to the word how on your handout. Let’s read together.” The class responds, “How much pizza is left?” The next sentence is more difficult. She decides to pre-read. “Boys and girls, next sentence. Track with your fingers while I read. ‘Write the fraction of pizza remaining represented by the pictures.’ Your turn.” “Write the fraction of pizza remaining represented by the pictures.” “OK. Look up here. I am going to do problem 1. It asks about the fraction of the pizza remaining, the part that had not been eaten yet. We have some definitions here. We went over these last week, but let’s read them again. Touch the word fraction. Ready? Read.” “A fraction is a number that represents a part of a whole.” She points to the pizza and says, “I need to write a fraction that stands for the part of the pizza that is left. Let’s read about the parts of a fraction. Point to the numerator on your page. Track while I read.”

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She reads, then the class reads, “The numerator represents the number of selected equal parts.” She continues, “The number of selected equal parts in this example is the number of the pizza slices not eaten yet. Let’s count them together.” She points to the board and leads the class, “One . . . two . . . three . . . four.” “So the numerator is 4. The numerator always goes above the line. I am writing it here.” She presses her clicker and 4 pops on the screen in the box above the fraction line, and then she continues, “Write 4 as the numerator on your page just like I did.” Mrs. Ruiz waits while the students write on their papers and then says, “Look at your partner’s paper and make sure they wrote 4 as the numerator.” A couple of students cue their partners to write on their papers. Mrs. Ruiz continues for the denominator. She pre-reads its definition, and then the students chorally read. She points to the pizza and counts with the students to get 8 slices for the whole pizza. She emphasizes that they are all the same size. She clicks, and 8 appears as the denominator on the screen. The students write 8 as the denominator on their papers. She then practices reading the answer with her students. “The fraction of the pizza remaining is four-eighths.”

3. Have students work a matching problem. (whiteboards) She continues, “Now I want you to write the fraction of the pizza remaining for picture number 2. Write it on your paper.” The students count, touching the page, and write their fractions on their handouts.

4. Pair-share. Have students explain their answer to their partner. “Red partner, read your answer to your partner. You should say ‘The fraction of the pizza represented by the picture is ______.’ Blue partner, explain the top and bottom numbers, the numerator and denominator of the fraction. Point to the picture and explain where the numbers came from.” The students turn and pair-share, fingers pointing to the pizza drawing. Mrs. Ruiz could have used whiteboards, but for this one problem, she just has her students hold up their worksheets.

5. Check for Understanding. Call on non-volunteers to explain their answers. “OK. I want to see your answers. Chin it. Hold up your papers.” She looks carefully around the room. All students except one are correct. She points to a random student with the correct answer. “Joshua, read me your answer in a complete sentence.” Joshua replies, “The fraction of the pizza . . . represented by the picture . . . is . . . three . . . uh . . . it’s three-eighths.” “Good, Joshua, three-eighths.” Mrs. Ruiz calls on another student who correctly reads her answer, three-eighths, and explains how she got her answer. Now Mrs. Ruiz calls on Emily. “Emily, I see you have a different answer. Can you read me your fraction?” Emily replies, “Three-fifths.” Mrs. Ruiz continues, “How did you get fifths?” “There’re three slices and five blank pieces.” Mrs. Ruiz points to the board. “Class, let’s read what the denominator represents. The denominator represents the number of total equal parts.” “Emily, can you count the total number of parts in picture 2.” After a moment, Emily says, “Eight.”

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

“Good,” says Mr. Ruiz. “There are a total of 8 equal parts in the whole pizza. Go ahead and fix your answer.” Emily erases her answer with her hand and writes 3/8. “Now please read your answer?” Emily says, “Three-eighths.” Mr. Ruiz cues, “In a complete sentence: The fraction of the pizza . . .” Emily responds, “The fraction of the pizza represented by the picture is three-eighths.”

6. Explain the connection to the new lesson. Mrs. Ruiz elaborates on the APK connection shown on the lower right corner of the screen. “Students, we know how to represent pictures as fractions. We just saw pizzas representing fractions of four-eighths and three-eighths. Look at our Objective today. Now we will use pictures to add fractions to see how much we have altogether.”

Example 4: Identify and use adjectives. (3rd) Mrs. B has her lesson projected on a large touch screen TV. The students don’t have handouts for this slide. It will be taught directly from the screen.

Identify and use adjectives. (3rd)

1. Review a related concept, if necessary. She says, “Students, look up here to where I am pointing at the word noun. Air track while I read first.” The students have been using the Engagement Norms all year. They respond quickly, raising their hands and pointing to the words on the TV as Mrs. B reads, “A noun is a word that names a person, place, or thing.” She continues, “Your turn.” The students respond, “A noun is a word that names a person, place, or thing.” She elaborates with some examples, “Words like teacher, boy, library, table, and clock are nouns.”

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2. Work a problem. If difficult, pair-share and ask a CFU process question (How did I _________?). “We have a question. Let’s read the next two sentences together.” Look at the pictures below. Which word correctly describes each picture? She continues, “We have a man and two answers. Let’s read the answers.” A. happy B. angry She looks toward the screen and says, “Class, show me a happy face.” The students all show broad smiles. “Show me an angry face, a mad face.” The students all show scowls. “Class, your angry faces match the face of the man. I am circling angry, and I am answering in a complete sentence: Angry correctly describes the picture of the man.” She uses her finger on the touchscreen to draw a circle around angry.

3. Pair-share. Have students explain their answer to their partner. 4. Have students work a matching problem. (Whiteboards) “Now, you answer question 2 to describe the picture of the mouse. Let’s read the two possible answers.” A. tall B. short “Write your answers on your whiteboards.” The students uncap their pens and start writing their answers. Mrs. B adds, “Then explain your answer to your partner in a complete sentence like I did. describes the picture of the . Partner A explain first.” The noise level increases as they explain their answers.

5. Check for Understanding. Call on non-volunteers to explain their answers. “Eyes front,” calls Mrs. B. “Backs straight,” respond the students. “Chin it.” The boards come up level with students’ chins. She calls on a non-volunteer, “Jayden, give me your answer in a complete sentence.” Jayden stands up and says, “Short describes the mouse because it is small.” “Good answer, Jayden, and you justified your answer, too.” She uses her finger to circle short on the touch-sensitive screen.

6. Explain the connection to the new lesson. Mrs. B quickly scans the Connection Box on the screen and then says, “Students, you already know how to use words that describe nouns—words like happy, angry, tall, and short. There is a name for words that describe nouns. They are called adjectives. Today, we will identify adjectives and also use adjectives in sentences to describe nouns.” Analysis: Even though answering the question by referring to the picture was not difficult, the APK itself was completely literacy based. The students read every word, including the definition of a noun and the question. Students used complete sentences as they pair-shared and answered questions. And the students were engaged. They weren’t just listening while Mrs. B talked.

Chapter 8  •  Connecting to What Students Already Know   

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Textbook Connections: APK and Warm-Up Problems Now that we have completed this APK chapter, you should be able to write your own APK and be able to more clearly recognize it in your instructional materials. Textbooks often provide warmup problems. Analyze them carefully. Sometimes, these problems are designed to Activate Prior Knowledge. You can do one first, have the students do one, and then make the connection to the new lessons. Often, however, the warm-up problems are actually Periodic Review covering something previously taught that is not related to the new lesson. For example, reviewing telling time when the upcoming lesson addresses geometric shapes. In these cases, the warm-up does not serve to Activate Prior Knowledge, and other problems will be needed. In any case, be sure to differentiate between review problems and Activating Prior Knowledge problems. Both are important but serve different purposes.

Summary You now have a great foundation in Activating Prior Knowledge. You’re prepared to include APK in your very next lesson. It’s easy, but you do need to think about it and plan before each lesson. As you practice EDI, all the lesson components will become even easier, until you use them automatically every day. And every part of EDI helps students learn more and learn faster. Let’s summarize the guidelines for APK, an important Explicit Direct Instruction component. •• Look at the Learning Objective and the student problems to identify what to activate. •• APK by activating students’ prior experiences that provide examples of the new learning. •• APK by reteaching pertinent sub-skills used in the new learning. •• Although lessons usually start with the Learning Objective, you can start with

APK first and then flow into the Learning Objective. •• Design APK so that it works for all students. •• APK is taught using the Student Engagement Norms with lots of student interaction: reading, pair-shares, whiteboards, and answering questions. •• Tell students the connection of APK to the new lesson to maximize their brain’s ability to link old and new information. •• Limit the Activating Prior Knowledge to 5 minutes to maximize instructional time of the new content. We’ve covered the preparation components of an EDI lesson: Learning Objective and Activa­ ting Prior Knowledge. Now we’re ready to go to the presentation components of a well-crafted EDI lesson: Concept Development, Skill Deve­ lopment, and Lesson Relevance. This is where you teach the new content. Let’s turn to the next chapter, These Are the Big Ideas: Concept Development.

From Silvia: Here is a little saying I use to summarize APK in just a few words: “Link. All students. Short.” This means that APK must link prior knowledge to new content. It must work for all students. It must also be short.

9 These Are the Big Ideas

Assessment

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EDI®

Homework

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Periodic Review

Activate Prior Knowledge

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Preparation

Concept Development

Explicit Direct Instruction

Skill Development

Independent Practice

Guided Practice Relevance

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Closure

English Learner Strateg ies Checking for Und e r s tan din g

Concepts are explicitly taught to students during Concept Development.

Part I: Concept Development Design We have already discussed Learning Objectives and Activating Prior Knowledge. These two Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) components are the Student Preparation 105

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section of an EDI lesson. It’s where you prepare your students, getting them ready to learn the new content.

EDI Content Presentation Now your lesson switches gears into the Content Presentation section where you teach the new content. You start with Concept Development where you teach the definitions of the concepts contained in the Learning Objective. Then you provide Skill Development where you solve problems and explicitly teach your students how to do it. This is followed by Guided Practice. Students work problems stepby-step under your guidance while you slowly release them to independence. In this chapter, you’ll see again why a clear Learning Objective for every lesson is so important. That’s because a properly designed Learning Objective lists the concepts for you to teach. In other words, you teach the concepts contained in the Learning Objective. The concepts to teach are listed in the Learning Objective.

Before we begin, let’s review how you can identify concepts in the Learning Objective.

Concepts Concepts are the main ideas in a Learning Objective. Concepts are usually nouns. Here are some sample Objectives with the concept identified. Isolate initial sounds. (K) Determine the connotative meaning of words and phrases. (11th–12th) Represent data sets using bar graphs and picture graphs. (2nd) Represent proportional relationships using equations. (7th) Apply Newton’s Third Law. (Middle school science) Describe the changes in the energy released during fission, fusion, and radioactive decay. (High school) Analyze supply and demand elasticity. (High school) Use perspective to draw structures. (7th-grade art)

Although most concepts are nouns, occasionally they can be a verb, especially the first a time a skill is taught to students. For example, a kindergarten lesson might have this Objective: Add numbers to 10 using objects. The concept to be taught is not objects or numbers. The concept, the big idea, in this case is that adding is finding out how many you have altogether. Almost all concepts involve definitions. Some standards, however, are rules. Many grammar standards, for example, are rules, and the rule becomes the concept. Here are some examples of concepts that are rules: Capitalize the first word of a sentence. Use a colon to separate hours and minutes and to introduce a list.

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

Concept Development During Concept Development in an EDI lesson, you explicitly teach your students the definitions of the concepts contained in the Learning Objective. As we will see in a few minutes you do that with written definitions, labeled examples, and Checking for Understanding (CFU) questions.

Why Is Concept Development Important? From John: EDI is metacognitive teaching. For each teaching practice, you know what it is, how to do it, when to do it, and why you do it. Now, let’s look at why you include Concept Development. If someone asks you why you spend time on Concept Development, here’s why.

Concept Development is important for several reasons.

1. Concept Development is important so students can generalize to new situations in school and real life. Students need a good foundation at the conceptual level so they can apply the concepts they have learned to new situations. In EDI, you are not teaching your students to fill out a worksheet. You want your students to be able to recognize and apply the concepts to any situation, whether it occurs at school on a worksheet or a state test, or if it occurs later, on the job in real life. To do this requires effective Concept Development. For example, students can calculate how much paint is needed to paint a wall because they immediately recognize that this involves the concept of area.

2. Concept Development is important so students can internalize the generalization as opposed to learning individual instances. It’s more efficient to teach generalizations than to try to teach all the instances. Also, students don’t need to remember as much when they learn a generalization. For example, don’t teach your students to capitalize Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Teach your students to always capitalize the days of the week. It doesn’t matter which day it is, capitalize it. That’s the big idea. That’s the concept. From Silvia: I observed an EDI lesson on capitalizing the days of the week. At the end of the lesson, one student raised his hand and told the teacher, “I was trying to remember to capitalize each day. Now, I remember one rule. Capitalize all days of the week.”

3. Concept Development is important if students are to do well on annual high-stakes state tests. Although preparing students for real life is the ultimate purpose of school, often the most immediate issue is improving student achievement, especially as measured by high-stakes state, national, or international tests. Providing effective Concept Development can directly improve student achievement.

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A Smarter Balanced practice question on quadrilaterals.

Sample questions are available for most state and national tests. You can see that many of the newer questions require students to have a clear understanding of concepts. For students to do well on concept-driven questions, they need to be able to instantly recall the concept’s definition from long-term memory and then be able to apply the definition to the test question. Here are some example questions that require concept knowledge. Students must know conceptually what quadrila­terals are to answer the question to the left. The question below refers to several concepts, especially in the possible answers: plot, theme, setting, and point of view. Students must understand the concepts of inequalities and how they are plotted on the Cartesian plane to answer question 27 (see the next page). They must also know the meaning of the mathematical symbols , and ≥. Students need to know how to read chemical reactions and understand the concept of the Law of Conservation of Matter to answer question 37, on the facing page. Note that the question is not asking students to create a balanced chemical equation. They are given two equations to analyze.

All Students Need to Be Taught Concepts

A DataWORKS assessment question about hyperbole modeled after the Smarter Balanced questions.

Being a proficient reader does not guarantee that students can answer concept-driven questions. Students—including poor readers—who have been taught concepts have the potential of answering concept questions. Students who have not been taught grade-level concepts— including students who are reading above grade level—will have difficulty answering questions about concepts such as plot, theme, setting, point of view, and cause-and-effect text structure.

ADMINISTRATOR TIP From John: Schools that focus on providing extensive remediation to low-performing students without providing grade-level instruction prevent students from answering grade-level questions found on state or national tests. Remediation, teaching the students the sub-skills they have not yet mastered, must be in addition to, not in place of, grade-level instruction.

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

A Smarter Balanced released question on inequalities.

A DataWORKS assessment question about chemical reactions.

Ineffective Concept Development Before we go further, we would like to share with you some practices that we have found in the field that might be restricting students’ learning of new concepts.

Field Observation 1: Concept Development is missing when lessons focus on skills or details. During DataWORKS observations, we often see teachers omit Concept Development (what it is) and jump right to Skill Development (how to do it). In math, for example, many teachers focus most of the lesson on manipulating numbers (doing the arithmetic) without providing a strong grounding in what those numbers represent. Here are some examples of where students would benefit from explicit Concept Development:

Example A: Ineffective Concept Development Mrs. Young holds up a large, empty cardboard box and states that volume is length times width times height as she slides her index finger along the edges of the box. She just gave the formula of how to calculate volume. Mrs. Young could improve her students’ knowledge greatly by telling them that volume is the space inside the box while they watch her place her hand inside the box. She could then provide examples that apply conceptual knowledge such as calculating the amount of cereal that could be stored inside a specific box or the amount of water in a swimming pool.

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Math is not the only content area where Concept Development is sometimes omitted in the classroom.

Example B: Ineffective Concept Development Mrs. Anderson teaches her students what is happening at each step of mitosis: interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Her students would understand more if she provided them with a solid grounding in the concept first: Mitosis is the process of cellular division resulting in two identical daughter cells with the same number of chromosomes. There are several steps in this cellular division process.

Make sure you don’t inadvertently skip Concept Development in your lessons or use Skill Development in place of Concept Development. Always teach students concepts so they can generalize and be prepared for the future, including testing and being productive adults.

Field Observation 2: Instructional materials are not being used to teach concepts. We have discovered something very interesting through the collection and analysis of millions of student assignments and thousands of classroom observations. We discovered that many language arts teachers and textbooks are teaching stories rather than teaching concepts. Standards in reading informational text and reading literature are designed to teach students generalizable concepts and skills that can be applied to any reading selection. Teachers should avoid spending 2 weeks describing the irony in a specific story. Instead, they should teach their students the concept of irony (words that are the opposite of what is really meant, or when the opposite of what is true or expected happens) and then teach how to apply that knowledge to identify and describe the use of irony in any passage, not just the classroom textbook. When students are tested, they will be required to read a passage they have never seen before. In 30 seconds, they need to recall what irony is and be able to describe its use in the new passage. Well-crafted lessons include Concept Development that students can apply to specific examples. Use your resources as vehicles to teach concepts and how to apply those concepts to specific examples.

Field Observation 3: Students are being taught to fill out worksheets instead of being taught concepts and skills. I watched an elementary school teacher walk his students through a worksheet projected on a smartboard. The students successfully answered every question orally and then wrote in the answers on their worksheets. Some of the questions included: What is on the front of my face? (nose) What do we write to the teacher? (note) Which word is a boy’s name? (Pete) Every time I relate this example, I ask, “What was the Learning Objective?” It was supposed to have been “Read words ending with a silent ‘e.’” During the lesson, students were answering the questions correctly, but silent “e” was never mentioned during the lesson. Students had the correct answers but weren’t taught the concept. They should have been taught that the silent “e” is a signal to the reader that the preceding vowel is pronounced as a long vowel. Then they would be able to generalize and read many, many words ending with a silent “e” and know the difference between reading words with and without a silent “e,” for example, pet, Pete, not, note, fat, fate, mad, made, bit, bite, and so forth.

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Always teach at the conceptual level. Don’t teach students how to fill out a worksheet. Often students can receive 100% on the worksheet and not learn the concept.

How to Design Concept Development the EDI Way Let’s talk about designing Concept Development. In a few minutes, we’ll go over how to teach it. Concept Development is easy to create. Define the concepts that are contained in the Learning Objective. Provide labeled examples. Include non-examples if they help clarify the examples. Then ask CFU questions about the concepts. Let’s look at some abbreviated examples first.

HOW TO DESIGN CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT Provide 1. Written definitions 2. Labeled examples 3. CFU questions

Determine the main idea and explain how it is supported by key details. (3rd)

Written definitions: A main idea is . . . 

Key details are . . . 

Labeled examples:

Provide a paragraph with the main idea and key details underlined.

CFU questions:

(Provide a short paragraph.)



1. Which sentence is the main idea? Why?



2. Which sentence is a key detail? Why?

Write an opinion piece. (5th)

Written definitions: An opinion piece is . . . 

An opinion piece contains . . . 

Labeled examples:

Provide a short opinion piece with the components underlined or highlighted.

CFU questions:

(Provide three sample titles.)



Which title could be the title of an opinion piece? Why?

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Solve problems using exponential equations in one variable. (Algebra)

Written definitions: An exponential equation is . . . 

An exponential equation contains . . . 

Labeled examples:

Provide exponential equations with the parts labeled.

CFU questions:

(Provide three sample equations.)



Which is an exponential equation? Why?

Describe the major battles of World War II and their effects. (High school)

Written definitions:

World War II was . . .  Major battles changed the course of the war.

Labeled examples: Provide a graphic organizer with name of battle, date, opposing armies, outcome, and effects on history.

CFU questions: Summarize one of the battles listed in the graphic organizer and describe how it changed the course of the war.

Concept Development 1: Provide Written Definitions Concept Development starts with a clear, written definition of the concept, what we call a bulletproof definition. In one sentence, or a few sentences, you must be able to explicitly define the concept and its unique attributes.

Concept Hooks.  Concept hooks are attributes you include in your definition that

will allow you to strategically identify the concept or use it later in the lesson. For example, the lesson is to identify characters. The definition is Characters are people, animals, or things that the story is about. Teachers can easily identify characters, but can’t always easily explain to young students how they did it. Now, if a second statement is added to the concept definition, Characters talk or do something in the story, this is a hook. Now students know to look for talking or action in the story to identify characters. Here is another example: The main idea is what the paragraph is about. This definition is hard to use to show students how to identify the main idea. However, if you add a second statement with some hooks: All or most of the sentences in the paragraph give information about the main idea, then you have a method of identifying the main idea by comparing the sentences.

Visible Written Definition.  When you teach concepts, your concise, written, bul-

letproof definition is what you put up in the front of the class for students to see and read. Most textbooks contain concept definitions at the beginning of chapters or sections. They are sometimes bolded or in a box or on the top of the page. Sometimes they are in the margins of the teacher’s edition. If concept definitions are

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

missing, not clear, or alluded to with a phrase such as “remind students that . . . ,” then you must provide your own written definition. From Silvia: Sometimes teachers say that concepts are difficult to teach in EDI. Actually, what I have seen is that sometimes teachers understand concepts—such as central message, theme, or main idea—intuitively but have a hard time putting them into concise words. In EDI lessons, teachers need clear, written concept definitions to teach students.

Concept Development 2: Provide Labeled Examples After defining a concept, immediately provide labeled examples that illustrate the definitions. When you teach, you will use the examples to explain what the definition means. You do this while referring back to the written definition. “Labeled examples” doesn’t mean that you always need arrows pointing to examples. Text-based examples can be labeled by having keywords in bold, underlined, or in color.

Non-Examples.  Include non-examples when they can strategically clarify the concept or prevent confusion. Suppose you are teaching similes. All non-examples might be mistaken as similes. However, none of them is comparing unlike things. Two of the non-examples use the word like, but they are not comparing anything.

Concept Development for a lesson on similes. (6th)

Math.  For math lessons, Concept Development can include worked-out examples.

You use these examples to explain to students how a process is done. Later during Skill Development you will model the thinking required while you solve unsolved problems.

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Concept Development for adding three two-digit numbers. (2nd)

Concept Development 3: Provide CFU Questions All EDI lesson components, including Concept Development, have Checking for Understanding questions to verify students are learning what you are teaching. Here are the two general types of higher-order questions1 used during Concept Development.

Type 1: Apply the concept definitions to additional examples and non-examples. Justify your answer. There are several ways to do this. A. Distinguish between examples and non-examples Which is an example of ______? How do you know? Which is not an example of ______? How do you know? Which (picture/poster/object) shows an example of ______? Why? B. Justify provided examples or non-examples Why is ______ an example of ______? Why is ______ not an example of ______? C. Compare and contrast given examples and non-examples What is the difference between the example and non-example? D. Create an example Give me an example of ______. Why is that an example? Draw an example of ______. Why is that an example? You have just taught: A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea. You have given examples of each type. Now, to Check for Understanding, ask students to apply the definition to additional examples or non-examples. In EDI, higher-order questions require students to create their own answers. Lower-order questions are recall of facts such as directly stated information in text.

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Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

Students, which of these three words is a noun: the big house? Write on your whiteboards the word that is a noun. Explain to your partner how you know it is a noun. You should say, “The word ______ is a noun because . . .” Partner A, go first.

After students have shown their whiteboards, you select students to read and justify their answers. Students must be able to describe their thinking or how they came up with their answer.

Type 2: Explain the definition in your own words In your own words, what is ______?

You know your students understand definitions when they can paraphrase them in their own words, but don’t ask this question too soon in the lesson, or students will just read back the definition without knowing what it means. Also, some basic definitions, such as the definition of a noun (words that name people, places, things, or ideas), are hard to paraphrase.

Faux Higher-Order Questions. Beware of faux higher-order questions. These questions require thinking but are off topic to the concept being taught. Children appear to be thinking and creative while answering a question unrelated to what you are teaching. Explanation: Students, the suffix -less means without. For example, we can write an endless number of words using the 26 letters of the alphabet. There is no end to the number of words we can write.

Faux question: Now I want you to write 20 different words on your whiteboards using the letters of the alphabet.

Explanation: Students, fearful means full of fear, scared.

Faux question: Tell your partner a time you were scared.

In this example, the lessons were suffixes. The questions should have addressed suffixes, not the context in which they were used. From Silvia: I have seen these examples where academic coaches cued teachers for the questions. Neither the teacher nor the coach realized the questions were not related to the concepts being taught. Students answered from their background knowledge, not from what was being taught.

Concept Development Enhancements and Tips There are additional enhancements that can be added to Concept Development to help your students learn. You can use graphic organizers, photographs, illustrations, word banks, and vocabulary definitions. You can use manipulatives, realia, and gestures. You can use short passages to help students focus on the new concepts being taught. In DataWORKS’ online EDI lessons at educeri.com, we include animation that highlights important information and pops in answers on the screen when you click the mouse to advance the lesson.

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Concept Development for biology lesson on phases of meiosis. Shows how diagrams and text can be used to explain a concept. (High school)

Vocabulary Development.  Concept Development is Content Vocabulary devel-

opment by default. You provide written definitions and labeled examples of the concept words. Concept Development is also an opportunity to teach one or two academic vocabulary words that happen to be in your definitions. These can be in footnotes and you teach them as you come across them.

Use Short Passages.  EDI uses short passages that clearly illustrate a new concept. Long readings are not needed. Even concepts such as theme and characterization can be shown with short passages. Short passages also allow for more examples to be used over the course of the lesson, which provides additional repetitions for the students.

Concept Development Layout Written Definitions, Labeled Examples, and CFU All Visible at the Same Time.  When you teach Concept Development, be sure you have the related infor-

mation visible on the same screen at the same time. For example, students need to be able to see the connection between a definition and its labeled example. You can use more than one screen for Concept Development, but each definition, labeled example, and related CFU question must be visible at the same time. If necessary, you can provide additional examples by repeating the definition at the top of the screen along with the new example. It takes mental processing and repetition to learn new information. Students are not internalizing the new material (that you already know) at the rate you are presenting it. So when you ask CFU questions, students need to be able to look back through the information to prepare an answer. Actually, when students go back and look at the information, this provides additional interactions with the material, which helps them learn and remember.

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

From John: I have seen PowerPoint lessons with very large fonts and sometimes only one sentence per screen. I watched students scratch their heads when a CFU question filled the screen. They had nothing to refer to. However, slides with just a few sentences could work if students have detailed handouts or textbook pages tightly aligned to the teacher’s presentation.

EDI Concept Development Examples We have already talked about educeri.com, our website with over 1,000 EDI clickand-teach lessons. Rather than describe Concept Development in words, we’ll provide real examples taken directly from educeri.com. You can go there later and select additional lessons for your own grade level or content area to study or teach. In each example below, you will see (1) written definitions, (2) labeled examples, and (3) CFU questions on the same slide. You might see additional features such as non-examples, graphic organizers, tables, illustrations, and vocabulary definitions. EDI includes two to seven new vocabulary words in every lesson, and some of these words show up during Concept Development.

Identify characters in a story. (1st)  The definition of a character includes “A char-

acter talks or does something in a story.” In the labeled example (the story), the characters are shown in bold, and the part where the character talks or does something is underlined.

Concept Development for characters. (1st)

Determine central message in a text. (3rd)  This lesson has three lines of definitions at the top of the slide. The central message is a lesson or idea about life in a text. • The central message is not directly written in the text. •• The main events of the text will provide clues about the central message. Examples of central messages are in the box in the upper right side. There is a short story, and a box below it lists the main events and the lesson learned from the

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story. Non-examples are on the bottom. CFU questions are on the right. Footnoted definitions are given for directly, clues, and armor. The vocabulary definitions are in a box on the lower right.

Concept Development for central message. (3rd)

Use literary devices to interpret an author’s work. (8th)  The definition for literary

devices is at the top of the slide. Definitions and examples of specific literary devices are organized into a table. CFU questions are on the right. Footnoted definitions are included for convey and intended.

Concept Development for literary devices. (8th)

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

Calculate unit rates. (6th)  Below is an example of Concept Development for a math lesson. It includes definitions, labeled examples, and CFU questions. Definitions are at the top of the slide. A generic example of a unit rate a/b is shown at the right in the Unit Rates box. A specific example of granola bars to dollars is shown. CFU questions are in the box on the right. Definitions for equivalent and per are in the vocabulary box.

Concept Development for unit rates. (6th)

History and Science Lessons.  Concept Development for EDI history and sci-

ence lessons starts with definitions and often uses graphic organizers to clarify and explain the new information being taught. Concept Development gives an overview of the new information. During Skill Development and Guided Practice, you provide additional information and details about the concepts.

Describe the government of the Roman Republic. (6th) 

Concept Development for government of the Roman Republic. (6th)

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Explain how earthquakes occur. (High school earth science)  Concept Development for this science lesson includes written definitions along with a table, illustrations, and a map. CFU questions and vocabulary definitions for seismic, lithospheric, and rigid are on the right.

Concept development for causes of earthquakes. (High school)

Using EDI As you become familiar with EDI, you will find that you can more easily identify lesson components, including Concept Development, in your own textbooks. You may find that Concept Development is missing or weak in some existing materials, but now you know you need to provide written definitions, labeled examples, and CFU questions.

EDI LESSON DESIGN EXERCISES Exercise 1

You have seen several examples of Concept Development. Now, please go to educeri.com and select some lessons for your own grade level to review. Look over the Concept Development slides. Can you locate written definitions, labeled examples (and non-examples, if applicable), and CFU questions? Exercise 2

Now open your own instructional materials. See if you can locate Concept Development. Can you find written definitions, labeled examples, and Checking for Understanding questions? If something is missing, can you add it yourself?

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

Part II: Concept Development Delivery We have talked about designing Concept Development, using written definitions, labeled examples, and Checking for Understanding questions. Now we are ready to go over how to teach concepts.

Teach Concepts Using the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE Every part of an EDI lesson—including Concept Development—is taught using the Engagement Norms. You pre-pronounce difficult words. You pre-read text. You include gestures and pair-shares. You intersperse CFU questions throughout the lesson using TAPPLE. You teach first. You ask a question. You have students pair-share. Students answer in complete sentences. You listen to student responses, and then you provide Effective Feedback. Your goal: 80% initial correct answers, and then 100% correct answers after providing corrective feedback for every question.

Engagement Norms Poster

Teach Concepts by Explaining and Demonstrating (if Applicable) EDI has three methods of delivering content to students: Explaining, Modeling, and Demonstrating. You may have your own definitions of each of these from when you went to college, from fellow teachers, or from trainings you have attended over the years. For EDI, we have very clear and explicit definitions of each delivery method. This clarity is necessary so everyone has the same definition of each method. This is especially important when providing classroom coaching and feedback to teachers. Let’s start with Explaining.

Explaining Students, this is what this means . . . 

Explaining is what most people would call “teaching.” You deliver content by explaining factual information (Declarative Knowledge) to students or by telling students how to do something (Procedural Knowledge). Explaining can be used anywhere in a lesson. Declarative Knowledge (facts) is often explained in third person:

TAPPLE Poster

There are three branches of government. They are the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. The legislative branch passes the laws. The executive branch enforces the law. The judicial branch interprets the law. Hyperbole is the use of exaggerated statements to emphasize something. An example of hyperbole is, “I told you a million times to be quiet.” It’s hyperbole because it exaggerates the number of times you were told to be quiet. And it’s emphasizing that that you should be quiet.

When teaching step-by-step Procedural Knowledge (how to do something), your speaking is often in second person (“you”):

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Students, this how you analyze compare and contrast text. First, you need to identify the two things being compared. Now you look in the text for how they are the same and how they are different. Sometimes Procedural Knowledge is explained using first person plural (“we”): Students, this is how we add two-digit numbers. First, we line the numbers up vertically by place value. Next, we add the ones column. Finally, we add the tens column.

Demonstrating Students, look at this object I have in my hand . . . 

You may have used the term demonstration to indicate that you worked a problem for students. For example, “I went to the board and demonstrated how to solve the math problem.” In EDI, demonstrations have a different meaning. A Demonstration is a physical demonstration. When you Demonstrate, you use physical objects to advance students’ understanding of the lesson. Demonstrations are not applicable to every lesson. They’re used most often in math and science. For example, suppose you are teaching a lesson about the structure of DNA. Before the lesson, you go into the science storeroom, search around, and retrieve the school’s plastic DNA model. During the lesson, you hold up the model and point to relevant parts while describing the DNA double helix structure. You just did an EDI (physical) Demonstration. You used a physical object to clarify the lesson’s concept. Here is another example of Demonstrating, using physical objects to advance the lesson.

Learning Objective: Determine the meanings of compound words. (2nd) Ms. Davis gives the definition of compound words: “A compound word is two words joined together to make a new word. Football is a compound word. It is made from the words foot and ball.” She then holds up printed cards of foot and ball, one in each hand. She then brings the cards slowly together to create football while saying, “When foot and ball are joined together, they make a new word football, which is the name of a game. The word football is a compound word.” This was a physical demonstration. The teacher physically moved objects that clarified a concept. Compound words are two words joined together to make a new word.

During Demonstrations, Let Students Handle the Objects To maximize the kinesthetic aspect of Demonstrations, you should not be the only one to handle the physical objects. Your students should handle them, too. For example, give students geometric solids to manipulate while you teach them how to classify geometric solids by number and shape of faces, edges, and vertices. It’s best to have class sets of objects, but if you only have one set of objects, then pass it around so all students can handle it. Demonstrations help all students learn and provide for tactile-kinesthetic learning. Although they are neither practical nor possible for all lessons, you should incorporate them as much as possible. Just be sure your Demonstrations specifically advance student understanding of the concepts in the lesson. Let’s look at some more examples.

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

Learning Objective: Calculate circumference. (7th) .

Mrs. Moore has handed out round paper plates to her students. She holds up her paper plate and says, “Circumference is the distance around a circle.” She says this while tracing her finger around the rim of her paper plate to physically show the circumference. She asks her students to hold up their paper plates and to repeat along with her while moving their fingers around the paper plate, “Circumference is the distance around a circle.” She does this twice. She takes a piece of string and lays it around the edge of her paper plate. She straightens out the string stretching it tight with one end in each hand and holds it up for all students to see. She continues, “Students, the length of this string is the distance around the paper plate. The length of this string is the circumference of this circle.” She has her students work in pairs to measure around their paper plates using string she has provided. She follows up with CFU questions: What is circumference? Show me using your paper plate.

Learning Objective: Describe the hardships of settlers during the Westward Movement. (8th) Mr. McWilliams has brought in a wooden model of a covered wagon to support his explanation of the hardships of the settlers. He holds up the wagon for the students to see and points to the water barrel on the side of the wagon. He explains how the settlers had to carry all their water with them. He tells how the settlers had to carefully ration water and depend on wagon masters who knew where rivers were located. There were no fast food restaurants along the way to buy a soda when you got thirsty. He points to a wide box on the side of the covered wagon. He tells the students how the settlers had to carry grain for their horses. He points to the inside, explaining that the settlers had to carry all their possessions in the wagon to start a new life in the West. He hands the wagon to the student sitting in the first row of desks. The wagon is passed around for each student to handle while the teacher continues the lesson.

Science Science classes are very conducive to Demonstrations using physical objects. Here are a few examples. •• Use an air table that reduces friction while sliding objects into each other to demonstrate conservation of momentum. (physics) •• Drop objects to demonstrate acceleration due to gravity. (physics) •• Use thorns, stems, roots, and colored petals to show structures of plants. (4th) •• Use solar system model to show daily change in sunlight. (5th)

How Much Time Should It Take to Teach Concept Development? In a typical 45- to 55-minute lesson, Concept Development is about 15 minutes. That’s a rough figure. If you teach one lesson over 2 days, it could be more. For young children in K and first grade, we teach the entire lesson in 20-minute chunks. Then we have brain breaks in between with a physical activity such as stretching, singing a song, doing a dance, or jumping up and down. In an EDI lesson, you could read the Concept Development material to students in a couple of minutes. However, teaching it takes much longer. You teach using the Engagement Norms and Check for Understanding using TAPPLE. You pronounce

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words. You include pre-reading, choral reading, explaining, physical demonstrations, and gestures. You ask CFU questions. This adds pair-shares, whiteboards, and listening to student responses. As a result of CFU questions, you may need to provide corrective feedback or even reteach.

How to Teach Concept Development We have steps for teaching Concept Development.

HOW TO TEACH CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT Teach using the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE 1. Read the Concept Definitions with your students. Pre-read, if necessary. Include a gesture, if applicable. 2. Point to the labeled examples. Read and explain them. Include a physical Demonstration, if appropriate. Include non-examples, if applicable. 3. Ask Checking for Understanding questions.

Note that this is a three-step process. Read the concept definitions. Explain the labeled examples. Check for Understanding. When you have more than one sentence for concept definitions, it’s usually best to read one definition and immediately point to and explain the labeled examples for that definition. Then read the next definition and explain its related labeled examples. Let’s look at the process.

1. Read the concept definitions with your students. Pre-read, if necessary. Include a Gesture, if applicable. Remember, in EDI’s literacy-based approach, students read as much as possible during every lesson, including reading the lesson itself. Show students how to pronounce any difficult words. Use one of the three tracked reading methods to read a definition. (1) Pre-read while students look at the words, then have students read chorally. Or (2) pre-read any difficult words, and have the students read chorally with you. Or, (3) if your students can read the content, just have them read chorally with you. This supports reading fluency and creates student engagement. Gestures is already one of our Engagement Norms. Gestures are used during Concept Development to physically act out parts of a definition. While gestures can help clarify the meaning of a concept, their real use is as a memory aid to help students remember a definition. When you use a gesture, you are providing a kinesthetic memory aid. Movements are easier to remember than verbal or written descriptions. When students later do the gesture, the information seems to pop back into their working memories. Gestures are especially beneficial to beginning readers who cannot read well enough to look back on the page for information. The gesture provides the information for the students. (Gestures were described in Chapter 4.)

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

2. Point to the labeled examples. Read and explain them. Include a physical Demonstration, if appropriate. Cue students to look at the labeled examples. Point with your hand, an object, or a laser pointer. Use tracked reading to read text-based examples. Now explain why the examples are examples by referring back to specific words in the concept definitions. From Silvia: I have a phrase I often use after reading a Concept definition: “Let me show you what this means . . .” Then I explain the examples while referring back to the definition.

From John: I have some words for Concept Development also. I tell teachers that when they teach concepts, “Just declare it.” Just tell the students what it is. Don’t ask the students. Don’t interrogate them. Tell them.

Concept Development is where you add physical demonstrations that clarify the concepts. For example, you could show shapes representing squares, parallelograms, or quadrilaterals. Be sure to connect the objects to the written definitions as you use them.

3. Ask Checking for Understanding questions. After you have read the definitions and explained the labeled examples, you are ready for some questions. Remember, CFU questions for concepts ask students to apply the concept definition to additional examples or non-examples, or ask students to explain the definition in their own words. If you have multiple concept definitions, you can ask a CFU question after each definition. Sometimes, however, the lesson flows better if you wait and ask the CFU questions after all the definitions have been taught. Then you can ask two or three CFU questions in a row. In the first example below, the teacher teaches three concept definitions and then asks CFU questions. In the second example, the teacher teaches two concepts and asks CFU questions after each definition. Let’s analyze some lessons.

Concept Development Example 1 Learning Objective: Use regular verbs in the past tense. (3rd or ELD) Look carefully at the Concept Development screen on the next page. You will see definitions, a table labeling the examples, and Checking for Understanding questions. You can also see a word bank in the upper right with Past Tense Clue Words. Note that in addition to teaching “add -ed to make past tense,” this lesson also addresses identifying the context that tells when to use past tense. This communicative approach to grammar emphasizes the meaning being conveyed, not just the syntax and rules.

“Work the Page.”  In EDI, teachers don’t just read down the page. They “work the

page.” They are all over it, showing the relationships among the information on the page. In the next example, the lesson is projected on a screen for all students to see. You will see the teacher read a definition from the top of the screen, then jump

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down to an example in the table. Later, he will read from the Clue Words box. In the end, he will ask CFU questions from the box on the right. As you read, picture where the teacher is on the screen.

Use regular verbs in the past tense. (3rd)

Concept Development for past tense verbs. (3rd) Mr. Y is standing at the front of the class. The lesson is projected on the screen beside him. The student desks are arranged in pairs facing the screen. The students have handouts. Mr. Y clicks the computer mouse and the screen changes from Activate Prior Knowledge to Concept Development. His students know that “tracking” means to follow the words on their page or on the screen. He points to the top of the screen and says, “Track on your paper while I read this for you first.”

(First definition) The students touch the words on their papers as Mr. Y reads, “A verb in the past tense show an action has already happened.” He turns to the class. “When I say past tense, this is our gesture.” He points his left thumb over his left shoulder and says, “Past tense. Everyone do this. It happened in the past.” The whole class joins in pointing their thumbs repeatedly backwards over their shoulders. “Now, let’s read that together.” The class joins in, “A verb in the past tense”—The class gestures over their shoulders— “ . . . shows an action has already happened.” Mr. Y says, “Let me show you what this looks like. So now let’s read together.” Mr. Y points toward the middle of the screen and everyone reads, “Jill jumped in the pool last night.” Mr. Y explains, “The verb jumped is past tense. It’s past tense because it has already happened. She jumped in the pool last night.” A few students gesture every time he says past tense.

Chapter 9  •  These Are the Big Ideas  

(Second definition) He points to the second sentence at the top of the screen, and says, “Track with me. A regular verb in the past tense ends in -ed. This is the key. Now read with me.” The students and Mr. Y read and gesture with their thumbs, “A regular verb in the past tense ends in -ed.” Mr. Y points to the center of the screen and says, “For example, everyone read this verb, jump. But if I want it to be in the past tense, I add -ed so it’s jumped. Everyone say jumped.” “Jumped,” the students call out. “And this is a sentence in the past tense. Ready? Read.” “Jill jumped in the pool last night.” Mr. Y continues, “I added -ed, and now it’s in the . . . (gesture) . . . past tense.” He makes the gesture and the students join in.

(Third definition) Mr. Y points to the third sentence at the top of the screen. “Track with me while I read this first. Clue words help you know when to use the past tense verb in a sentence. So now let’s read this together.” “Clue words help you know when to use the past tense verb in a sentence.” “OK. Let’s read some of the clue words that tell us it’s in the . . . (gesture) . . . past tense.” He points to the box in the upper right corner of the screen and says, “Read them with me: before . . . yesterday . . . last . . . earlier . . . in the past.” He continues, “Let me show you what that looks like. Everyone can read this sentence.” The students join in, “Jill jumped in the pool last night.” He explains, “Well, she did this last night, so it’s in the past tense.” Everyone gestures.

(Check for Understanding) Mr. Y is ready for a CFU question. He points to the right side of the screen and says, “Can you read this with me? Which underlined verb is in the past tense? How do you know? A. Last night we baked cookies. B. We bake cookies almost every day during the holidays.” Mr. Y turns to the class and says, “Write the past tense verb on your whiteboards. And when you answer this, you say, ‘The verb . . . is in the past tense because . . . ’” “Partner A talk to B and make sure you have the right answer.” The noise level increases as the students pair-share. As the noise level starts to fall, Mr. Y calls out, “Eyes front!” The students respond in unison, “Backs straight!” The room is silent. “Chin-it,” says Mr. Y. The whiteboards come up all around the room. Mr. Y slowly looks around the classroom, and says, “Kaylee, which underlined verb is in the past tense?” Kaylee stands up with her whiteboard and says, “The verb baked is in the past tense because -ed is added.” Mr. Y says, “Exactly, it’s in the past tense.” He pauses a moment and then adds his own question, “One more question. Partner B explain to A: What clue words tell you it’s in the past tense? Point to the clue words on Partner B’s handout and explain. You should say, ‘The clue words that show past tense are . . . ’” The students’ arms go into motion as they pair-share. Mr. Y touches an app on his cell phone and a random name pops up. He calls out, “Jayden.”

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Jayden stands up and answers, “Last night.” Mr. Y cues, “Answer in a complete sentence. The clue words . . .” Jayden thinks a moment and then says, “The clue words ‘last night’ show past tense.”

Concept Development Example 2 Let’s look at another example. Even though this is a math lesson, it is still textbased, and you will see the extensive use of the Engagement Norms. This is Concept Development. The teacher will read a definition, point to and explain the labeled examples, and ask CFU questions. She will do this twice, once for each definition.

Find the greatest common factor of two whole numbers. (6th)

Concept Development for greatest common factor. (6th)

(First definition) Mrs. Williams points to the top of the Concept Development screen and says, “Students, touch this phrase on your handout. We read it as . . . common factor. Let’s read together, common factor. One more time, common factor. Track with me on your page while I read the definition, ‘A common factor of two numbers is a factor both numbers share.’ Let’s read together. A common factor of two numbers is a factor both numbers share. “Let me show you what that means. Look up here on the screen. We have two numbers, 12 and 18, and the factors of each number are listed. The factors of 12 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. And here are the factors of 18. Let’s read them together, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18.” Mrs. Williams is projecting on the whiteboard at the front of the class. She picks up a red marker, circles some numbers and says, “These are the factors that both numbers share. Let’s read them . . . 1, 2, 3, 6. They are the common factors of 12 and 18.”

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(Check for Understanding) “I have a question for you. Look up here. We have the factors of 12: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12 and the factors of 16: 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. Let’s read the questions, What are the common factors of 12 and 16? How do you know? “Copy all the factors onto your whiteboard and circle the common factors. Then turn to your partner and explain your answer. Partner A goes first. You should point to your whiteboard and say, ‘The common factors of 12 and 16 are . . . because . . . ’ Go ahead. Write on your whiteboards and justify your answer to your partner.” The students pair-share. She doesn’t use an attention signal with whiteboards. As the noise dips she just calls out, “Chin-it!” The students raise their boards. She selects two nonvolunteers to justify their answers in complete sentences. Then she adds, “Don’t erase your boards yet.” She is ready for the second definition.

(Second definition) “Now, let’s go back to the top of the page. Look up here while I read. ‘The Greatest Common Factor (GCF) of two numbers is the largest factor both numbers share.’” As she stretches out the word ‘largest,’ she extends her arms to show large. She continues, “Now, let’s read together, and I want to see your arms go out for the word ‘largest.’” The students gesture as they read. “The Greatest Common Factor (GCF) of two numbers is the largest factor both numbers share.” Mrs. Williams points to examples and says, “We have the common factors for 12 and 18 right here . . . 1, 2, 3, and 6. The greatest common factor for 12 and 18 is 6 because this is the largest factor of both numbers.” She points to the bottom of the screen at the non-example. “There are other common factors of 12 and 18: 1, 2, and 3, but they are not the greatest common factor.”

(Check for Understanding) “We’re ready for the next set of questions. Let’s read. What is the GCF of 12 and 16? How do you know? You should still have the factors on your whiteboards. Draw an arrow to the greatest common factor, and label it GCF. Partner B explains first this time. You should say, ‘The greatest common factor of 12 and 16 is . . . because . . . ’” The students pair-share and the noise dips. She calls for students to show their whiteboards, and she selects two non-volunteers to explain their answers in complete sentences. “My last question for you on this page is about the difference between common factors and greatest common factors. It’s at the bottom of the Checking for Understanding box. Read the question on your own, and then explain to your partner using the sentence frame provided. Partner A, go first. Then switch. Both partners should talk.” The students pair-share. Mrs. Williams calls on two non-volunteers.

Summary We have covered Concept Development. We made the distinction on how to design and how to teach. Let’s summarize one more time.

How to Design Concept Development Provide 1. Written definitions 2. Labeled examples 3. CFU questions

How to Teach Concept Development 1. Read the Concept Definitions with your students. Pre-read, if necessary. Include a gesture, if applicable. 2. Point to the labeled examples. Read and explain them. Include a physical Demonstration, if appropriate. Include non-examples, if applicable. 3. Ask Checking for Understanding questions.

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Exercise Look at some example lessons on educeri.com for your grade level. Can you visualize yourself working the page, moving around between the written definitions, labeled examples, and CFU questions? Try it. These Concept Development Strategies work for any concept from kindergarten

through high school and college. Now we’re ready to move on to Skill Development, where you work problems and teach students how to do it, how to apply the skill in the Learning Objective (analyze, distinguish, solve, write, plot) to the concept. Let's turn to the next chapter, I’ll Work a Problem First: Rule of Two—Skill Development and Guided Practice.

10 I’ll Work a Problem First

Assessment

Dif fer en Chec tia king tin for g Un St de Learning rs ta n Objective

es

EDI®

Homework

Explicit Direct Instruction

n tio

ta en

Pr

Teaching gies Strate Stra tive teg gni i e Co s: Ex for Understanding pla cking Che i n Ch ,D ec e k in g fo

Periodic Review

Activate Prior Knowledge

s gie te ra ng di

Preparation

Rule of Two—Skill Development and Guided Practice

Concept Development

Skill Development

Independent Practice

Guided Practice Relevance

l ode ,M ate ng str ndi on sta m er nd rU

Closure

English Learner Strateg ies Checking for Und e r s tan din g

Skill Development and Guided Practice

I

n Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) lessons, Skill Development and Guided Practice follow Concept Development. Concept Development focuses on what it is. Skill Development and Guided Practice focus on how to do it. 131

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During Concept Development, we teach the lesson’s concepts, using written definitions and labeled examples that illustrate the definitions. We add nonexamples if they help clarify the definitions. We ask CFU (Check for Understanding) questions to verify that students understand the concepts. During Skill Development and Guided Practice we’ll use that conceptual knowledge to solve new problems from scratch.

Skill Development (Teacher) During Skill Development, you, the teacher, solve problems related to the lesson. But you are not just solving problems while students watch. You are explicitly teaching your students the strategies you use to solve the problem. To do this, you first provide steps, a methodology to use. Then you tell your students (out loud) your thinking processes as you use the steps to solve the problem. Finally, you intersperse CFU questions about how you solved the problem.

Guided Practice (Students) During Guided Practice, you direct students as they solve problems similar to the ones you just solved. It’s called Guided Practice because you guide the whole class in solving a problem one step at a time. You check each step to see that all students are doing it correctly. You intersperse CFU questions asking students to explain their work and to justify their answers. You provide corrective feedback or reteach if students are unable to do it.

Rule of Two Rule of Two is our new method of teaching Skill Development and Guided Practice. Basically, it means you present problems in matched pairs. You solve the first one and the students solve the matching one. We’ll come back to this later. Let’s look at Modeling. Rule of Two Poster

Modeling “Listen, students, this is how I do it.”

Modeling is the primary teaching method for Skill Development. Modeling is teaching by stating out loud, in first person, the strategic thinking processes you are using while you analyze text, solve a problem, or answer a question. In reality, you are not just modeling how to solve a problem. You are verbalizing the strategic thinking you use to make decisions while solving a problem. Modeling can also be used when you reveal your internal thinking of a method or strategy you use to remember information. You can model cognitive strategies, showing how you remember definitions, concepts, or how to do something. Students, this is how I remember . . .  During modeling, you verbalize the strategic thinking that you use.

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

Why Is Modeling Important? Modeling is one of the most powerful methods of teaching because you are very clearly revealing the strategic thinking that is used to do something. The reason you do this is so that your students can apply your thinking when they analyze text or solve similar problems. Modeling helps all students, but the explicit presentation of your thinking strategies really helps low-performing students. When you reveal the exact step-by-step thinking you use, your students have something they can emulate themselves. Plus, there is something about the teacher’s first-person revealing of her thinking. It’s as if the information is going directly from the teacher’s brain into the students’ brains. From Silvia: Modeling is important because students are hearing and seeing how an expert—the teacher, who already knows how to do it—thinks while solving a problem. Students must be shown that strategic thinking is used to solve problems. Teachers don’t just get the answers out of thin air. This is very important because many underperforming students have the impression that teachers are “super smart” and that they just get the answers without any effort. Teachers must show their students that there is systematic thinking involved in addressing any type of problem, thinking that students can emulate and use, too.

From John: During our trainings of thousands of teachers, we have found that teachers can intuitively solve problems, but they don’t always express in words exactly how they do it. This can be a problem, especially when dealing with higher-order thinking skills. Here are a few examples where you need to be able to explain your thinking processes exactly or your students will have a hard time: solving math word problems, determining main idea, making predictions and inferences, determining mood or tone, identifying lesson learned or theme.

Checking for Understanding Following Modeling Checking for Understanding questions are modified following Modeling. They should focus on verifying that your students can explain the thinking processes and strategies that you used. For example, Students, how did I know where to put this in the organizer? CFU questions following Modeling focus on verifying your students’ understanding of your thinking processes and decision making.

Here are some examples of the types of CFU questions to use following Modeling. We call them “process” questions. They address students’ understanding of the processes you used to solve a problem. What was I thinking when I . . . ? How did I remember . . . ? How did I decide to . . . ? Why did I . . . ? How did I know . . . ?

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TEACHING TIP When students cannot answer process questions, it often means you did not reveal enough of the thinking you used. You may have described what you did, but not the thinking or processes you used.

Note Taking Generally, students are listening and watching during Skill Development while you model how to solve a problem. However, you can ask students to make a copy of your problem in their notes while you work it. In math, for example, this involves students copying your worked problem as you do it. This also allows them to have a worked example to refer to later. In lessons where you analyze text, you can cue students to underline textual evidence or to copy information into a graphic organizer as you do it. After you have worked a problem, you will ask your students to explain to their partners—and then to you—how you worked the problem.

How to Design Skill Development and Guided Practice SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND GUIDED PRACTICE 1. Develop steps 2. Provide matched problems for teacher and students Rule of Two 3. Include all variations 4. Add CFU questions

1. Develop Steps Skill Development in EDI lessons include steps and processes that are used to solve problems. You refer to these steps when you model how to solve problems, showing students that there is a method. You don’t just magically come up with a theme, main idea, or character trait. You have steps to do so. When designing Skill Development, you sometimes need to work a problem yourself and then write down the steps that you just used. Sometimes, teachers can intuitively do something but can’t describe how they did it. If you can’t come up with discrete steps, it will be difficult to explain how to do it.

Strategic Steps vs. Directions Skill Development and Guided Practice steps contain a combination of strategic steps and directions. Steps that are directions address the mechanics of working a problem but don’t provide any information on how to do it.

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

1. Read the question. 2. Read the passage. 3. Write the answer in the blank. Strategic steps are those that require thinking and analysis. Strategic steps often include a strategy that can be directly stated or added as a hint. The strategies and hints are actually applications of the concept definitions taught during Concept Development, what we called concept “hooks.” When you solve a problem, you use the strategies to show students how to work the problem. The two examples below include a direction step followed by a strategic step. 1. Read the sentence. 2. Identify the noun in the sentence. Hint: Look for people, places, or things. 1. Read the paragraph. 2. Identify phrases that reveal character traits. Hint: Look for words showing what the character says or does.

Focus on Thinking Steps that require thinking can sometimes be mistakenly written as directions. 1. Circle the character’s name. 2. Underline what the character says. With these types of steps, the classroom dialog becomes, “What did you underline?” “I underlined . . .” This is easy to avoid. Use verbs that represent a cognitive activity, the thinking required. Then the discussions will change from mechanics such as circle, underline, or highlight to the thinking: identify, determine, analyze, and so forth. You can include the directions at the end of the sentence. 1. Identify the character in the passage. (circle) 2. Determine what the character said. (underline)

2. Provide Matched Problems for Teacher and Students: Rule of Two

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After providing steps, you need to locate or create the specific problems to solve. After working in thousands of classrooms and teaching hundreds of EDI lessons ourselves, we interlaced Skill Development and Guided Practiced. We call this the “Rule of Two.”

Rule of Two The Rule of Two is actually very simple: Work problems in pairs. You work a problem first, showing students how to do it. Ask CFU questions about how you did it. Then immediately have students work a similar problem, showing their work or answers on their whiteboards. Ask CFU questions about how they solved it.

RULE OF TWO Teacher works a problem. CFU. Students work a similar problem. CFU.

Rule of Two can also be referred to as “mirror problems” or “matched problems.” Either way, the idea is that you show students how to solve a problem. Then they immediately solve a similar one.

Rule of Two Examples Teacher

Student

Teacher identifies the setting in paragraph 1. CFU.

Students identify the setting in paragraph 2. CFU.

Teacher solves an addition word problem. CFU.

Students solve an addition word problem. CFU.

Teacher writes an introductory paragraph. CFU.

Students write an introductory paragraph. CFU.

Teacher analyzes a major battle in World War II. CFU.

Students analyze a different major battle in World War II. CFU.

Teacher balances a chemical equation. CFU.

Students balance a chemical equation. CFU.

To locate matched problems, you sometimes need to skip around in your resources. For example, you usually can’t just do the even problems and have the students do the odd problems. You need to match the problem types. From John: One year during Christmas vacation, I met with high school math teachers. We went through their textbooks and labeled matched problems. This one simple analysis allowed their math lessons to be more effective. If you have PLC (Professional Learning Community) or common meeting time, you can do this as a group. It only needs to be done one time.

Rule of Two Is Important Over the last few years, one of our areas of emphasis at DataWORKS has been increasing student engagement. We found that holding student attention was difficult when teachers worked two or three problems in a row for Skill Development.

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

It’s just too long. Students are more engaged when you use the Rule of Two because they are doing something more often. Another reason the Rule of Two is so useful is that it allows you to focus on one variation at a time. If you work three or four variations in a row, it’s hard for students to keep the differences clear in their minds.

3. Include All Variations Most lessons include different variations of the same type of problem. In these cases, use the Rule of Two to teach each variation. For example, in a lesson on figurative language, you identify and analyze a simile. Then have your students analyze a different simile. You analyze another simile. Now the students analyze another simile. After doing the pairs of similes, you move on to identify and analyze a metaphor. Now have the students identify and analyze a metaphor. Math lessons can contain many variations: Add positive numbers. Add negative numbers. Solve word problems with positive numbers. Solve word problems with negative numbers. These should be done as pairs of problems with you working the new example first each time. You need to look for different variations while designing a lesson. Look closely at the Independent Practice the students will be doing at the end of the lesson to be sure you teach all the variations during the lesson. Only the variations taught should be assigned during Independent Practice or homework.

Rule of Two Example The rounding numbers lesson below is taken from the EDI lesson bank at educeri .com. It shows the Rule of Two for the first variation, rounding to the nearest 10. You can see the steps, problem 1 for the teacher, problem 2 for the students, and Checking for Understanding questions. Problem 1 shows the answers that appear after the teacher advances the slide. This lesson uses a number line to visually show rounding to the nearest number.

Round numbers. (3rd)

Skill Development/Guided Practice for round numbers. (3rd)

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Below is the Rule of Two matched problems for the second variation, round to the nearest 100. Problem 3 is for the teacher. Problem 4 is for the students.

Second page of Skill Development/Guided Practice for round numbers. (3rd)

Generally, for Guided Practice, students show answers on whiteboards. In this example, students could hold up their worksheets to show their work. This would be faster than having students draw number lines on whiteboards for each problem.

After Matched Pairs, Mix Them Up After you and your students have solved a few matched pairs, you can intermix the variations. Now students need to distinguish between them. If the variations are very complicated, model your thinking first in distinguishing between the variations before having the students do one. For example, you could mix euphemisms and oxymorons after you have analyzed each one.

4. Add CFU Questions The fourth step in preparing Skill Development and Guided Practice for an EDI lesson is to create Checking for Understanding questions.

Process Questions for Checking for Understanding During Skill Development, you intersperse process questions about how you are solving the problem. These CFU questions don’t ask students to recall what the answer is. Instead, you ask students to describe how you got the answer. You ask questions about the process of solving problems.

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

Language Arts CFU questions often address the process of identifying textual evidence to support an inference or generalization. Math CFU questions address processes such as the thinking behind the analysis of word problems, the analysis of graphs and geometric figures, or the mathematical computations used. We already saw some example CFU questions to use after modeling. The general process question for Skill Development when the teacher solves a problem is How did I . . . ? The general question for Guided Practice when students do the work is How did you . . . ? Skill Development (teacher) How did I decide if I needed to regroup?

Guided Practice (students) How did you decide if you needed to regroup?

Skill Development (teacher) How did I use the context clues to determine the meaning of the figurative language?

Guided Practice (student) How did you use the context clues to determine the meaning of the figurative language?

The next example shows the screen before analyzing the text. You can see that there are four steps along with CFU questions for steps 2 and 3. The second example shows the screen after analysis. The answers appear while teaching, when advancing the slides.

Recognize theme in text. (5th)

Skill Development/Guided Practice for recognize theme in text. (5th)

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Internal Rule of Two The Rule of Two works great for most problems. However, it does not work as well for long problems or for analyzing long passages. This is because the students end up sitting for long periods of time while the teacher works a lengthy problem or analyzes a long passage sentence by sentence. To allow students to participate sooner, we developed the Internal Rule of Two. The Internal Rule of Two says that students can do some of the repetitive steps inside a larger problem after the teacher has modeled how to do that step. That means you don’t need to analyze every sentence in a long passage or perform every calculation yourself in a complex math problem. Let’s look at an example.

Skill Development/Guided Practice with answers shown. (5th)

This passage is Skill Development for you the teacher to analyze. There are 10 sentences, but you don’t need to analyze all 10 yourself. You can use the Internal Rule of Two and have your students join in. However, you can’t just do every other sentence. You need to look over the text ahead of time to see which groups of sentences you should analyze and which ones the students should analyze. Step 2 states, “Read the passage and identify events that suggest the theme. (underline).” This is where you use the Internal Rule of Two. There are 3 events to be identified that will suggest the theme. They are sentences 2 through 4 (boy disobeys and falls into the chocolate), sentences 6 through 8 (girl disobeys and turns into a giant, purple grape) and sentences 9 through 10 (Charlie obeys and gets lifetime supply of chocolate). You model identifying the first events in sentences 2 through 4 (boy disobeys and falls into the chocolate). (Note. The answers are shown in a different color. They are not there when you first show the slide. The answers pop in as you advance the slide.)

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

Now you make a judgment call. If the students are following you and understand what they are doing, direct them to read sentences 5 through 8 and to identify the second event (girl disobeys and turns into a giant, purple grape). Have students pair-share and call on random students to report out. Direct students to read sentences 9 through 10 and to identify the third event. Call on random students to report out. However, if you feel that your students need more support after you identified the first event, then you can identify the second event also. Then have students identify the third event and pair-share. Call on random students to report out.

How to Teach Skill Development/ Guided Practice Now that the lesson is well designed, we’re ready to teach. Use the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE. Read a step. Do a step. CFU. For example, use tracked reading to read a step, then execute a step, then call on random students to explain the step in complete sentences after pair-sharing. Provide matching, mirror problems using the Rule of Two or the Internal Rule of Two. Teacher works a problem. CFU. Students work a matching problem. CFU.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT (TEACHER) 1. Teacher and students read a step. 2. Teacher executes the step, modeling the thinking required for strategic steps. 3. CFU, pair-share for processes teacher uses. How did I . . .  4. Repeat for remaining steps.

GUIDED PRACTICE (STUDENTS) 1. Teacher and students read a step. 2. Teacher directs student to execute a step. 3. CFU, pair-share for processes students use. How did you . . .  4. Repeat for remaining steps.

Skill Development starts by reading a step. Sometimes, teachers have students read all the steps at once. However, it is usually more effective to read and execute each step one at a time. After working a few problems, just refer to the steps. You don’t need to chorally read them over and over. Also, don’t have students memorize the steps; just use the steps. As you work additional problems, focus on the new elements in the variation that make it different or more complex than the previous examples. Remember that only 15 to 20 minutes should be spent on Skill Development/Guided Practice. If your lesson is taking longer than that, you probably need to chunk it into two separate lessons or part one and part two, saving more complex variations for the second day.

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Slow Release As students become more proficient, start a slow release toward independence. Reduce checking each step and the number of process questions. Students can work several steps at once or even work entire problems. You can have students pairshare a step but not call on any students to report out. As students become more proficient, you will see 100% correct answers. In these cases, you can quickly move on to another problem rather than have students explaining their answers. Toward the end of a lesson, you can have students show just the answers on their whiteboards. You don’t need to solve any more yourself. Students can even work two or three problems and then show their answers. If you see a couple of mistakes, you can provide individual feedback while the other students work additional problems. Let’s look at an example.

Draw inferences from text. (5th) Although many lessons require students to draw inferences, this lesson uses “reverse logic.” The inference has already been given, and students must find textual evidence to support it. This matches textual evidence types of questions now being asked in many high-stakes tests. An inference, generalization, theme, or character trait is given, and then students must identify evidence that supports it. An interesting aspect of a textual evidence question is that students don’t know how many answers there will be. Every sentence is a potential provider of information. Since every sentence must be carefully analyzed in this lesson, I’ll incorporate the “vote with your whiteboards” strategy to analyze sentence by sentence. I looked over the lesson ahead of time. It’s a good opportunity to use the Internal Rule of Two. I will analyze the first sentences, and then have my students analyze the remaining sentences, one at a time. I will have students track and read throughout the lesson, even when I am modeling. I have the lesson projected on a smart board. I have just completed Concept Development. Watch carefully. Can you identify when I use the Engagement Norms, Check for Understanding with TAPPLE, and use the Internal Rule of Two?

Skill Development and Guided Practice for draw inferences from text. (5th)

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

I say, “Students, look at this next slide. We have some steps and a passage. Watch carefully. I’ll analyze part of it, and you’ll analyze the rest.” The students can read the first step, so I don’t pre-read. I say, “Touch step 1 on your page.” I wait a moment for students to locate it on their handout, and say, “Let’s read the first step together. Ready? Go.” The class reads chorally, “Read the question and identify the inference (circle).” “ OK. We’re going to read the question.” I point to the word Anita in Question 1 and say, “This word is Anita, a girl’s name. Say Anita.” The class responds, “Anita.” I continue, “Point to Question 1. Let’s read Question 1 together. Go.” The class reads chorally, “Which words and phrases in the passage support the inference that Anita is running late to school?” It’s hard to model any thinking here, so I just say, “The inference is stated at the end of the question: Anita is running late for school.” I start to say, “We are identifying it . . .” but then correct myself. I don’t want to use pronouns. I want to say the new vocabulary as much as possible. (We have a saying at DataWORKS. Students will not use the new vocabulary more than you do.) I want to model some strategic thinking. I say, “We are identifying the inference in the question just to remind us about the idea we are looking for while we read the passage. I am going to circle the inference: Anita is running late for school.” I push my remote clicker. The slide advances, and the inferenced is circled.

Draw inferences from text lesson. Step 1: Identify the inference. I continue, “Circle the inference on your handout like I did on the screen.” The students look at the screen and down at their papers as they circle the inference on their handouts. “ Check your partners to make sure they identified the inference on their page.” I wait while the students look to check their partner’s page. A couple of students hurry and circle the inference. One student has not circled the inference yet. I say, “Chin-it. Hold up your papers so I can see you circled the inference: Anita is running late for school.” The papers come up. All students now have the inference circled. “  OK. Papers down,” I say. I want to model more of my thinking about the connection between the concept of inferences and what we are going to do. “  Look up here,” I say, pointing to the third bullet in the Concept Development definitions on the top of the screen. (I already taught all these during Concept Development. I refer to them again during Skill Development because I want to teach conceptually, applying conceptual knowledge. In EDI we are not just blindly answering questions. We are using conceptual knowledge to do so.) I read, “An inference is not written in the text. So I already know the passage will not say Anita is late for school, but there will be information in the text to support, or show, she is late for school.” I continue, revealing my thinking, “The inference is about Anita, but I think the most important part of the inference is that she is late, not that she is going to school, but that

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she is late for school. So the question is really asking us to find words and phrases that show she is late.” I have talked enough. I provided some thinking, and it’s time to CFU. “ Students, tell your partners how I identified the inference and analyzed the question. What did I think when I read the question?” I can’t think of a good sentence frame, so I add, “And use the word inference during your conversations. Partner B goes first, then Partner A.” The students turn and start talking. Some students point to information on the page while they talk. As the noise of the talking begins to diminish, I call, “OK. Eyes front!” The students stop talking and respond, “Backs straight!” Many of the students instantly sit up straighter. After a pair-share, you often need to repeat the question to remind students exactly what they are answering. I say, “How did I identify the inference and analyze the question?” I click my iPad app to generate a random student name. I look at the name and say, “Ava.” Ava stands up and says, “You circled the inference.” I reply, “Can you tell me something I said about the inference.” Ava thinks for a moment and says, “It won’t be in the text.” I push for use of the lesson vocabulary and reply, “Can you start that by saying, ‘The inference won’t . . . ’?” Ava answers, “be in the text.” I say, “Give me the whole sentence, ‘The inference won’t be in . . . ’” Ava responds, “The inference won’t be . . . in the text.” I add, “Very good. Inferences are not written in the text.” I call on a second random student, Anthony, who stands up and adds, “You said the most important part of the inference is that she is late.” “  Yes, we will identify words that show she is late.” I continue, “OK. We’re ready for step 2. Let’s read together. Go.” The students read chorally, “Read the text and identify words and phrases that support the inference. (underline).” “  This means we need to find words that support the idea that Anita is late for school, and we are going to underline them. Let’s read sentence 1 together. Ready? Anita rolled over in her bed. This sentence says she rolled over in her bed, probably waking up, but there is nothing to support the inference that she is late. She could be waking up early. She is not doing anything to show she is late. I am not going to identify any words in sentence 1.” “ Let’s read sentence 2 together. The sun was shining through the window warming her face.” I continue, “This shows it could be morning because the sun was shining, but it does not say anything yet about being late for school. She could have woken up early or late.” I am ready to CFU, “Now I have question for you. I was trying to find information to support the inference that Anita was late for school. Why didn’t I find any supporting information in the first two sentences? You should say something like this, ‘There is no supporting evidence because . . . ’ Partner A, explain sentence 1. Partner B, explain sentence 2. Listen to your partner and be ready to explain either sentence.” I wait while the students turn and pair-share. I give my attention signal. I say, “Why didn’t I find any information in sentences 1 and 2 to support the inference that Anita was running late for school. Let’s start with sentence 1.”

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

I use my iPad app to call on a random student, William. He stands up and says, “Sentence 1 does not support the inference because it says she rolled over in her bed. It does not say she is late.” I randomly call on Olivia to explain sentence 2. She says, “Sentence 2 does not support the inference because it says the sun warmed her face and doesn’t show that she is late.” We are ready for sentence 3. I have already modeled two sentences that do not support the inference. Sentence 3 does not support the inference either. I can have the students analyze this sentence, but first I need to define a word. I say, “Look at this word in sentence 3, basking. Say basking.” The class responds, “Basking.” I continue, “There is a footnote number 4 on basking showing that there is a definition. Point to the vocabulary box on the lower right hand corner of our handout to the words next to the number 4.” I wait a moment for students to find the vocab box. “Basking means— read with me—exposed to warmth.” I add an example orally, “So when you lie on the sand at the beach, you are basking in the sun, feeling its warmth on you. “ Now let’s read sentence 3 together. She felt relaxed and happy basking in the sun. Students, do you think this sentence supports the inference that Anita is late for school? Get out your whiteboards. Write yes if you think it supports the inference. Write no if it doesn’t support the inference.” I wait while the students write on their whiteboards. Then I add, “Explain your answer to your partner. You should say ‘Yes, sentence 3 supports the inference because . . . ’ or ‘No, sentence 3 does not support the inference because . . . ’ Partner B goes first this time.” I want the students to vote with their whiteboards and to justify their answers. After the pair-share, I call, “Chin-it.” The boards come up. I look around the room and see that everyone has no written on their boards. I call on Mathew. He stands up and says, “Sentence 3 does not support the inference that Anita is late for school. It just says that she is basking in the sun.” I call on another random student who gives a similar answer. I’m ready for the next sentence. I am going to model this one since it is the first sentence that supports the inference. “  OK, students, boards down. Let’s read the next sentence together. “Struggling to open her eyes, she blinked at the clock and froze.” Does this sentence show Anita might be late for school? The first part, struggling to open her eyes, shows she is waking up. She blinked at the clock says she opens and closes her eyes as she looks at the clock. None of these words show she knows what time it is or if she is late. But look at this last part—and froze. This doesn’t mean she became ice. Froze means she suddenly stopped moving. She didn’t move at all when she looked at the clock and saw the time. “  Everyone, look at me.” I rotate toward the classroom clock on the side wall and act out froze with my eyes wide open, not moving, as soon as I see the clock. I say, “Class, turn toward the clock and show me frozen when you see the clock. Don’t move.” I wait while the students repeat my gesture, looking at the wall clock not moving with eyebrows up and eyes wide open. “  Students, this is the first hint that she might be late. She looked at the clock and didn’t move as she realized she had overslept. “  Step 3 said that we are to identify words or phrases, groups of words, that support the inference. I am not going to identify the entire sentence, only the words that support the inference that she is late.’ I identified only the words, and froze, so I am underlining to show I have identified them. I advance the slide, which underlines the words for me. (Note. The sample EDI lessons taken from educeri.com have built-in automation that provides answers. In your own lessons, you can manually underline when using a doc camera or a smartboard. If you are projecting onto a whiteboard, you can write on it directly with a marking pen.)

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Draw inferences from text lesson. Step 2: Identifying evidence to support the inference.

I continue, “Underline and froze on your worksheet like I did. Check your partner to see that they underlined and froze.” The students look at each other’s papers. Some students direct their partner to hurry and underline and froze. I check for understanding. “I identified the words and froze to support our inference that Anita is running late for school, and not some of the other words like blinked at the clock. I want Partner A to point to sentence 4 on Partner B’s worksheet and explain the words in the sentence that support the inference and the words that don’t. “  You should be saying things like, ‘The words and froze support the inference because . . . ’ or ‘The words blank and blank do not support the inference because.’” I wait while arms cross and the students pair-share. When the noise level of the talking dips, I give my attention signal and call on a random student, Josh. Josh starts to answer. I cue him to stand up so the whole class can hear him. He says, “And froze supports the inference because she sees the clock and knows she is late.” I call on Madison. She adds, “Blinked at the clock isn’t the answer because it doesn’t show what time it is.” I cue for vocabulary, “Can you say, blinked at the clock does not support the inference because . . . ?” Madison restates, “Blinked . . . at the clock . . . does . . . not support the inference . . .  because it doesn’t show the time is late.” I paraphrase, “Yes, blinking at the clock shows she looked at the clock, but not that she realized she is late.” I am ready for the students to do the next sentence, but I want a proper reading. I say, “I’m going to read the next sentence first. It is something Anita said, and we need to read it with emotion. I will read very loud for the first two words. Listen. “‘Oh, NO!’ she screamed.” “  OK. Read with emotion.” The students join in. “‘Oh NO!’ she screamed.” I say, “Write on your whiteboards, yes or no. Are there any words or phrases to support the inference that Anita is late for school?” I look around the room and see everyone writing yes on their boards. I add, “I see yes on your boards. Now write a word or phrase that supports the inference that Anita is running late for school. She has just looked at the clock. Explain to your partner. You should say, ‘Sentence 5 supports the inference . . . ’ and then explain why. Partner B goes first.” The students write their supporting words on their whiteboards. I call for chin-it. I look around and see a couple of different answers. I call on Jacob. He stands and replies, “Sentence 5 supports the inference that Anita is late for school. She says ‘Oh NO,’ when she sees the time on the clock. She is worried.”

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

“  Thank you, Jacob,” I say as he sits down. I look around. “Students, keep your boards up. Emily, I see you have a different answer. Can you stand up and explain your answer?” Emily stands and says, “The sentence supports the inference because she screamed.” I inquire, “What do you mean by that?” Emily answers, “She didn’t say ‘oh, no.’ She screamed ‘Oh, NO!’ She knows she is late.” The word screamed was not underlined on my slide, but I agreed that it supports the idea that Anita realizes that she is late. I tell everyone to underline “Oh, NO!” and to underline “she screamed.”

Skill Development/Guided Practice with slow release of students. I start a slow release. I say, “Students, read sentence 6 with your partner and write on your whiteboard any phrases that support the inference that she is late.” As I call on students, they describe how phrases such as “jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes,” and “snatched her backpack” show she is late and in a hurry. The phrase “brush your teeth” does not support the inference of being late. I have the students analyze sentence 7 on their own with no pair-share. I say, “Write yes or no on your whiteboards and any words that support the idea of being late for school. Write it and hide it. Don’t show your partner. Be ready to show me.”

We just saw a lot of techniques in the previous example: Internal Rule of Two, gestures, reading text, asking CFU questions, voting with whiteboards, justifying answers in complete sentences, and so forth. These are strategies that can be used day after day, year after year, in all lessons in all content areas.

Procedural Knowledge Lessons The lessons we just saw were Procedural Knowledge lessons. Procedural Knowledge lessons teach how to do something, for example, how to round numbers. The language arts lessons were also teaching how to do something: how to recognize theme and how to support inferences.

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It’s important to understand that we weren’t teaching students to learn the story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We were teaching students how to recognize theme in any story. We happened to use the Chocolate Factory story, but we weren’t trying to teach any specific details contained in the story. We read about Anita running late for school. Again, we were not trying to learn about Anita. We were practicing how to support inferences. Before we move on to the next chapter, however, we need to address another type of lesson that is not about how to do something. These lessons have a slightly different approach.

Declarative Knowledge Lessons Declarative Knowledge lessons teach facts and information. Most history lessons contain Declarative Knowledge, for example, the causes of the French Revolution, the major battles of World War II, or the fall of the Roman Empire. Some content areas are combinations of Procedural Knowledge and Declarative Knowledge. Draw a human face (procedural). Characteristics of Renaissance art (declarative).

Remembering Declarative Knowledge Declarative Knowledge lessons address understanding and remembering factual information. One method that helps the brain remember is repetition. Repetition is not just chanting over and over. Repetition occurs naturally when information is presented in different ways: Listen to it. Read about it. Write about it. Summarize it. Pair-share (talk about it, listen to your partner). Ask and answer questions about it. EDI lessons include repetition to help students learn and remember.

Literacy Approach: Learn by Reading Science, History, and Technical Subjects The term literacy refers to the ability to read and write. One of the shifts in education these days is a greater emphasis on students learning content by reading. We call this the literacy approach. Students learn new content by reading about it. In fact, many new standards, such as Common Core, now include specific literacy standards for science, history, and other technical subjects. Literacy standards address areas such as citing textual evidence to support analysis, determining central ideas, using text structure to analyze text and analyzing arguments in any content area. Literacy Approach: Students learn new content by reading about it.

Note. The literacy approach in EDI focuses on learning content by reading. Of course, students can write about what they are learning also, but if students are doing extensive writing, then they need instruction in how to do that writing.

EDI Literacy Approach Explicit Direct Instruction lessons have always been text-based. In the past, content area lessons such as history and science were done PowerPoint style with bulleted points for the teacher to elaborate on. In EDI literacy-based lessons, Skill Development and Guided Practice now include more reading and analyzing of content-specific passages to learn content. Generally, key information is extracted from passages and placed into graphic organizers based on criteria from the lesson (Marzano, 2017). This is done Rule of Two style. The teacher first analyzes some text and completes parts of an organizer.

Chapter 10  •  I’ll Work a Problem First  

Then the students read and analyze the next part of the text for additional information to place in the organizer.

Literacy-Based CFU Checking for Understanding questions in literacy-based lessons address two areas: the content itself plus the literacy aspect of how and why the information was extracted from the text and placed in the organizer. In literacy-based lessons, students are not reading and answering questions by themselves. You guide students as a class, reading specific sections of text and analyzing the information. Literacy-based CFU questions require students to pair-share with their partners, describing the specific information identified, where it goes in the organizer, and why it goes there. Content-area CFU questions ask students to pair-share and describe the content in the organizer. Literacy-based EDI lessons generally use graphic organizers rather than just having students answer questions. The use of graphic organizers adds more thinking, such as classifying, comparing and contrasting, and distinguishing between ideas.

The Literacy Approach Is Important Low reading comprehension is a concern in many schools. When you use the literacy approach, you are greatly expanding student reading, especially informational text. Over time, 50% of elementary school, 55% of middle school, and 70% of high school reading should be informational text. This cannot be accomplished in language arts lessons only. Using text-based lessons in other content areas allows us to add additional informational text reading. Typically, implementing the literacy approach involves moving away from lecture-based lessons where students listen and take notes to lessons that incorporate analysis of text.

Literacy Approach Example: History Let’s look at an example of a declarative knowledge history lesson.

Learning Objective: Describe the government of the Roman Republic. (6th)

Concept Development for Roman Republic lesson. (6th)

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The preceding slide is Concept Development. Definitions for the Roman Republic and the Government of the Roman Republic are at the top of the slide. The graphic organizer in the center summarizes the components of the Roman government: the consuls, the senate, the assembly, and dictators. There is text for the students to read, but not from passages. For Skill Development and Guided Practice, students read passages to learn more details about the concepts already taught in Concept Development. The passages are usually selected readings from course textbooks. Below is the first slide of Skill Development/Guided Practice. An overview of the Roman consuls was taught during Concept Development, shown above. Now for Skill Development/Guided Practice, the lesson provides text with additional details about the consuls. If you look at the graphic organizer, you can see the information from the text is being categorized into two areas: the Responsibilities of the consuls and the Checks and Balances restricting their power. For Skill Development, you, the teacher, analyze some sentences to extract information to place in the graphic organizer. Then the students analyze some sentences. CFU questions address the literacy aspects (what information goes where in the organizer) and the history content (summarize the responsibility of the consuls).

Skill Development/Guided Practice for Roman Republic lesson. (6th)

Literacy Approach Example: Science Now let’s look at science. The science curriculum teaches Declarative Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge. Declarative Knowledge science lessons teach facts such as the types of rocks or the steps of mitosis. Procedural Knowledge science lessons teach processes such as how to do something (how to classify rocks) or how to calculate something, for example, density (d = m ÷ v). Science lessons for Declarative Knowledge can be taught using the literacy approach. Concepts are first presented during Concept Development. Then informational text is read and analyzed during Skill Development and Guided Practice. Here’s an example.

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Learning Objective: Analyze the structures that form at plate boundaries. (High school earth science) The slide below shows Concept Development. You can see written definitions, a map showing the plates, a table summarizing the types of plate boundaries, and CFU questions.

Concept Development for Plate Boundaries lesson. (High school)

The next slide shows Skill Development and Guided Practice for this Declarative Knowledge lesson. The literacy approach is used. Informational text is analyzed for additional information about the types of plate boundaries, which is placed in the graphic organizer. The slide shows the completed information for Convergent Boundaries.

Skill Development/Guided Practice for Plate Boundaries lesson. (High school)

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Summary We covered a lot in this chapter. We described the Rule of Two, the overall approach where you use matched problems—one for you, one for the students. We talked about the Internal Rule of Two. Students can join in and work repetitive parts of a problem you are doing. We described Skill Development. You reveal your thinking while showing students how to work problems step-by-step. We described Guided Practice. You direct the whole class to work problems step-by-step while checking each step. We discussed Checking for Understanding that includes process questions, requiring students to explain how problems are solved and to justify their answers. We also described teaching Declarative Knowledge (facts) using the literacy approach where students learn by reading and analyzing content-based text. Before going to the next chapter, here are some quick exercises for you. Exercise 1: Identify Steps Open one of your textbooks. Are there steps for students to use? Often you will see worked problems with descriptions of how to solve that

specific problem. Can you locate or provide steps that will work for any problem? Exercise 2: Matched Problems: Rule of Two Can you locate (or provide) matched problems from your resources? One for you to work. A matching one for your students to work. Exercise 3: Declarative Knowledge Literacy Approach Look through your instructional resources again. Are there Declarative Knowledge lessons that could be taught using the literacy approach where students read and analyze text to learn content. Exercise 4: Sample Lessons Go to educeri.com and select some lessons for your class. Look at Skill Development/ Guided Practice. Identify the steps, matched problems, and CFU questions. The bulk of time in teaching EDI lessons is spent in Concept Development and Skill Development/Guided Practice, but we have a couple more lesson components to cover before the lesson is completed. Let’s read This Is Important to Learn: Relevance.

Final thoughts from John: The literacy approach is for learning content. In almost all language arts lessons students are reading and answering questions to show reading comprehension of what they just read. For example, when elementary school students compare and contrast polar bears and brown bears, they are practicing the skill of comparing and contrasting information in a text. They are not learning about bears. However, when students read about bears in a science class, the intent is to learn about bears—what they eat, where they live, and so forth. That’s where you use the literacy approach.

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e are putting together well-crafted, well-taught Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) lessons. So far we have: Learning Objective, Activate Prior Knowledge, Concept Development, Skill Development, and Guided Practice. Now we are ready to switch gears for a moment and tell students why the new content is so important to learn. 153

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Relevance Lesson Relevance is explicitly teaching students why learning the new content is important to them and to society. Knowing the relevance of what is being taught provides motivation for students and increases student engagement in the lesson. Lesson Relevance also fits in with the brain’s desire to make meaning from new information. When new information is meaningful, it is more likely to be remembered. Since students may not realize the lesson is important, you explicitly provide reasons why it is.

Student Motivation We digress a moment to discuss student motivation. From our work in the classroom, we have found three things that create motivation: (1) Calling on random students. The fact that any student can be called on at any time increases motivation for students to pay attention. (2) Relevance. Showing students that a specific lesson is important to learn creates motivation to learn the new content, whether they just want to do well in school or use the information later. (3) “I can do it.” This is true human motivation at the most basic level. It’s exciting to transition from not understanding to understanding. This is the goal of every EDI lesson. Students are able to do it by the end of the lesson.

When Do You Teach Lesson Relevance? After experimenting with different locations, we have found that the best time to teach Relevance is right after Skill Development and Guided Practice. At this point the students have a good grasp on the content in the lesson and are ready to understand its importance. If you teach Relevance too soon, the students are trying to connect importance to something they don’t quite understand yet. From Silvia: We used to call it Importance. With the introduction of the Common Core State Standards and other new state standards, we felt that Relevance was a better term. Either way, it’s the same: Relevance or Importance.

How Do You Provide Lesson Relevance? You teach Relevance by presenting reasons why the content is important to learn. These reasons can be divided into three categories: (1) personal relevance, (2) academic relevance, and (3) real-life relevance.

Personal Relevance For personal Relevance, you provide reasons why the lesson is important to your students personally, how it could help them in their lives. Telling time is important. You will know when to be ready for school. You will know when to watch your favorite TV show. (1st) Evaluating the claims in an author’s argument will help you determine what to believe. (6th)

For older students, Relevance can connect lessons to specific careers they might be interested in, showing a direct connection between what they are learning and the workplace.

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Students, the wordplay that we are analyzing today is used by people in creative careers. Writers are paid big bucks to write headlines like this: “Politicians in Washington DC have a monumental problem.” (Word play on the Washington Monument) (11th–12th)

Academic Relevance Academic Relevance addresses reasons why the lesson is important for something related to school. It’s on the test. You need to know this for next year. Students, these linear equation problems are important because they could be on the high school exit exam.

When you provide academic reasons, you should include a sample test question that shows how the concept will be tested.

From Silvia: The academic Relevance of a lesson can be more effective in schools that have a schoolwide focus on standards and improving student achievement, and where that focus is understood collectively by all students, teachers, and administrators.

Real-Life Relevance These reasons explain why the lesson is relevant in real life. You tell how it’s important in certain occupations or how it is important to society at large. The lesson may not be directly used by them, but students can see that the information is important for someone to know. Students, photosynthesis is important because is it the source of all the food we eat on Earth. (High school biology) Students, you have seen TV shows where a detective analyzes the angle of a bullet. Well, they are using the same equations for parabolas that we are learning today. (algebra)

HOW TO DESIGN LESSON RELEVANCE 1. Provide written reasons; include vocabulary from the lesson 2. Provide examples 3. Write CFU questions

How to Design Lesson Relevance 1. Provide Written Reasons; Include Vocabulary From the Lesson For Relevance, you provide written reasons why the lesson is important for students to learn. The reasons should include vocabulary learned in the lesson, which provides additional opportunities for students to read and say the new words. An easy way to do this is to incorporate the Learning Objective directly into the reasons.

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Plotting and locating points on a coordinate plane will help you do well on tests. (5th) Revising writing by consolidating sentences will help you make your writing flow smoothly. (5th) Predicting the phenotypes of offspring will help you predict what your own children may inherit. (High school biology)

Most lessons use two to three reasons. However, we limit the number of reasons for younger students. For K and first grade, provide one reason, for second grade, two reasons. These are generally personal reasons that the young students can relate to. Identifying the main topic can help you tell someone what you read about. (1st)

For older students, it’s a good idea to include different types of Lesson Relevance because students will often relate to one type of reason more than another. For example, academic Relevance will connect to some students but is not always a strong motivator for other students. Some students will be interested in specific occupations but not others. And some of the personal reasons may not apply to all students. Try to provide a range of reasons.

2. Provide Examples After you provide a written reason why the lesson is relevant to learn, you immediately provide an example that illustrates the reason. This is similar to Concept Development where you provide written definitions along with labeled examples that illustrate the concept. The example can be something written or a visual showing the use of the new information from the lesson.

3. Write Checking for Understanding (CFU) Questions For every EDI lesson component, including Lesson Relevance, you include CFU questions. However, Checking for Understanding is slightly different for Relevance. You want to verify that your students can describe the Relevance of the lesson, but you can also provide the opportunity for students come up with additional reasons of their own. So after you have given your reasons, ask. A. Does anyone else have another reason why it is relevant to (Learning Objective)? Students, does anyone else have another reason why it is relevant to distinguish between literal and nonliteral words and phrases? (3rd)

(Note. Students can’t always come up with additional reasons, but you as the teacher can add another if you think of one.) After you have provided reasons and the students have possibly added additional ones, you are ready for the final CFU question. Look carefully at the next question. It asks the students to make an evaluation by selecting the most relevant reason and then to justify their answers. B. Which reason is most relevant to you? Why? Requiring students to select the best reason and to justify their response makes this a higher-order question where students must think. This technique can be used in any type of opinion question in any content area.

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Let’s look at some examples of EDI lesson Relevance from lessons on educeri .com. Look carefully. Can you locate written reasons, examples, and CFU questions? The Concept definition is repeated at the top of the page as a resource in case you need to refer to it while explaining the examples.

Find the areas of rectilinear shapes. (3rd)

Relevance for finding the area of rectilinear shapes. (3rd)

Interpret quantitative relationships in line graphs. (7th)

Relevance for interpret quantitative relationships in line graphs. (7th)

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Determine the meaning of words using context clues. (2nd)

Relevance for determine the meaning of words using context clues. (2nd)

How to Teach Lesson Relevance Like all EDI lesson components, Relevance is taught using the Engagement Norms and TAPPLE.

HOW TO TEACH LESSON RELEVANCE 1. Students read Relevance reasons 2. Teacher explains Relevance examples 3. CFU Call on volunteers for additional reasons Call on random students for the most important reason

Since students are familiar with the new words in the lesson by the time you teach Relevance, you can usually skip pre-reading the Relevance reasons. Just have the students read chorally with you. Then point to the example and use the example to explain what the reason means. Repeat the choral reading and explaining for each reason. Now CFU. Start by asking if anyone has another reason why the lesson is important to learn. Provide a sentence frame: (Learning Objective) is important because . . . Interpreting solutions of systems of linear equations is important because . . . (8th)

You can include a pair-share, having students talk to each other about additional reasons, before you call on individual students. This allows students time to process

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and think about the reasons. Call on volunteers. You use volunteers because students are providing reasons from their own experiences, not from your teaching. After hearing reasons from volunteers, you are ready for the final question: What is the most important reason and why? Students can give a reason presented by the teacher, a reason from another student, or add a new one themselves. Restate the sentence frame. Have students pair-share. Then call on random students to answer in complete sentences. Generally, whiteboards are used. Have students write the number of the reason on their whiteboard. Call for a show of boards and select random students to respond in a complete sentence to tell why they selected the reason they did.

Concrete Reasons As an alternative to calling on students to restate reasons why the lesson is important, you can ask students to provide an example of how they would use the new information from the lesson. This can work for young students or students of all ages. Why is it important to solve money problems involving bills and coins? (2nd) It’s important to solve money problems involving bills and coins. I will know if I have enough money to buy a hamburger. It’s important to solve money problems involving bills and coins to know if I have enough money to buy a cell phone. Why is the Kinetic Molecular Theory of Gases important? (physics) The Kinetic Molecular Theory of Gases is important so I know why car tires lose pressure when the weather is cold. Describing the Kinetic Molecular Theory of Gases is important to know how the smell of a perfume goes across a room.

Example of Relevance Let’s watch an example. Mrs. Morrison is teaching: Assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th) She has just finished Skill Development and Guided Practice. She clicks the mouse, and the slide on the screen advances to Relevance. She says, “Now we are going to look at why this is so important to us. OK?” She points to the screen. “Let’s read reason one together. Ready?” She slides her hand across the screen pointing to the words as the class reads, “Assessing the evidence that supports an author’s argument will help you defend what you believe.”

Assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th) Mrs. Morrison continues, “Thinking back to what we’ve already read, if we just say something is better, we haven’t given any evidence. “Look at this example up here. Let’s read the author’s argument in the first sentence together, ‘Drinking too much soda is bad for your health.’” Using the vocabulary from the lesson, she continues, “This author provides evidence and facts from reliable sources to defend what he believes.” She doesn’t have the students read the example. She just explains the underlined information. “Look,” she says as she points, “National Diabetes Association, 3.4 tablespoons of sugar in a can, 54,750 calories each year.

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Relevance for assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th)

“So let’s read the reason number 2. Ready?” The class reads, “Assessing the evidence that supports an author’s argument will help you do well on tests.” She asks, “Students, do you have your highlighters?” “Yes,” respond the students as they grab their highlighters. “Let’s read the sample test question together.” “The author supports the argument that Houdini was a hard worker by describing . . .” “Let’s highlight the first phrase  .  .  .  the author supports the argument  .  .  .” The students’ heads turn down to their worksheets as they highlight the phrase. “The question is asking for supporting evidence. Let’s read the second test question.” The students read, “Which claim from the article is least supported by factual evidence?” Mrs. Morrison adds, “Let’s just highlight the whole question: Which claim from the article is least supported by factual evidence? We did that today when we saw weak evidence in the article about children using the Internet.” The students highlight the words. She continues, “So, if you see questions like these, you’ll say, oh yeah, I already know how to do this.” Mrs. Morrison pauses a moment and says, “Does anyone else have a reason why it’s important? Talk with your partners first to see if you can think of another reason. Another reason it is important to assess the evidence that supports an author’s claim is . . .” The noise goes up as the students pair-share. As the talking drops, Mrs. Morrison calls out, “One, two . . .” The students respond, “Eyes on you.” Mrs. Morrison calls on a volunteer, “Megan.”

Chapter 11  •  This Is Important to Learn  

Megan stand up and says, “It is important to assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument because if you want to look up something like as an example if soda is bad for your health, you wanna know if the source is re, relia, re . . .” Mrs. Morrison cues, “Reliable.” Megan continues, “Yes, reliable.” “Thank you, Megan” Megan sits down. Mrs. Morrison elaborates, “I think we can add reason number three now. Can you believe what you read? When you read an article, you know to check if the author has any evidence to support what he is saying. “So write on your whiteboards the reason why what we are learning today is important, to assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. Just write the number 1, 2, or 3 on your whiteboard. Then turn to your partner and justify your answer . . . It is important to assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument because . . . Partner B, go first.” The students pair-share. After a moment, Mrs. Morrison calls out, “OK. One, two, three. Chin-it.” The boards go up. Mrs. Morrison looks around the classroom. When using whiteboards, she always calls on correct answers first. In this case, the question is an opinion. There are no right or wrong answers. She randomly selects Brianna. Brianna stands up and says, “It is important to assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument because, uh, if you don’t know if what you’re reading is true, you can read about something that, that may not be true, and you know if it had more evidence you could believe that it’s true.” Mrs. Morrison looks around at the whiteboards. If she pulled a random stick she might get the same reason again. She sees a different reason and calls on Kevin who stands and says, “It is important to assess the evidence that supports an . . . author’s . . . argument . . . because, you could be better at writing.” Mrs. Morrison adds, “Yes, a better writer. Kevin, you added your own reason. Why did you select that?” Kevin responds, “I want people to believe what I write.”

Summary This chapter described how to write and teach lesson Relevance. You provide reasons— personal, academic, or real-life—why the lesson is important to learn. You provide examples for each reason. When teaching, you have students read the reasons. You elaborate on what they mean using the examples. You call on volunteers for any additional reasons. Then you ask students to select the most important reason usually using whiteboards. Relevance provides another opportunity for students to read and use the new vocabulary from the lesson. Be mindful of the time

spent on Relevance. It generally should be less than 5 minutes. Exercise Go to educeri.com and select lessons for your grade level or content area. Look at Relevance. Can you see reasons, examples, and CFU questions? Do you see vocabulary from the lesson being used during Relevance? We’re ready to close the lesson. The last teaching component of EDI is Closure. Please turn the page to read Making One Final Check: Closing the Lesson.

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12 Making One Final Check Closing the Lesson “Students, I want to make sure you are completely

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The last component in an EDI lesson is Closure, where students must prove that they have learned the new content.

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Closing the Lesson During Lesson Closure, you have reached the last component of an EDI lesson before students start to work by themselves. You started your lesson by preparing your students to learn with a Learning Objective and Activating (or providing) Prior Knowledge. You then presented the new content to your students. Concept Development defined the new concepts and included labeled examples. During Skill Development you modeled your thinking processes while you worked problems. For Guided Practice you guided the whole class in working problems step-by-step. You taught all the problem variations that will be in the Independent Practice. You are ready to wind up the lesson with Lesson Closure.

What Is Lesson Closure? During Lesson Closure, students work problems or answer questions to prove that they learned the content they were just taught. In reality, Closure is a final Checking for Understanding (CFU) to make sure students understand the content before they’re given any assignments to work on by themselves. Closure should take no more than 5 minutes to complete, but make sure you leave yourself some time before students head out the door or pack up and switch gears. From John and Silvia: After observing thousands of teachers across the United States and around the world, we found that very few teachers explicitly verify that their students know the new content before handing out the assignments. Occasionally, we see teachers close the lesson by providing a summary of what was taught. Sometimes followed with, “Any questions before I pass out the worksheets?” Closure is an activity for students to show they have learned.

Why Is It Important to Include Closure in Every Lesson? Closure is one of the components of EDI that contributes to its high student success rate. One reason is that you don’t actually assign Independent Practice until the students have shown they know how to do it. Think what this means. Every day, students successfully practice on problems they know how to do. That’s because you prepare and present an effective lesson that teaches them how to do it. And you include a formal lesson Closure to have students prove to you that they know how to do it before assigning any Independent Practice. With EDI, you don’t assign Independent Practice until after your students have proven to you that they already know how to do it.

Another reason Closure is important is that you don’t want students to be practicing and memorizing their misperceptions during Independent Practice. As students repeat their errors, they are internalizing into long-term memory the wrong way of doing it. You, or some other teacher next year, will have to spend extra time “unlearning” students and reteaching. A third reason you use Closure at the end of a lesson is so you can identify individual students for additional help. Of course, you are monitoring student learning throughout the lesson, too, but during Closure, you make the final determination if any individual students are going to need extra help.

Chapter 12  •  Making One Final Check  

Aim for 80% to 100% Success During Closure We already talked about teaching and reteaching the whole class to reach 80% success on each Checking for Understanding question and then providing effective feedback to achieve 100% correct answers. We use the same approach during Closure. Close the lesson when 80% of students can do it. But it’s not necessary to abandon the last few students. They can be provided with additional assistance such as targeted In-Class Intervention. In the next chapter, we’ll describe how to do this. You need to have at least 80% of your students successful before you assign Independent Practice.

How to Provide Lesson Closure During Closure, you don’t do any more teaching. You have students solve problems or answer questions to determine the following: 1. Can my students successfully execute the skill I just taught them? 2. Can my students correctly apply the concept I just taught them? 3. Can my students summarize what they have learned? Now let’s look at the types of Closure.

Skill Closure In typical day-to-day teaching, you usually don’t have time for all three Closure questions. Lesson Closure often focuses on a skill problem. Can students work a problem correctly by themselves with no pair-share? Important Note. Skill-based Closure is one of the few times you don’t have students pair-share. You want individual accountability. If a lesson has different variations of a problem, the lesson’s Closure often needs variations, too. If you haven’t completed the entire lesson, the Closure problem should only address the types of problems that were already taught. Day 2 of the lesson can use a different Closure problem.

Concept Closure You can include concept-related questions at Closure. Although you can ask students to restate a definition, concept questions usually require students to apply the concept as part of a problem to solve.

Assessment-Type Closure Closure is a time where you can provide a question that matches the types of questions used in high-stakes assessments. Assessment questions often include error analysis, multiple correct answers, or “reverse logic.” They can require students to locate textual evidence, write an explanation of a solution, and so forth. Assessmenttype Closure questions can address skills or concepts. Many high-stakes math assessment questions, especially for middle school and high school, are very conceptually oriented. For these questions, students do not

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need to perform mathematical computations to answer, but they do need to understand concepts. For example, students could be asked to determine a graphical solution. At what point on the graph was the delivery truck accelerating?

From Silvia: Assessment-Type Closure questions should also be incorporated into lessons as part of Skill Development and Guided Practice so you can model solving them. It’s not necessary to wait until Closure to introduce assessment-type questions.

HOW TO PROVIDE CONCEPT OR SKILL CLOSURE •• Provide a problem for Closure. •• Ask students to work the problem by themselves. Use tracked reading, if necessary. Otherwise, have students read and solve the problem by themselves. •• No pair-share. •• For short answers, use whiteboards. Have students “write it and hide it.” Call for a show of answers. Look over student answers. •• Call on random students to describe their answers. •• Make instructional decisions. {{ �

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If students are ready, then assign Independent Practice or homework. If students are not ready, be ready to reteach. Assign alternative Independent Practice. Identify students for additional help. Pull out a small group of students for additional help while other students work independently.

For very young students and beginning readers who cannot work independently, Closure can be done as Guided Practice with more support from the teacher.

Summary Closure In a Summary Closure, you ask students to tell you what they learned. It can be used in any lesson no matter how far you got through the lesson. Just have students summarize what they learned for that day. In a Summary Closure, you first ask students to pair-share and talk to each other about what they learned. You cue them to use the new vocabulary from the lesson. A Summary Closure can be done orally, or you can have students write a sentence or two about what they learned. You call on random students to report out and tell the class what they learned. A Summary Closure can have a different purpose than a Concept or Skill Closure. A Summary Closure generally doesn’t measure if students can solve problems independently. A Summary Closure is more of a cognitive strategy to help students internalize new information by thinking, talking, and writing about it. In fact, you should tell students to look at their textbook, worksheet, or notes while summarizing.

Chapter 12  •  Making One Final Check  

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HOW TO DO A SUMMARY CLOSURE •• Provide a Summary Closure statement that includes the Learning Objective. Have students read it.

What did you learn today about Generating Equivalent Fractions? (4th) What did you learn today about Constructing and Interpreting Two-Way Frequency Tables? (High school) •• Direct students to pair-share and tell their partners what they learned. Cue students to look at their handouts or notes. Provide a word bank for students to use. Include concept words and academic words that were defined in the lesson. •• If you want a written Summary Closure, direct students to write on their papers. Don’t use whiteboards because they will be erased. •• Call on random students to report out.

Summary Closure Options Scaffolding means providing additional support that helps students be successful without lowering the rigor of the lesson. There are some scaffolding options you can use to help students write their sentences for Closure. They are similar to the whiteboard strategies. Should students pair-share before writing an answer or after writing an answer? Let’s look at various levels of support for helping students write about what they learned. 1. No scaffolding: Write then pair-share. Report out. Have students write their sentences on their own. Then have students pair-share, reading their sentences to each other. Call on random students to read their sentences to the class. 2. Some scaffolding: Pair-share then write. Report out. Have students pair-share first before writing their sentences. Students get to hear and help each other. Now have them write their sentences. Call on random students to read their sentences.

Sample word bank for solving for an unknown angle using properties of angles. (7th)

3. Maximum scaffolding: Pair-share. Report out orally. Write. Report out. Have students tell their partners what they learned. Students hear each other’s ideas. Call on random students to report out to the class. Students hear additional ideas from other students plus any feedback you provide. Now have students write their sentences. They have heard several responses that can help them come up with sentences. Call on random students to read their sentences.

Closure Examples The next page shows some sample Closures from educeri.com.

Sample word bank for comparing two texts. (K)

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Draw a picture graph. (3rd) On this Closure slide you can see Skill Closure, an Assessment-Type Closure (Extended Thinking) using error analysis, and a Summary Closure. On the right is the word bank for students to use. (Can you find the error in the Extended Thinking question?)

Closure for drawing a picture graph. (3rd)

Assess the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th) This Closure contains a Skill Closure, an Assessment-Type Closure (Constructed Response Closure), which requires students to write an explanation, a Summary Closure, and a word bank. Let’s listen in on the closure for this lesson.

Closure for assessing the evidence that supports an author’s argument. (7th)

Chapter 12  •  Making One Final Check  

Mrs. W is standing at the front of the classroom. Her lesson is projected on the screen behind her. She starts her Summary Closure. “Everybody, grab your handouts and stand up.” The students noisily slide their chairs back as they rise to stand at their desks holding their papers. “We are going to do a super pair-share, which means that you stand up and explain what you learned today, what you learned about assessing the evidence that supports an author’s argument.” She points to the word bank on the screen and says, “Find our new words again from the word bank. Ready?” The students read chorally, “Evidence, assess, accurate, appropriate, adequate, argument.” “Now I want you to go ahead and turn to your shoulder partner, and I want you to use these words to explain what you learned today.” The room explodes in noise as the students look down at their notes, everyone talking at the same time.

Super Pair-Share for Summary Closure: Stand up and tell your neighbor everything you learned today. Mrs. W uses her attention signal to end the pair-share but leaves her students standing. “Tell me, what did you learn today about assessing the evidence supporting the author’s argument?” She pulls a stick. “Julieta?” Julieta responds, “I learned about assessing the evidence supporting an author’s argument . . . the Triple A check for evidence and how to . . . and . . . all the sources that can support the evidence.” Mrs. W questions, “And what was the Triple A test of evidence, Julieta?” “Accurate, appropriate, and”—Julieta glances down at her paper—“and adequate.” Mrs. W points to the board and says, “So everyone, tell me what were the three words that help us with the Triple A assessment of supporting evidence?” The class responds, “Accurate, appropriate, and adequate.” She calls on a second student, a boy, who announces, “Today, I learned about accurate. Accurate . . . is the evidence true? Appropriate . . . does it fit? And adequate . . . is there enough evidence?”

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Summary Closure: Report out what you learned today.

When Closure Is Complete, Initiate Independent Practice During Lesson Closure, your students showed you they were ready for Independent Practice. It seems that the only thing left now is for you to hand out the worksheets. But in a well-crafted EDI lesson, Independent Practice can be much more strategic. But first let’s take a quick look at Planning for Success: Differentiation and Scaffolding. We have been using them all along. Then we go on to describe how to use Independent Practice and Structured Independent Practice to increase student learning.

Exercise

You have already looked at Closure EDI lessons from educeri.com. Now look at your own resources. Can you see something to use for Closure? If not, can you add your own? Can you add a Summary Closure?

Photos courtesy of DataWORKS

13 Planning for Success

Assessment

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ifferentiation and scaffolding are already built into EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction), but let’s stop for a moment to discuss how they are being done. There are differences between differentiation and scaffolding. Differentiation refers to the idea of modifying instruction to meet a student’s individual needs and learning styles. Scaffolding refers to modifications you make while designing 171

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and teaching lessons that allow all students to be successful in learning the same content. Differentiation is often directed at individual students, while scaffolding is done for the entire class. For example, in EDI when a student can’t answer a Checking for Understanding (CFU) question and you rephrase your question from open-ended to multiple-choice, you have differentiated for that one student. When you pre-read a Learning Objective before having the entire class read chorally, you are scaffolding. In reality, differentiation and scaffolding strategies overlap, but they have the same goal, increasing student success. So let’s look at how EDI has built-in differentiation and scaffolding.

Differentiating and Scaffolding to Increase Student Success Our goal with EDI is to have 80% to 100% of students successful by lesson Closure, and EDI has built in differentiating and scaffolding to accomplish that goal. Student success can be improved by making strategic decisions before the lesson, during the lesson, and after the lesson.

Plan for Success Before Teaching Of course, what is done before the lesson is taught is an important contributor to student success. There are two areas to address during the planning stage: (1) lesson design and (2) anticipating difficult areas for the students.

Lesson Design When you design an EDI lesson, you are already addressing the most important factor regarding student success: You are writing a lesson pre-designed to generate student success. This is the ultimate scaffolding. Your Learning Objective and Independent Practice are exactly synchronized. You prepare bulletproof written definitions of the concepts you are teaching. You provide labeled examples that illustrate what the definitions mean. You create and use clear steps to execute skills. Throughout the lesson, you teach your students exactly what they need to successfully complete the Independent Practice, including covering all the different problem types found in the assigned problems. Much of the EDI success is due to the use of the Rule of Two. You always provide matched problems. The first one is for you to model the steps to solve it. The second one is for the students to solve. At DataWORKS, we have found that when students are not successful, it’s not because they can’t learn. It’s usually because of defects in the lesson itself. For example, a teacher uses a strategy such as “sounds right” during a grammar lesson instead of providing clear definitions and rules for the students to apply. Sometimes, teachers solve problems but cannot describe in words exactly how they determined the answer. Often, a teacher provides lots of information and then tells the students to “learn it” without providing any strategies or techniques for students to use to remember or organize the information. When students are unsuccessful in these lessons, we say, “It’s not the students. It’s the lesson.”

Chapter 13  •  Planning for Success  

Anticipate Difficult Areas for Students As you put together your EDI lessons, you also look over the material to anticipate specific areas where your students might need support with additional examples, explanation, or elaboration that provides additional clarity. During planning is when you select which examples to Model and show students how to think while working problems. You can also show students how to remember information, and Model how you remember the material. Also, look for areas where you can include physical Demonstrations to provide additional clarity, especially for kinesthetic students. As you practice working with EDI, you will become better and better at designing lessons that include very clear definitions and procedures for the students to use so they can be successful. So the first step in improving student success is having a well-crafted lesson to start with. From Silvia: As I train teachers, I see them transformed from thinking that “these kids just can’t do it” to “the lesson wasn’t quite good enough.” This philosophical shift away from blaming students to providing more effective lessons is the bedrock of school reform if we want to improve student achievement for all students.

Example: Planning for Success Here is an example of a teacher thinking about difficult areas while preparing his lesson.

Learning Objective: Describe the three types of rocks. (4th) Mr. Johnson is going to teach a science class on the three types of rocks. This lesson is Declarative Knowledge, where his students will have a lot of information and facts to remember. He will use the literacy approach. He is going to work directly from the science textbook, which has descriptions for students to read and pictures of the rock types. He anticipates that his students will have problems keeping all the information straight and remembering the types of rocks, so he creates a graphic organizer that will allow his students to consolidate several pages of textbook information into one organizer. He will use the graphic organizer throughout the lesson, starting with Concept Development and especially during Skill Development and Guided Practice when he and his students will extract information directly from the textbook. Last year, many students couldn’t remember the types of rocks, so this year he is going to provide a method for the students to remember. He decides to Model how he remembers the types of rocks: igneous rocks (from ignite, fire), sedimentary rocks (sediment), and metamorphic rocks (morph, change). Besides using the textbook, he will bring in rock samples from the science storeroom to use for a physical Demonstration. He will pass the rocks around for the students to hold and touch while he is describing their physical characteristics. Mr. Johnson knows his students need practice with reading informational text. During Guided Practice he will pre-read difficult words or sentences while extracting information about each type of rock. He and the class will complete the organizer together. He will have the students hold up their organizers like whiteboards periodically so he can see that they are doing it properly. He will use the Rule of Two. He will analyze some sentences, and the students will analyze some sentences. He selects the categories for his organizer: types of rocks, how they are formed, physical characteristics, and where they are found. He is almost finished when he adds one more row, examples.

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Types of Rocks

Igneous

Sedimentary

Metamorphic

How to remember

Ignite—fire

Sediment—falls in layers

Morph—change

How they are formed Physical characteristics Where they are found Examples

Graphic organizer for describing types of rocks. (4th)

Amount of Content to Teach From our classroom research, we have found that as teachers start to use EDI, they sometimes try to teach too many concepts or problem types in the same lesson. Having narrower, more focused lessons results in higher success rates because teachers are not trying to teach too much at once. A lesson might incorporate skills from previously taught lessons, but the new learning is only one objective. Remember that standards often contain several Objectives combined into one standard. EDI lessons teach one learning objective at a time. You can look over the EDI lesson titles on educeri.com to see how lessons are based on a single Learning Objective.

Time For very young students in preschool to second grade, we teach in 20-minute chunks, for example, phonics, brain break, sight words, brain break, writing letters, brain break. Our brain breaks include a physical activity such as dancing, stretching, singing, and so forth. For older students, most EDI lessons are 45 to 55 minutes. Sometimes, even older students need a brain break. In any grade level, you can ask students to stand up for a second to stretch or even talk. This resets their attention span so they are ready to learn. The same ideas apply for high schools using block schedules. Provide a break midway for students to move around a little.

Plan for Success During the Lesson: Modify So Students Will Be Successful To support students during a lesson, use the Engagement Norms all the time. The Norms provide scaffolding. They help all the students. An important thing to keep in mind while teaching is to modify your teaching according to your students’ responses to Checking for Understanding questions. Your students’ ability to answer CFU questions, not the clock or the pacing calendar, determines the true pace of the lesson. Resist the temptation to try to speed through a lesson when students aren’t learning, or else students won’t be successful during Independent Practice or later when tested. Be ready to use the Effective Feedback strategies to support students in answering CFU questions. This is differentiation because you are providing support for individual students based on their responses.

Chapter 13  •  Planning for Success  

As you implement, practice, and become an expert in EDI, you will start to make corrections automatically during the lesson in response to your continual Checking for Understanding. You will know exactly when to speed up, when to slow down, and when to reteach. Students will be successful by the time you reach the end of the lesson because you modified your lesson to match their rate of learning. You can’t teach faster than the absorption rate of the students.

Plan for Success After the Lesson: Modify at Closure If students are not successful during Closure, you need to make a strategic decision. Remember, the purpose of Closure is to measure if your students are ready for Independent Practice. Avoid the temptation to give students their assignments before they have proven that they are ready. Remember, with EDI, you don’t give students Independent Practice until they have already proven to you that they know how to do it. In practical terms, this means that you need to continue the lesson the next day. Students can be given an alternate assignment as Independent Practice. This could be review problems from a previous lesson they have already mastered or a part of the assignment from today’s lesson that they have mastered. If students are not successful by Closure, another strategy you can use is to extend Guided Practice by working more examples together step-by-step with students. If you don’t have additional problems ready, use the homework problems.

All Students Successful Suppose you have already retaught, and a few students still aren’t ready. You have reached 80% success but are worried about the last few students. Naturally, you want all your students to be successful. However, it’s not efficient to reteach the whole class for just a few students, so you use Closure to identify individual students for differentiated in-class and out-of-class interventions.

In-Class Interventions and Out-of-Class Interventions Interventions refer to providing additional support for students to learn grade-level content. Remediation refers to providing additional support for below-grade-level skills. EDI lessons can be used for intervention or remediation.

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In day-to-day grade-level instruction, students who are not successful during the lesson are provided additional help. You provide In-Class Interventions by pulling out the unsuccessful students at the end of the lesson into a small group for additional teaching. You can do this while the other students are working by themselves during Independent Practice. Some students may still need additional help. If this happens, write a “prescription” describing the assistance the students need to be successful on the lesson you just taught. Now send them to an Out-Of-Class Intervention such as after-school tutoring where they can be provided with additional teaching time. One benefit of this EDI intervention approach is that students are not prejudged. The teacher groups the specific, identified students after the teaching, not before. All students are taught the same grade-level content during class time. From Silvia: Teachers tell me that with EDI they don’t decide ahead of time who can learn and who can’t. A teacher told me, “Silvia, with EDI, I provide equal opportunity by teaching the whole class grade-level content. Then I use Closure at the end of the lesson to identify students I need to help.”

Response to Intervention (RTI) and EDI Response to Intervention is a tiered instructional model used in many schools to support students. It’s usually referred to as RTI. • Tier I. All students receive high-quality, research-based classroom instruction. • Tier II. Targeted Interventions for identified students using small group instruction. • Tier III. Intensive Interventions for individual students targeting specific skill deficits. EDI fits very well in this model. Day-to-day instruction using EDI lessons is the Tier I high-quality, research-based classroom instruction. EDI’s goal of 80% student success during initial whole-class instruction fits the RTI Tier I 80% goal most schools use. The RTI model uses assessments to identify students for interventions. EDI identifies students for targeted interventions at the lesson level, specifically through Checking for Understanding. EDI recommends pulling out identified students for small-group instruction (In-Class Intervention) at the end of a lesson. This is RTI Tier II, which includes 15% of students. EDI suggests the use of Out-of-Class Intervention for the final 5% of students who need additional help. This is the RTI Tier III intervention.

Summary EDI has extensive differentiation and scaffolding built in to support students. It comes from both lesson design itself and the delivery strategies you use while teaching.

We’re ready for Having Students Work by Themselves: Independent Practice and Periodic Review.

14 Having Students Work by Themselves Independent Practice and Periodic Review

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Starting With the End in Mind: The Independent Practice Must Match the Lesson Although this chapter on Independent Practice comes near the end of this book, you already know that you need to consider the Independent Practice during the entire design and delivery of the lesson. That’s because the whole lesson is strategically designed to teach students how to do the types of problems that are included in the Independent Practice. Your entire EDI lesson is designed to teach the students how to successfully complete the Independent Practice.

What Is Independent Practice? Independent Practice is any type of assignment students complete by themselves without the teacher’s help. It can be an assignment given to students to complete in class, or it can be a homework assignment students are to complete at home by themselves. When students work in groups with each other, this is also a form of Independent Practice because they are not receiving instruction from the teacher. Here is an example of Independent Practice. “Students, I want you to do the odd problems on page 46. Start on them now. Those that you don’t complete will be your homework for tonight.” It is important to know how to use Independent Practice correctly. Independent Practice is not for students to teach themselves the content. You teach students the content during an EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) lesson. Independent Practice is where students practice and apply the concepts and skills they were just taught, that they now know how to do. Students are sometimes given increasing quantities of problems in an attempt to improve their learning. But additional problems only improve learning if students already know how to do them. Assigning additional homework problems won’t help students who don’t know how to do them. From John and Silvia: We have collected worksheets where students do every problem wrong. These students don’t need more homework. They need more teaching before the homework is assigned.

The Real Purpose of Independent Practice Now let’s look at the reasons for Independent Practice. It might surprise you. It’s not to develop work habits or self-discipline or to reduce Internet chatting time. The real purpose of Independent Practice is to provide students with additional repetitions of the lesson’s concepts and skills so they will remember them. Repetitions strengthen the transfer of new information from working memory (conscious memory) into permanent, long-term memory. It’s important to note that information stored in long-term memory is the only information that can be retrieved later. Information that does not go beyond shortterm working memory is not retained by the brain and can’t be retrieved or used later. The necessary repetitions for remembering don’t come from just the Independent Practice, however. Many repetitions are provided during the lesson itself, especially during Skill Development, Guided Practice, and Checking for Understanding questioning. Repetitions also help students develop fluidity so they can work problems quickly and accurately.

Chapter 14  •  Having Students Work by Themselves  

Think about driving a car. The first time you drove, you probably spent considerable effort just driving in a straight line. After you learned to drive, you didn’t have to think about the steering wheel or the brake or the accelerator pedal. You operate them automatically. You reached automaticity. And that’s how you want your students to interact with academic skills such as long division, writing a paragraph, or analyzing text. From Silvia: This idea of automaticity is sometimes called “over learning,” where students are taken beyond minimal competency and can solve problems with ease and fluidity.

The repetitions during the lesson plus those provided by Independent Practice all build on each other to promote automaticity. When your students reach automaticity, they can retrieve and use information, procedures, and concepts from their long-term memories quickly and accurately. It’s in long-term memory, and it can be retrieved. From John: Many students can’t recall the multiplication facts. That’s because the facts are not in long-term memory to be recalled. No amount of encouragement, rewards, or punishment can retrieve information that is not there. Learning the multiplication facts requires many repetitions to transfer to long-term memory. Repetitions include saying, hearing, and writing the multiplication facts.

From Silvia: Teachers often state that students knew how to do it during class but had forgotten by the time the quiz was given on Friday. In these cases, the students had the information in working memory during the lesson but did not have enough practice or repetitions to transfer it into long-term memory.

Once again, the purpose of Independent Practice is not to learn content. It’s to provide repetitions to transfer the newly taught information into long-term memory and to develop fluidity and automaticity so students can work quickly and accurately. From John: Once I had some teachers tell me that students don’t learn because they don’t do their homework. Their mouths dropped in amazement when I replied, “To learn content, it doesn’t matter whether students do their homework or not. Students learn content while you teach it to them during the lesson.” As they caught their breaths, I went on to add that students do need to do homework and practice problems, but it’s to remember the content, not to learn it.

Motivating Students to Do Their Homework Schools often spend considerable energy trying to motivate students to do their homework. They encourage, prod, beg, plead, and bribe students to complete their assignments. The best way to get students to do homework is to ensure they know how to do the work before it is ever assigned. In fact, that’s the purpose of your entire EDI lesson: to prepare your students to complete the Independent Practice successfully. From Silvia: One day a teacher excitedly stopped me in the hallway. “Silvia, the day after you were here, when you had me reteach after all the Checking for Understanding, I had several students turn in homework for the first time in the entire year!” I smiled and replied, “That’s because they knew how to do it.” So always make sure your students know how to do the homework before assigning it. Knowing how to do the problems motivates students to do them.

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Strategies for Implementing Independent Practice Most of the time, Independent Practice merely entails handing out the worksheet or assigning problems from the textbook. However, there are two strategies that can be implemented during Independent Practice: In-Class Interventions and Structured Independent Practice.

In-Class Intervention During Independent Practice We already described how to implement In-Class Interventions during lesson Closure. You identify students during lesson Closure who need extra help. While the other students are working by themselves during Independent Practice, you pull out the identified students in a small group and provide them with extended teaching time.

Moving From Unstructured to Structured Independent Practice Assigning students Independent Practice on the skills and concepts that were taught is an important component of each lesson. Typically, students are given instructions for Unstructured Independent Practice, with instructions like this, “Your assignment for today is questions 1 through 12 at the end of Chapter 3. What you don’t finish in class, do for homework. I’ll be at my desk if you have any questions.” Usually, what happens at this point is fairly predictable. Left on their own, students get off task. They socialize and daydream. They get out their cell phones.

Use Structured Independent Practice There is a simple way to turn classroom Independent Practice into a more effective use of instructional time. This is done by holding all students accountable for their instructional productivity every few minutes to ensure they are progressing through the assignment and are academically engaged. Typical instructions for Structured Independent Practice go like this: Your assignment for today is questions 1 through 12 at the end of Chapter 8. In 3 minutes, I will check everyone’s response to question number 1. Three minutes after question number 1, I will check question number 2, and so forth until the end of the period. I am setting the timer right now. You can work ahead if you want, but be ready to show me the first answer in 3 minutes when the timer rings.

By retaining control of Independent Practice, teachers have found students to be academically engaged, working on the assignment. Also, classroom behavior improves since students are not left on their own.

Periodic Review Periodic Review is the last piece in the puzzle to help students remember. Periodic Review is additional repetitions (practice) spread out over time. Periodic Review goes by several names, such as daily review, warm-up problems, spiral review, fluency practice, or distributed practice, but the goal is the same: practice spread out over time. Periodic Review typically involves reviewing previously taught material, the next day, 1 week later, 2 weeks later, and 4 weeks later. The sessions don’t need to be long, but the student brains need the repetitions for memory retention.

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When DataWORKS writes a curriculum or creates pacing guides for schools, we build in Periodic Review. However, it’s complicated to schedule review for all lessons spread over different time frames, so we have a second approach we often use. We pace new lessons for 4 days a week and use the 5th day as a combination catch-up and Periodic Review Day. Another alternative would be to set aside certain days each month for review, such as the first and third Mondays. Either way will work. Just be sure to provide time for Periodic Review in your pacing calendar. But there is one important rule to follow that makes Periodic Review effective.

Periodic Review: You Do One First When you do Periodic Review, you need to do a problem first to remind students how to do it. Periodic Review is not a quiz to find out who already knows. Periodic Review is additional repetitions spread out over time to improve memory retention. When students don’t remember how to do it, they aren’t getting the additional repetitions they need. The “you do one first” can be done with various levels of support. • Use a complete Rule Two. You model working a problem first. You ask CFU questions about how you solved the problem. Then have students work matching problems. Have students pair-share to explain their work to each other. CFU by calling on random students to explain. •• Work a problem modeling your thinking processes. Have students immediately solve matching problems. Have students pair-share their answers. CFU by calling on random students to explain. •• Provide a worked problem on the board or in a book. Have students solve matching problems. Pair-share. CFU by calling on random students to explain.

From John: I was walking the halls with the principal, Mr. M. He had requested that all his math teachers include review problems every day. In class after class we visited, we saw review problems on the board for students to work at the beginning of the class. But there was a problem. As we stood in the hall between classes, we talked about what we were observing. He started, “I’m glad to see that the teachers have review problems, but I don’t see the students working them.” I agreed and added, “About half the students are working the problems. The other half are staring at the walls. They aren’t being disobedient. They don’t remember how to solve the problems, and they’re stuck.” This led to a big insight about review.

Summary Now you know that the purpose of Indepen­ dent Practice is not for students to learn the content on their own. Its purpose is to provide repetitions so students will remember what they were just taught while developing fluidity and automaticity with the new content. And you know that when you provide well-designed and well-delivered lessons, you expect high success rates every day when

students turn in their Independent Practice. And, of course, the Independent Practice must exactly match the content taught during the lesson. We’ve covered all the components of an EDI lesson, from Learning Objective to Independent Practice. Now let’s turn to the next chapter, Creating Well-Crafted Lessons: Putting It All Together.

15 Creating Well-Crafted Lessons

Assessment

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Explicit Direct Instruction lessons combine design components and delivery strategies into well-crafted lessons.

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e’ve covered all the individual components of an EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) lesson. Now we’re going to discuss how to design complete lessons. There are two approaches used in designing lessons. In the first approach, you have a textbook, and you are creating a lesson from existing materials. In the second approach, you are designing a lesson from scratch.

Creating EDI Lessons From a Textbook Most textbooks focus on providing content information and Independent Practice problems, but they don’t always include all the lesson design components or delivery strategies that maximize learning for students. For example, textbooks don’t always include continuous Checking for Understanding (CFU) questions, reasons why the lesson is important to learn, modeling of strategic thinking processes, or methods to help students remember the new content. When we train teachers, we ask them to bring their adopted materials to use in developing lessons. We have found that textbooks have some of the components of a well-crafted lesson, but may not have them all. We have also found that literature textbooks sometimes contain recall questions regarding what happened in the story as opposed to CFU questions on literary concepts such as characterization, irony, personification, imagery, figurative language, theme, and so forth. We rarely see adopted textbooks that tell teachers how to question students, how to use pairshares, or how to select random students. We have discovered that as teachers become more proficient with EDI, they are able to identify lesson components in their textbooks even if the components are not well labeled. For example, they can recognize when a definition at the top of the page or one in a “reminder to the teacher” in the margin is the definition to use for Concept Development. Even though the book provides problems, you now know that you will need to arrange them in matching pairs to be taught as Rule of Two—one for you, one for the students. When your textbook says “Show students how to work the sample problem,” you now know that this is Skill Development. You provide clear steps and then apply the steps while Modeling your internal thinking for the students. You ask CFU questions to verify students can describe the thinking required. Later on, your textbook might call for working examples with the students. This is Guided Practice. Even though the book doesn’t tell you, you know that you will have the students work with you step-by-step. You will have them hold up their whiteboards or answer questions at each step to verify that they are executing the steps correctly. Let’s go over each EDI lesson component and how you can locate them in your textbooks.

Independent Practice Most books provide worksheets, questions, or problems for students to work. Look at these first. This is Independent Practice. Throughout the design of the lesson, make sure you are preparing your students for the Independent Practice problems. During Skill Development and Guided Practice, be sure to explicitly teach all the variations found in the Independent Practice. If you are a standards-based school, verify that the lesson is on grade level.

Chapter 15  •  Creating Well-Crafted Lessons  

Checking for Understanding Textbooks generally don’t provide sufficient CFU questions. Sometimes there are no CFU questions in the text. You will need to create them yourself and intersperse them throughout your lesson. When you teach, use TAPPLE, pair-shares, complete sentences, whiteboards, and corrective feedback. Remember, your goal is 100% correct answers after corrective feedback, No matter how your textbook is organized, CFU responses tell you if you need to reteach. Some textbooks have “reteach” problems or lessons. These are actually for additional teaching time. Reteaching in EDI is real-time reteaching during the lesson while you are teaching. As you use EDI more and more, you develop a sixth sense about when to include CFU questions. But it’s best to always prepare some ahead of time while designing your lessons.

Learning Objective Objectives come from state standards. Textbooks often have a content standard written in the margin or on the bottom of the page. Make sure that the textbook’s Learning Objective is worded from the standard. Sometimes, textbooks reword the standards to match their lesson instead of changing their lesson to match the exact standard. Also, textbooks can change the standards to “kid-friendly” language. Be careful. Students need to learn and use the vocabulary that is contained in the standards. In fact, high-stakes test questions often use vocabulary taken directly from the standards they are assessing. Content standards often contain several Objectives, so you usually need to deconstruct the state standard into the specific Learning Objective that matches the Independent Practice. Some textbooks have a box labeled “Objectives.” Often these contain multiple Objectives. You will need to select the specific one you are explicitly teaching in a given lesson. Analyze the Independent Practice to see what the Objective is. Often textbooks include multiple Objectives that are only peripheral to the actual lesson being taught. EDI lessons teach one Objective in each lesson. You will sometimes need to rephrase the textbook’s Objective into a clearly stated EDI Learning Objective containing concepts, skills, and context. Your book may not tell you what to do with the Objective, but you know to have the students read the Objective chorally and to each other. Then you call on random students to read the Objective. Some textbooks start the lesson by asking students to describe what the Learning Objective means. Generally, students don’t know what the Objective means before the lesson is taught. In EDI we just ask students to read the Objective at the start of the lesson. They learn what it means over the course of the lesson.

Activate Prior Knowledge (APK) Textbooks don’t always include a clearly labeled APK lesson component. They sometimes provide warm-up problems that can be used to Activate Prior Knowledge if they are related to the new content. Often however, these warm-up problems turn out to be distributed practice from prior lessons and are not suitable for Activating Prior Knowledge for the new lesson. If the warm-up problems are actually Periodic Review, then do them outside of the lesson. In other words, don’t start the lesson, then stop to work unrelated problems and then return to the lesson.

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If your textbook has an effective APK, use it; otherwise, create your own. Then (1) Activate students’ Prior Knowledge using a Universal Experience or a Sub-Skill Review, (2) include Checking for Understanding, and (3) reveal the connection to the new lesson.

Concept Development Textbooks often have concept definitions in the margins, in boxes, or in the text. Concept Development can sometimes be identified in the teacher’s edition with phrases such as “tell the students that” or “explain that.” If you look carefully, you can usually find them. If your book doesn’t have a clear, bulletproof definition of the concept, then modify the one that is there or prepare a new one. Students need clear, concept definitions followed up with labeled examples and, when appropriate, non-examples. Be sure to provide written concept definitions for students to read. The definitions are best shown on a screen or whiteboard in front of the classroom, but they could be in the textbook or on worksheets. Textbooks sometimes start the lessons with examples and then students are asked to identify what the examples are. In these cases, you can easily modify the lesson. In EDI, you explicitly provide the Concept first and then use examples to illustrate the concept and reinforce its attributes. If your textbook doesn’t provide enough examples or strategic non-examples, then provide additional ones to support student learning. For Declarative Knowledge lessons (facts), you need to separate the big ideas (Concept Development) from the details (Skill Development). Sometimes for Declarative Knowledge, textbooks jump right to presenting details without focusing on the big ideas, the umbrella ideas. In these cases, you will need to expand on the textbook to provide sufficient Concept Development. For EDI Concept Development, review your textbook and then modify it as necessary so you can • Locate concept definitions and labeled examples in the text book. If they are missing, provide your own •• Teach Concepts by Explaining or using a physical Demonstration •• Ask CFU questions. Concept Development questions usually require students to apply the concept definitions to explain additional examples or non-examples

Skill Development (Teacher) and Guided Practice (Students) Many textbooks provide problems for Skill Development, but they are not always presented with clearly identified steps or procedures. Books often describe how to solve a specific example, but don’t provide generalizable steps for solving any problem. If your textbook doesn’t have clear steps, you will need to create them for your students. Textbooks sometimes provide “guided practice problems” or call for the teacher to “work problems with the students,” but the books usually don’t describe how to conduct Guided Practice.

Chapter 15  •  Creating Well-Crafted Lessons  

Rule of Two In EDI, Skill Development and Guided Practice are done using the Rule of Two (or the Internal Rule of Two). When using textbooks, you need to locate matched problems for you and your students to work. To provide effective Skill Development/Guided Practice for Procedural Knowledge (how to do something), you may need to modify your textbook in order to •• Look in the textbook for steps. If they are not there, create them •• Skill Development: Select problems for you to Model using the steps to solve •• Create CFU questions to verify that students can describe how you solved the problem •• Guided Practice: Locate matched problems for students to work •• Be prepared to CFU, checking each step •• Locate problems to teach all variations •• Identify problems for slow release toward students working by themselves To provide effective Skill Development/Guided Practice for Declarative Knowledge (facts and information), you may need to modify your textbook to •• Separate the umbrella ideas (the concepts) from additional details related to the concept •• Locate or prepare written definitions of the umbrella ideas to use for Concept Development •• Locate additional details for Skill Development and Guided Practice •• Use the literacy approach and extract the additional details from text •• Provide a schema to organize the details (graphic organizer with categories) •• Create CFU questions that address both the content and the literacy aspect of how the information is extracted from text and properly placed in the graphic organizer

Explain, Model, and Demonstrate Explaining, Modeling, and Demonstrating are not lesson components. They are lesson delivery strategies. But the more you think about delivery while you design your lesson, the more effective the lesson will be when you teach it. Most textbooks include material for Explaining, but you should be watching for areas where Modeling and physical Demonstrations will help students. Textbooks sometimes call for the teacher to “model a problem” or to “think aloud.” In both cases, switch into first person and reveal your strategic thinking processes while working a problem. Be ready to ask questions about your thinking processes. Use Modeling during Skill Development even if the book doesn’t suggest it. EDI Demonstrations use physical objects to advance students’ understanding of the concepts. If the book suggests a physical Demonstration, use it but only if it clarifies the concepts being taught. We have seen examples of physical activities that take up a

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lot of time but don’t really advance students’ understanding of concepts. In the past, valuable learning time was spent with students cutting, gluing, coloring, and pasting.

Relevance Most textbooks don’t explicitly provide a section on why learning the lesson is important. If you look carefully, however, you can often find something in the textbook describing why the lesson is important or how it is used in real life. Whether your book explicitly provides Relevance or you add it yourself, you can •• Provide reasons why the lesson is important to learn. Use personal, academic, and real life reasons. Use examples from the book, if available •• Call on volunteers to see if students have any additional reasons •• Check for Understanding of Relevance. Students, which reason is most important to you and why?

Closure Textbooks sometimes have a Closure problem or an Exit Ticket problem. Most likely, you will have to provide your own Closure. It’s easy. You can use a problem from the textbook or the Independent Practice. For lesson Closure, you ask students to •• Execute the skill (work a problem on their own) •• Solve an assessment-type question •• Summarize their learning using the new vocabulary from the lesson.

After Closure No matter how the book is organized, you can use these two specific practices while the class begins Independent Practice: •• Structured Independent Practice. Set an egg timer and have students hold up their work periodically to show you that they are completing the Independent Practice problems. •• In-Class Interventions. Pull out students identified during the lesson and Closure who need extra help. Work with them while the other students complete Independent Practice.

From John: This sounds like a lot of work, all this modification of the textbook. Teachers sometimes say they just want to teach whatever is in the book. However, if you don’t optimize your lessons, your students are being shortchanged. They are not being taught in the most effective manner. Lessons don’t get better when practices are omitted. They get worse. Learning doesn’t increase when practices are omitted. Learning gets reduced.

Creating Your Own EDI Lessons When writing a lesson from scratch, you create all the lesson components yourself. You often need to do this for standards—especially tested standards—that are not well covered in the adopted materials. Here are the steps to use in designing your own lesson. Note that the lesson is not usually written in the order it is taught.

Chapter 15  •  Creating Well-Crafted Lessons  

1. Select a standard. If you are a standards-based school, select a grade-level standard. If you are remediating students, select a standard that is below grade level that addresses a specific gap in students’ knowledge. Remedial lessons must be done during remedial time or reteach time and not during the time allocated for grade-level lessons. Remember, remediation must always be in addition to, not in place of, grade-level instruction if students are to be able to answer grade-level questions on state tests. 2. Create a Learning Objective from the standard. Remember, standards often contain multiple Learning Objectives. 3. Locate or create Independent Practice. Make sure it matches the Learning Objective. 4. Prepare Concept Development. Circle the concept in the Learning Objective. Create written definitions for the concept you circled. Provide labeled examples that show what the definitions mean. Include non-examples, only if they help clarify the concept. Write CFU questions. Generally, these questions require students to apply the definitions to additional examples or non-examples. 5. Prepare Skill Development and Guided Practice. Work a problem yourself. Write down the steps you used. Write CFU questions for the strategic steps that require thinking and decision making. Locate or create sets of matching problems that cover all the variations in the Independent Practice. 6. Go back and create Activate Prior Knowledge (APK). It is often easier to create an effective APK after you have prepared Concept Development and Skill Development since you are more aware of the sub-skills and the exact definition of the concept. Write a Universal Experience or Sub-Skill Review. Write the Connection explaining how the APK leads to the new content. 7. Prepare Relevance. Write personal, academic, or real-life reasons why the lesson is important to learn. Include an example for each one. Add CFU. Any other reasons? Which is the most important reason to you and why? 8. Prepare Closure. There are three options: Provide a skill-based problem. Provide an assessment-type question. Provide a Summary Closure with a word bank for students to use.

Use EDI 66% of the Time Students best learn new grade-level content each year by being taught grade-level content in well-crafted lessons. Ideally, teachers should spend two thirds of their instructional time teaching new grade-level content to their students in wellcrafted, well-taught lessons. At DataWORKS, we have observed thousands of classrooms. From our observations, we discovered that on average teachers spend only about one third of the day presenting content to students in organized lessons. Large parts of the day are spent on reviewing, going over assignments, giving tests, and having students work independently by themselves. In some classrooms we see teachers walk students through filling out worksheets instead of explicitly teaching the concepts and skills that are needed to complete the worksheet. In many instances, worksheets have become the lessons themselves instead of being the Independent Practice to use at the end of well-crafted lessons.

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Use EDI Strategies All the Time Even if You Don’t Have a Lesson At DataWORKS, our straightforward strategy for improving student learning and increasing student achievement is for schools to maximize the use of wellcrafted, well-taught lessons every day that explicitly teach students grade-level concepts and skills. That’s what this whole book is about. However, even when you don’t have a full start-to-finish EDI lesson, students can still benefit from the EDI strategies. You can use the Engagement Norms any time you are working with students: one-on-one, small group, or whole class. You can always add Checking for Understanding questions using TAPPLE, or use the Rule of Two to work problems.

Suppose, for example, you are providing a review before an important test. Rather than just having students sitting at their desks by themselves answering practice questions, use the Rule of Two. You work a problem first. Then have students work a matching problem. Intersperse CFU questions requiring students to describe how you and they solved the problem. Ask students to pair-share. Have students show answers on whiteboards. Call on random students to report out. When reviewing Declarative Knowledge content with students, your purpose is to get the information into long-term memory. To do this, you need to facilitate maximum student interaction with the information. Present the content concisely. Have the students discuss the information, take notes, fill out organizers, and answer CFU questions. When you go over tests or homework, don’t just give the answer. Model how you think through the problem, or how you know how to answer the question. Then ask CFU questions about your thinking processes. If necessary, ask the students to solve a similar problem.

You Have the Tools to Change Education With EDI you have all the tools to prepare and deliver effective lessons. Your students will learn more and learn faster and perform at higher levels. You can use EDI to teach any content, anywhere, to all students. At DataWORKS, we believe that every time lessons improve . . . even a little bit . . . students learn more. And that’s how test scores go up. If you think about it, for test scores to increase, students must know more, must learn more, must be taught more. During our thousands and thousands of classroom observations, we have found inconsistent use of effective teaching practices. We have also found that many

Chapter 15  •  Creating Well-Crafted Lessons  

school reforms such as class size reduction, block scheduling, after-school tutoring—even new textbook adoptions—do not improve classroom teaching practices. We realized that school reform lies neither with the students nor with the school facilities. It’s the lesson. What’s important is well-crafted, well-taught lessons day after day after day after day after day, where students turn to you at the end of the lesson and confidently say, “I can do it!”

DataWORKS Enters the Classroom to Teach A Final Story From John A few years ago, Silvia decided that she and I would teach EDI demo lessons for all grade levels kindergarten to twelfth grade in all content areas. Here is how it started. One day Silvia wrote an e-mail to a school where she was scheduled to coach teachers presenting EDI lessons. She handed me a copy. It said: Greetings teachers, Today, I will be observing your class. I am providing you with three choices for the coaching session. 1. I will sit quietly, observe, and then we will debrief after the lesson. 2. You may ask me for assistance during the lesson. For example, if you need a Checking for Understanding question, you may turn to me. 3. If you are stuck or the lesson is going poorly, you may turn to me to take over, and I will teach the lesson. Sincerely, Silvia Ybarra DataWORKS

When I saw this, I was trembling. “Silvia, do you think you can just take over any lesson and do a good job?” She replied, “I’m nervous just thinking about it, but I know the EDI strategies can be used for any grade level in any content area. If I stick to the strategies, I can do it.” Silvia and I are often separated on the road for days at a time training teachers and providing classroom coaching. A few weeks later, she wrote a different e-mail to another school. Dear Principal, Yes, I will be happy to teach a lesson at your school so your teachers can see EDI in action. Please tell me the grade level and the content area you want me to teach. Sincerely, Silvia Ybarra DataWORKS

Later Silvia told me of the requested lesson. Teach a history lesson on the Reformation to English Learners who are poor readers using the grade-level textbook. She wrote a Learning Objective: Describe the theological, political, and economic ideas of three major figures during the Reformation.

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Within a few months Silvia had taught lessons to students in almost every grade level in various content areas using EDI. My turn came next. I was assigned to teach an Algebra I class. I was nervous when I stepped up in front of 30 students I had never seen before. The teacher handed me a stack of 3” × 5” index cards with the students’ names to use for Checking for Understanding. There was a filming crew present. I was wired for sound with a wireless mic. I stepped up to the front of the class and started, “Today, students, we are going to solve and interpret a system of simultaneous linear equations by graphing. Let’s read the Objective together . . .” After the lesson, Silvia, who had watched from the back of the room, hugged me. “That was great! That was EDI! You strung together technique after technique after technique, and the students were successful!” Later on I learned that the class was not even an algebra class. I had successfully taught an algebra lesson to pre-algebra students. Of course, I used all the EDI strategies. I brought my own whiteboards and had all students responding with them within a few minutes of the start of the lesson. I used “I’ll come back to you” when students couldn’t answer and retaught when necessary. On that day, DataWORKS actually taught three lessons. Silvia and I both taught one, and another DataWORKS consultant taught a middle school science lesson, “Describe the process of mitosis.” During our debriefings after the lessons, teachers were amazed at how successful ALL the students were. They were especially impressed that students they had considered to be lower performing were successfully participating and correctly answering CFU questions. Silvia was right: “EDI can be used for any grade level in any content area.” Explicit Direct Instruction is the method of teaching where students learn more and learn faster. You can do it!

16 Looking at All the Components Analyzing a Sample Lesson

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hroughout this book you’ve seen parts of sample lessons. In this chapter, we’ll analyze a complete lesson so you can see how it is put together. After looking at this lesson, you can go online at educeri.com and see over 1,000 Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) lessons covering all grade levels.

Use educeri.com for EDI Lessons Educeri is our EDI lesson subscription service. You can get free trial access to over 1,000 lessons just by entering your e-mail address. Educeri will then e-mail you an invitation to join. Educeri EDI lessons are ready to teach. That means you just project them on a screen and start teaching. The lessons include downloadable student handouts you can print for your students. Some lessons have online quizzes for students. The Educeri site has many other resources besides EDI lessons. It has Common Core and Next Generation Science Learning Objectives. We have downloadable posters for TAPPLE (Checking for Understanding), Student Engagement Norms, and the Rule of Two. New material is being added every day, so be sure to check what is available.

EDI Lesson Layout Let’s use educeri.com to look at sample EDI lessons. We’ll study fifth grade “Draw inferences from the text.” Although this is fifth grade, the design principles and layout will apply to any lesson for any grade. EDI lessons are organized into the EDI lesson components, containing the exact content to project and present to your students. Educeri lessons don’t include instructions for lesson delivery such as “Have the students pair-share here,” “Use Modeling here to show your strategic thinking,” or “Have the students read the concept definition chorally with you.” You add the delivery strategies yourself while you teach. Basically, the Engagement Norms are the delivery strategies. You teach EDI using the Engagement Norms.

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Slide 1: A lesson overview page on educeri.com.

Click on the lesson itself to start teaching. On the right side under “Additional Resources” is the link to download a student handout.

Learning Objective EDI lessons start with a Learning Objective, which is shown on the top of slide 2. EDI lessons include two to seven new vocabulary words in every lesson, in addition to the concept definitions. You can see the footnoted word “draw” in the Learning Objective. The definition is shown in the vocabulary box located on the lower right side. The definition is notated as a multiple-meaning word, giving you a heads up about how to teach it. Students already know to “draw” pictures, but draw has a new meaning in this lesson. The CFU (Checking for Understanding) questions are shown in the box on the right side. After you teach a few EDI lessons, you know what the Learning Objective questions will be, and you don’t need to read from the box.

Activate Prior Knowledge A Universal Experience APK (Activate Prior Knowledge) is used in this lesson to activate students’ prior knowledge of inferences. Students can answer from their life experiences. APK usually includes two problems: one for the teacher and one for the students. However, this Universal Experience is simple enough that you don’t need to model one first. Just direct students to write their answers on their

Chapter 16  •  Looking at All the Components  

Slide 2: Learning Objective and Activate Prior Knowledge.

whiteboards and pair-share “My educated guess is . . .” Call for a show of boards. Call on non-volunteers to explain their answers. The connection of APK to the new content is provided for you in a box on the lower right side. You can read it or just paraphrase it.

Concept Development Slide 3 shows Concept Development for EDI, which includes written concept definitions, labeled examples, and CFU questions. Depending on the specific lesson, there can be illustrations or computer automation to show a concept and footnoted vocabulary definitions. In this example, a vocabulary definition is provided for the word “quoting” in the third sentence from the top of the page. Checking for Understanding questions related to the concepts are in a box on the right side. These questions are application level questions, requiring students to apply the concept definitions to examples or non-examples.

Skill Development and Guided Practice Slides 4 and 5 show Skill Development and Guided Practice, which include a copy of the Concept Definitions at the top of the slide. Although you, the teacher, understand the concepts, you can refer to them while you model your thinking to solve problems. This reinforces the concepts for students. Steps are provided for you to work step-by-step, showing students exactly how to solve problems. Be sure to read the steps with your students. The steps are in formal academic English. (Read the text and identify the inference.) The story itself is in more conversational English. (Anita rolled over in her bed.) Students are not asked to memorize the steps, but you and the students use steps during the lesson.

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Slide 3: Concept Development.

In Educeri EDI lessons, answers show up on the screen while you teach. In slide 4, the circled text and the underlined text are answers to question 1. The answer for question 2 is shown below the question. Although the answers are all shown here, they actually appear one at a time when you click to advance the slide. This is another advantage of Educeri lessons. You don’t need to refer to a teacher’s edition for the answers. The answers are already built into the lessons themselves and show up as you click to advance the slides. EDI lessons use the Rule of Two: the first problem for the teacher and second problem for the students. In this example, you use the Internal Rule of Two. You analyze sentences 1 to 5, one at a time, deciding if they support the inference that Anita is running late for school. Then you continue sentence by sentence, having students read and then “vote” with their whiteboards. Does the sentence support the inference, yes or no, and why? Remember you can’t just do every other sentence for the Internal Rule of Two to work. In this example, you analyze sentences 1 to 3, Modeling why they don’t support the inference. Then you analyze sentences 4 and 5, Modeling how specific words support the inference. You have now Modeled analyzing supporting and nonsupporting sentences. The students can now analyze sentences 6 and 7. Skill and Guided Practice include CFU questions that are generally “How did I . . . ?” and “How did you . . . ?” Footnoted vocabulary definitions are included for identify and basking. Slide 5, on the next page, provides additional questions about the passage. These application questions are often similar to national or state test questions. In this case, the questions use reverse logic such as explaining why a sentence is not an inference. These questions are great for generating higher-order thinking. Students clarify their understanding and thinking when they explain why a statement is not correct. You can see the letter “T” in the answer box. This is hinting that the teacher do these questions. However, EDI is not scripted. If the students are ready, have them answer these questions.

Chapter 16  •  Looking at All the Components  

Slide 4: Skill Development and Guided Practice with answers shown.

Slide 5: Skill Development and Guided Practice with answers shown.

Slide 6 provides another passage to analyze. If your students are confident at this point, have them identify the inference in the question. Then have them “vote” with their whiteboards sentence-by-sentence, explaining which sentences support the inference. If your students need additional support, you could analyze sentences 1 and 2. Then have your students analyze the remaining sentences and answer question 2 at the bottom of the page.

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Slide 6: Skill Development and Guided Practice (continued) with answers shown.

Slide 7: Skill Development and Guided Practice (continued) with answers shown.

Slide 7 has two Application level questions. There is a small “s” on the left indicating that these are for students to answer. Possible answers are shown in a different color. Slide 8 provides an additional passage and question. High-stakes testing generally use longer passages, so we often include longer passages for students to analyze. Also, the question has changed from “which sentence . . . ?” to “which paragraph supports the idea . . . ?” The answer is shown in a different color in the last paragraph and appears after you click on the page. This passage would be too long to use for initial teaching to answer one question but is in a format often used in testing which would then ask additional questions about the paragraph.

Chapter 16  •  Looking at All the Components  

Note that the specific steps used in the prior slides have been changed to a generic list of steps applicable to any reading comprehension question. Step 2, “Determine the ELA concept involved” is important. Teaching your students how to recognize the concept being assessed such as theme, inference, or characterization can help them answer the question. Also, the question did not use the word inference. It used “supports the idea that” instead. Slides 9 and 10 explain lesson Relevance and include written reasons why the lesson is important to learn. Have students chorally read the reasons, and then you elaborate using the examples below each reason.

Slide 8: Skill Development and Guided Practice (continued) with answers shown.

Slide 9: Lesson Relevance.

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Slide 10 for lesson Relevance includes an example of a question taken from the Smarter Balanced released questions. (Smarter Balanced provides one of the tests for the Common Core State Standards.) The intent is to show students a sample test question, not to have them answer the question. If you look back to slide 8, you can see that the text was modeled after this released question.

Slide 10: Lesson Relevance.

Slide 11 contains a Skill Closure problem. The answers are shown, but they don’t appear on the slide until you click.

Slide 11: Closure with answers shown.

Chapter 16  •  Looking at All the Components  

We often include additional questions that reflect some of the current types of test questions. We call them Extended Thinking or Access Common Core since they are based on assessment questions used by Smarter Balanced and PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), the two organizations providing assessments for Common Core State Standards. The question on this slide uses reverse logic where students must state why a sentence is not an inference. Students have already done this during the lesson. The Summary Closure on the bottom of the page is a new addition to EDI. Students must describe what they learned and must include some of the new vocabulary from the word bank on the right side. The Summary Closure could also be used as an exit ticket at the end of a class period.

Slide 12: Access Common Core and Summary Closure.

The Summary Closure can be used even if you didn’t finish the entire lesson. When you have a few minutes left, have students complete the Summary Closure. This can be done orally for younger students, while older students write complete sentences on their worksheets or in their journals about what they learned. Have students pair-share, and call on students to report out. Following the lesson comes Independent Practice or homework (see slide 13). If students are working on Independent Practice in the classroom, you can pull out a small group of students for additional help. Now you should be able to recognize the various lesson components in other lessons or in your own instructional materials. Are you ready? Let’s try it.

Exercise

Select a different lesson on educeri.com or a lesson you have in your own textbook, or just look at the inference lesson in this book again. Use the EDI Lesson Design Checklist to see if you can identify all the parts of a lesson.

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Slide 13: Independent Practice with answers shown.

EDI Lesson Design Checklist Learning Objective (LO) __  Written Learning Objective with Concept and Skill __  Footnoted vocabulary definition (not always used) __  CFU questions __  Sentence frame

Activate Prior Knowledge (APK) __  Text for students to read __  Definitions, if necessary __  Footnoted vocabulary definition (not always used) __  Universal Experience or __  Sub-Skill Review __  Matched problems for teacher and students __  CFU questions __  Sentence frame __  Connection of APK to new learning

Chapter 16  •  Looking at All the Components  

Concept Development (CD) __  Written Concept definitions __  Labeled Examples __  Non-Examples, if applicable __  CFU questions __  Academic text for student to read __  Graphic organizer, if applicable __  Footnoted vocabulary definition __  Sentence frames __  Additional resources (word bank, tables, illustrations, etc.)

Skill Development and Guided Practice __  Written steps __  Rule of Two (matching problems) or __  I nternal Rule of Two (a longer problem or passage divided between teacher and students) __  CFU questions __  Academic text for students to read __  Footnoted vocabulary definition __  Sentence frames __  A  dditional resources (concept definitions, word bank, tables, illustrations, etc.)

Relevance __  Written Relevance reasons __  Examples to illustrate the reasons __  CFU questions __  Footnoted vocabulary definition __  Academic text for students to read __  Sentence frames __  A  dditional resources (concept definitions, word bank, tables, illustrations, etc.)

Closure __  Concept Closure Questions __  Skill Closure Questions __  Summary Closure (What did you learn today?) __  Academic text for student to read (Continued)

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(Continued) __  Assessment-Type Closure __  Footnoted vocabulary definition __  Sentence frames __  A  dditional resources (concept definitions, word bank, tables, illustrations, etc.)

Independent Practice __  Problems that match lesson __  All problem types from the lesson are included __  Footnoted vocabulary definitions __  A  dditional resources (concept definitions, word bank, tables, illustrations, etc.)

Periodic Review __  Problems that match the lesson __  Three Periodic Reviews __  Footnoted vocabulary definition __  A  dditional resources (concept definitions, word bank, tables, illustrations, etc.)

Summary We covered a lot in this chapter. We analyzed all the EDI lesson Design Components using an EDI lesson taken from educeri.com. You used the EDI Lesson Design Checklist to practice

analyzing another lesson. And this checklist can be used as a guide for writing lessons in the future.

• Resources • What the Research Says Explicit Direct Instruction Puts Research Into Practice There is extensive research to support the lesson design components and lesson delivery strategies of Explicit Direct Instruction. For those readers who would like an introduction to the research, we have provided a brief discussion in this section on resources. Direct instruction itself is not new. It has been around for a long time, so some of our references go back in time, too. For example, the instructional term wait-time was proposed by Mary Budd Rowe back in 1986. She found that when teachers waited at least 3 seconds before selecting students to respond to questions, positive things happened for both students and teachers. And Madeline Hunter used the term checking for understanding in the 1980s.

Chapter 2. Are Some Approaches Better Than Others? What Is Effective Instruction? Refer to Chapter 3 notes below.

Chapter 3. Good Instruction Is Always Good Instruction: An Explicit Direct Instruction Overview There is overwhelming research supporting teacher-centered instruction in lesson design and lesson delivery where teachers directly teach their students specific concepts and skills usually taken directly from the state content standards. In 2012, international researchers Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller published their findings about direct instruction: Decades of research clearly demonstrate that for novices (comprising virtually all students), direct, explicit instruction is more effective and more efficient than partial guidance. So, when teaching new content and skills to novices, teachers are more effective when they provide explicit guidance accompanied by practice and feedback, not when they require students to discover many aspects of what they must learn. On the next page is a table showing five instructional models. We have added our EDI model to the right side of the table to show how it compares to other researchers’ direct instruction models. In a study covering one hundred years of educational research, Jeanne Chall (2000) found that the traditional teacher-centered, direct instruction approach produces higher student achievement. 205

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Good & Grouws (1979), Missouri Mathematics Program

DataWORKS Educational Research (2017), EDI

1. Objectives; provide anticipatory set

1. Opening

1. Learning Objective

2. Review

2. Review homework; mental computations; review prerequisites

2. Activate Prior Knowledge

2. Presentation (small steps; model; examples; check understanding)

3. Input and modeling

3. Development

3. Concept Development

3. Guided practice (high frequency of questions; all students respond; high success rate; continue to fluency)

4. Check understanding and guided practice

4. Assess student comprehension

4. Skill Development

Gagne (1977); Gagne & Briggs (1979)

Rosenshine (1995)

1. State learning objectives and orient students to lesson

1. Gain and control attention

1. Review (homework; state goals)

2. Review prerequisites

3. Stimulate recall of relevant prerequisite capabilities

3. Present new material

4. Present the stimuli inherent to the learning task

4. Conduct learning probes

5. Offer guidance for learning

Slavin (2014)

2. Inform the learner of expected outcomes (Relevant previous learning; prerequisite skills)

Hunter (1982), Mastery Teaching

5. Guided Practice

6. Relevance 6. Elicit performance 7. Provide feedback 8. Appraise performance 5. Provide independent practice 6. Assess performance and provide feedback 7. Provide distributed practice and review

9. Ensure retention and make provisions for transferability

7. Lesson Closure

4. Corrections and feedback (process; sustaining; reteach)

5. Independent practice (help during initial steps; continue to automaticity; active supervision)

5. Independent practice

5. Seatwork

Independent Practice

6. Weekly and monthly reviews

6. Homework

6. Homework; weekly and monthly reviews

Periodic Review

Source: Adapted from Huitt, W. (2003). Classroom instruction. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/instruct/instruct.html

Resources  •  What the Research Says  

A meta-analysis study by Adams and Engelmann (1996) yielded over 350 publications of studies conducted on explicit instruction. The authors found the consistent results of research as evidence that explicit instruction is an effective instructional practice for all students. There is also extensive brain research supporting the compatibility of direct instruction strategies and the way the brain works. On pages 281 through 283 of How the Brain Learns, David Sousa (2011) describes how brain research supports the components of direct instruction. Research also supports the use of direct instruction with various student populations: •• English Learners (Goldenberg, 2006); •• African American students (Chall, 2000; Delpit, 2006; Jencks & Phillips, 1998); • special education students (American Federation of Teachers, 1999); •• talented and gifted students, grade-level students, and those with diverse language backgrounds or “learning styles” (Watkins & Slocum, 2004), and •• high school students (Bessellieu, 2000; Graham, 2005; National Institute for Literacy, 2007; Nokes & Dole, 2004; Shanahan, 2004; Shaywitz, et al. 1999; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). A meta-analysis study showed that comprehensive school reform programs that have the strongest evidence of effectiveness favor teacher-centered instruction (Borman, Hewes, Overman, & Brown, 2003). In addition, research supports the use of direct instruction in various content areas: •• reading (Mathes, et al., 2003; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2000; Pearson & Dole, 1987), •• mathematics (Anderson, Corbett, Koedinger, & Pelletier, 1995; Baker, Gersten, & Lee, 2002; Klahr & Carver, 1988; Rittle-Johnson, 2006), •• science (Chen & Klahr, 1999; Coker, Lorentz, & Coker, 1980; Klahr & Nigam, 2004; Kuhn, Black, Keselman, & Kaplan, 2000), and •• history/social science (Twyman, McCleery, & Tindal, 2006).

Chapter 4. Creating Engaged Students: Use Engagement Norms! Pronounce with me: Students with proper English pronunciation are more likely to be understood, even if they make errors in grammar or syntax. Not knowing how to pronounce a word in English often causes students to avoid communicating in English and can eventually lead to social isolation and employment difficulties (Gilakjani, 2012). Track with me: In research, this skill is often referred to as Directional Tracking. The purpose is to promote the processing of sounds in order from left to right. Poor readers have frequent tracking errors where they improperly process letters and sounds out of order. Tracking promotes correct phonological processing (Gagen, 2007). Read with me: Also known as choral reading, this strategy builds confidence in readers and extends the enjoyment of reading (Opitz & Rasinski, 2008).

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Gesture with me: Gestures provide cognitive support when children attempt to talk about difficult tasks (Evans & Rubin, 1979). In one study, children were less likely to reiterate teacher speech if there was no gesture than if it was accompanied by a matching gesture (Goldin-Meadow, Kim, & Singer, 1999). Pair-Share: The pair-share technique is often combined with typical instruction to foster collaborative learning (Rao & Dicarlo, 2000). It allows students to “rehearse in a low-risk situation” the answer that they will deliver to the teacher if called on (Barkley, Cross & Major, 2014). Pair-share also allows for the researchrecommended wait time, which in turn has been proven to increase student response rate (Marzano, Pickering, & Heflebower, 2011). Attention signal: The best type of attention signal is a responsive signal that serves as a way of creating “cultural resonance” with the students, giving them something they can relate to while at the same time bringing them to attention (Muhammad & Hollie, 2011). Whiteboards: When teachers effectively Check for Understanding (CFU) they gather real-time data about what students know and are able to do. Asking students to respond on whiteboards is a visual Checking for Understanding that can be used to check the entire class at once (Fisher & Frey, 2014). Complete sentences: If students aren’t using the words, they aren’t developing academic discourse. The key is for students to talk with one another, in purposeful ways, using academic language (Fisher, Frey & Rothenberg, 2008).

Chapter 5. Is Everyone Learning? Checking for Understanding Refer to Chapter 6 notes below.

Chapter 6. Everyone Learns: Corrective Feedback and Whiteboards Many researchers have described the importance of Checking for Understanding questions throughout the lesson (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Cotton, 1988; Hunter, 1982; Sanders, 1966; Vosniadou, Ioannides, Dimitrakopoulou, & Papademetriou, 2001). The components of the TAPPLE method of Checking for Understanding are supported by research. Several studies confirm the importance of wait time after posing questions to students (Casteel & Stahl, 1973; Rowe, 1972, 1986; Stahl, 1990; Tobin, 1987). Selecting non-volunteers follows the research by Madeline Hunter (2004). Providing effective feedback to student responses operationalizes research that has consistently found that when teachers use effective feedback, they improve the academic achievement of their students (Bellon, Bellon, & Blank, 1992; Black & Wiliam, 1998; Clarke, 2001).

Chapter 7. Establishing What Is Going to Be Taught: Learning Objective Research shows that student achievement improves when students are told what they are going to learn (Althoff, et al., 2007; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986).

Resources  •  What the Research Says  

Chapter 8. Connecting to What Students Already Know: Activating Prior Knowledge Many researchers have shown that Activating Prior Knowledge improves student comprehension and academic achievement (Marzano, 1998; Marzano et al., 2001; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; Spires, Gallini, & Riggsbee, 1992).

Chapter 9. These Are the Big Ideas: Concept Development Refer to Chapter 10 notes below.

Chapter 10. I’ll Work a Problem First: Rule of Two—Skill Development and Guided Practice Chapters 9 and 10 have not only operationalized research that supports teaching concepts and skills, but they have also shown how EDI integrates these components into each lesson to provide powerful learning experiences for students. Explicit Direct Instruction supports spending a significant portion of a lesson on Concept Development and Skill Development. Studies of classroom teachers support this premise (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Evertson, Emmer, & Brophy, 1980; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986, p. 381; Wigdor, 1999). Many researchers are stressing the importance of concept development in mathematics (Hiebert & Carpenter, 1992; Mayer, 1974; Mayer, Stiehl, & Greeno, 1975; Robertson, 2008; Swan, 1990; von Glasersfeld, 1996; Walkerdine, 1998). The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), in its Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) and Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991), presents a vision of mathematics education where all students develop procedural and conceptual understanding of important mathematical ideas through high quality, engaging instruction. EDI focuses on having lessons designed and taught at the proper skill level. This matches research calling for lessons at the proper cognitive level and that the cognitive levels match during instruction, Independent Practice, and assessments (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom, 1956). EDI applies research showing student achievement improves when teachers include: •• Modeling (teacher think-aloud) (Bandura, 1977; Baumann, Jones, & SeifertKessell, 1993; Davey, 1983; Hennings, 1993; Ivey, 2002; Ivey & Broaddus, 2001; Olshavsky, 1977); and •• Physical Demonstrations (Hake, 1992; Korwin & Jones, 1990; Willingham, 2006). Research studies support extensive use of teacher-led Guided Practice, including feedback for students and determination if reteaching is necessary so that students can do Independent Practice successfully (Coker, Lorentz, & Coker, 1980; Evertson, Anderson, Anderson, & Brophy, 1980; Good & Grouws, 1979; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Rosenshine & Meister, 1992; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986; Stallings, 1974; Stallings et al., 1978, 1979). An often unnoticed, but important part of the Skill Development and Guided Practice involves something we refer to as the Rule of Two (often referred to as the “I do, You do” strategy), the research-based method of providing

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the student with a similar problem to the one the teacher will model. This is mentioned by many researchers including Clark (2012).

Chapter 11. This Is Important to Learn: Relevance An integral part of an EDI lesson is teaching students the importance, the relevance, of learning the content in the lesson. Researchers have found that classroom activities that connect lessons to real life increase student classroom participation and motivation (Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Lumsden, 2000; Policy Studies Associates, 1995; Skinner & Belmont, 1993).

Chapter 12. Making One Final Check: Closing the Lesson Lesson Closure supports research stating that it is important that students not practice their misperceptions or errors, and especially not practice their mistakes into permanence. Pat Wolfe (1998) writes in Educational Leadership about this problem. Hunter (2004) also describes this effect. She says, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; it makes permanent.” Lesson Closure in Explicit Direct Instruction is specifically designed to prevent students from practicing problems before they know how to complete them. Teachers use Closure to verify that students know the new content before they are asked to work by themselves.

Chapter 13. Planning for Success: Differentiation and Scaffolding Differentiation means delivering content appropriate for the ability level of the student. The idea is to “meet the child where they are when they enter the class and move them forward as far as possible on their educational path” (Levy, 2008). In EDI this often involves de-escalating CFU questions to the level of the student. Instead of asking an open-ended question, rephrase the question to be multiplechoice. EDI provides Response to Intervention (Response to Intervention Network, 1999) according to its three tiers, but handles 80% during the lesson, 15% in small groups after the lesson, and 5% out of class.

Chapter 14. Having Students Work by Themselves: Independent Practice and Periodic Review This chapter follows the research that states that Independent Practice is the outcome of a well-designed and well-taught lesson and that Independent Practice serves to help students remember and retain the information. When students are taught new content, they undergo two phases: acquisition and consolidation. Well-designed lessons contribute to the acquisition phase. Independent Practice contributes to the consolidation phase. Independent Practice or homework provides students the opportunity to practice new content and skills and to internalize concepts or processes (Bailey, Silvern, Brabham, & Ross, 2004; Balli, Wedman, & Demo, 1997; Gagne & Driscoll, 1974; House, 2004; Hunter, 2004; Marzano, 1998; Singh, Granville, & Dika, 2002; Trautwein, Köller, Schmitz, & Baumert, 2002; Van Voorhis, 2003; Walberg, Paschal, & Weinstein, 1985).

• References • Adams, Gary L., and Siegfried Engelmann. 1996. Research in Direct Instruction: 25 Years Beyond DISTAR. Seattle: Educational Achievement Systems.

Barkley, Elizabeth F., Patricia Cross, and Claire Howell Major. 2014. Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Althoff, Sarah E., Kristen J. Linde, John D. Mason, Ninja M. Nagel, and Katie A. O’Reilly. 2007. “Learning Objectives: Posting and Communicating Daily Learning Objectives to Increase Student Achievement and Motivation.” ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED496125. Chicago: Saint Xavier University & Pearson Achievement Solutions.

Baumann, James F., Leah A. Jones, and Nancy SeifertKessell. 1993. “Using Think Alouds to Enhance Children’s Comprehension Monitoring Abilities.” The Reading Teacher 47 (November): 184–93.

American Federation of Teachers. 1999. “Building From the Best, Learning From What Works: Five Promising Remedial Reading Intervention Programs.” Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers. Accessed July 2004. http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/ teachers/remedial.pdf. Anderson, John R., Albert T. Corbett, Kenneth R. Koedinger, and Ray Pelletier. 1995. “Cognitive Tutors: Lessons Learned.” Journal of the Learning Sciences 4 (2): 167–207. Anderson, Lorin W., and David R. Krathwohl, eds. 2001. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Outcomes. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Ardovino, Joan, John Hollingsworth, and Silvia Ybarra. 2000. Multiple Measures: Accurate Ways to Assess Student Achievement. Thousand Oaks: Corwin. Bailey, Lora B., Steven B. Silvern, Edna Brabham, and Margaret Ross. 2004. “The Effects of Interactive Reading Homework and Parent Involvement on Children’s Inference Responses.” Early Childhood Education Journal 32 (3): 173–8. Baker, Scott, Russell Gersten, and Dae-Sik Lee. 2002. “A Synthesis of Empirical Research on Teaching Mathematics to Low-Achieving Students.” The Elementary School Journal 103 (1): 51–73. Balli, Sandra J., John F. Wedman, and David H. Demo. 1997. “Family Involvement With Middle-Grades Homework: Effects of Differential Prompting.” Journal of Experimental Education 66(Fall): 31–48. Bandura, Albert. 1977. Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press.

Bellon, Jerry, Elner Bellon, and Mary Ann Blank. 1992. Teaching From a Research Knowledge Base: A Development and Renewal Process. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 277–8. Bessellieu, Frances B. 2000. “Direct Instruction: Its Contributions to High School Achievement.” High School Journal (December). Accessed February 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb139/is_200012/ ai_n7840199. Black, Paul, and Dylan William. 1998. “Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment.” Phi Delta Kappan October. Bloom, Benjamin Samuel, ed. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York: Longmans, Green. Borman, Geoffrey, Gina M. Hewes, Laura T. Overman, and Shelly Brown. 2003. “Comprehensive School Reform and Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research 73 (2): 125–230. Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Casteel, J. Doyle, and Robert J. Stahl. 1973. The Social Science Observation Record: Theoretical Construct and Pilot Studies. Gainesville: P. K. Yonge Laboratory School. Chall, Jeanne S. 2000. The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? New York: Guilford Press. Chen, Zhe, and David Klahr. 1999. “All Other Things Being Equal: Children’s Acquisition of the Control of Variables Strategy.” Child Development 70: 1098–1120. Clark, Richard E., Paul A. Kirschner, and John Sweller. Spring 2012. “Putting Students on the Path to Learning:

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Gilakjani, Abas Pourhosein. 2012. “The Significance of Pronunciation in English Language Teaching.” English Language Teaching 5 (4). Goldenberg, Claude. 2006. “Improving Achievement for English-Learners: What the Research Tells Us.” Education Week 25 (43): 34–6. Goldin-Meadow, Susan, San Kim, and Melissa Singer. 1999. “What the Teacher’s Hands Tell the Student’s Mind About Math.” Journal of Educational 91 (4): 720–30. Good, Thomas L., and Douglas A. Grouws. 1979. “The Missouri Mathematics Effectiveness Project: An Experimental Study in Fourth-Grade Classrooms.” Journal of Educational Psychology 71 (3): 355–62. Graham, Steve. 2005. “Strategy Instruction and the Teaching of Writing: A Meta-Analysis.” In Handbook of Writing Research, edited by Charles A. MacArthur, Steve Graham, and Jill Fitzpatrick, 187–208. New York: Guilford Press. Hake, Richard. 1992. “Socratic Pedagogy in the Introductory Physics Laboratory.” The Physics Teacher 30 (9): 546–52.

Evertson, Carolyn M., Charles W. Anderson, Linda M. Anderson, and Jere E. Brophy. 1980. “Relationships Between Classroom Behaviors and Student Outcomes in Junior High Mathematics and English Class.” American Educational Research Journal 17 (1): 43–60.

Hattie, John. 2009. Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York: Routledge.

Evertson, Carolyn M., Edmund T. Emmer, and Jere E. Brophy. 1980. “Predictors of Effective Teaching in Junior High Mathematics Classrooms.” Journal of Research in Mathematics Education 11 (3): 167–78.

Hiebert, James, and Thomas P. Carpenter. 1992. “Learning and Teaching With Understanding.” In Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning, edited by Douglas A. Grouws, 65–97. New York: MacMillan.

Fisher, Douglas, and Nancy Frey. 2004. Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom, 2nd Ed. Alexandria: ASCD. Fisher, Douglas, Nancy Frey, and Carol Rothenberg. 2008. Content Area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-Based Lessons for Diverse Language Learners. Alexandria: ASCD. Gagen, Miscese. 2007. “Directional Tracking Explained” Right Track Reading. Accessed December 16, 2008. http:// www.righttrackreading.com/tracking.html. Gagne, Robert. 1977. The Conditions of Learning. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Gagne, Robert, and Leslie Briggs. 1979. Principles of Instructional Design (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Gagne, Robert, and Marcy Perkins Driscoll. 1974. Essentials of Learning for Instruction. 2nd ed. Hinsdale: The Dryden Press. Gelman, Rochel, and J. Greeno. 1989. “On the Nature of Competence.” In Knowing, Learning and Instruction, edited by Lauren B. Resnick. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hennings, Dorothy G. 1993. “On Knowing and Reading History.” Journal of Reading 36 (5): 362–70.

Hollingsworth, John, and Silvia Ybarra. 2009. Explicit Direct Instruction: The Power of the Well-Crafted, WellTaught Lesson. Thousand Oaks: Corwin. Hollingsworth, John, and Silvia Ybarra.. 2013. Explicit Direct Instruction for English Learners. Thousand Oaks: Corwin. House, J. Daniel. 2004. “The Effects of Homework Activities and Teaching Strategies for New Mathematics Topics on Achievement of Adolescent Students in Japan: Results From the TIMSS 1999 Assessment.” International Journal of Instructional Media 31 (2): 199–210. Huitt, W. (2003). Classroom instruction. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/ instruct/instruct.html Hunter, Madeline. 1982. Mastery Teaching. El Segundo: Tip Publication. Hunter, Robin. 2004. Madeline Hunter’s Mastery Teaching: Increasing Instructional Effectiveness in Elementary and Secondary Schools. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

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• Index • Academic Relevance, 155 Academic Vocabulary, 19, 49, 80, 208 Access Common Core, 201 Access to educational opportunities, 11 Achievement, student effective lessons and, 1–2 research on, 2–3 teaching grade level standards, 84–85 Acquisition phase, 210 Activating Prior Knowledge (APK), 16, 89–103 defined, 90 EDI Circle, 89 EDI lesson design checklist, 202 Explicit Direct Instruction and, 94 importance of, 90 Learning Objectives and, 91 research on, 209 by reviewing concepts, 91 by reviewing skills, 91 in sample lesson analysis, 194–195 selecting knowledge to activate, 91 sub-skill review, 90, 92–94, 98–102, 189 Teach First, 46 time spent on, 94 Universal Experience, 90, 91–92, 94–98 using Student Engagement Norms, 94 vocabulary, “attaching a label,” 91 vs. assessing prior knowledge, 93 warm-up problems, 103, 185 ways of, 90 well-crafted lessons, creating, 185–186, 189 Adjectives, Activating Prior Knowledge for, 101–102 Air-tracking, 27 Answers allow students to change, 66 call on correct and incorrect, 66 in Educeri EDI lessons, 196 multiple-choice, 61–62, 64 point to, 52 strategies when students cannot answer, 60–63 students are not allowed to not know, 60 students on CFU questions, 46

TAPPLE example, 57 teach for success (80% and 100%), 59, 67, 165, 172 See also Questions APK. See Activating Prior Knowledge Ardovino, Joan, 3 Ask a Specific Question in TAPPLE, 47–48 Assessment of prior knowledge, 93 Assessment-Type Closure, 165–166, 168 “Attaching a label” to a concept, 91 Attention Signal, as Student Engagement Norm, 33–34 research on, 208 in TAPPLE, 53 training students in, 39 Attention spans of students in pair-sharing, 49 Australia, DataWORKS in, 5–6, 38 Australian Curriculum: English, 82 Automaticity, 179 Big idea (concept) of Learning Objectives, 76, 78 Brain research, 13, 207. See also Research Briggs, Leslie, 206 Bulletproof definitions, 112, 186 Call and response, attention signal, 33–34, 208 Calling on students on correct and incorrect answers, 66 strategies when students cannot answer, 60–63 See also Volunteers Carlson, Gordon, 92 Cause-and-effect structure of text, 95–96 CFU. See Checking for Understanding Chall, Jeanne, 12, 205 Checking for Understanding (CFU), 41–57 Ask a Specific Question, 47–48 benefits of, 43 checklist summary, 71 as cognitive strategy, 63–64 in Concept Development, 111, 114–115, 116, 118, 125 defined, 42

217

218   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) EDI Circle, 41 Effective Feedback, 56, 59–64. See also Effective Feedback, in TAPPLE following modeling, 133 Lesson Closure as final, 164 in Lesson Relevance, 156–158 Listen Carefully to Response, 56 literacy approach, 149 pair-share, 48–53. See also Pair-share, in TAPPLE Pause, 48, 49 Pick a Non-Volunteer, 53–56 process questions in Skill Development and Guided Practice, 138–139 random selection of students, 53–54 research on, 205, 208 and reteaching. See Reteaching in sample lesson analysis, 194 students answering questions, 46 Teach First, 45–46 timing of, 43–44 using TAPPLE, 18, 45, 190 well-crafted lessons, creating, 184, 185, 189 whiteboards in. See Whiteboards, in Checking for Understanding Checklists CFU using TAPPLE, 71 EDI lesson design, 202–204 China, DataWORKS in, 6 Chin-it, 35, 39, 66 Chunking the standards, 80 Circumference, calculating, 123 Classroom instruction, research on, 3–7 Classroom management in pair-sharing, 49 tracked reading in, 26 whiteboards for, 64 See also Discipline problems Closure of lesson, 17, 163–170 aiming for 80-100% success during, 165, 172 Assessment-Type Closure, 165–166, 168 Checking for Understanding, 44 Concept Closure, 165 defined, 164 EDI Circle, 163 EDI lesson design checklist, 203–204 examples, 167–169 how to provide, 165–169 importance of, 164–165 Independent Practice after, 164, 170, 188 modify to plan for success after lesson, 175 research on, 210 in sample lesson analysis, 200

scaffolding options, 167 Skill Closure, 165, 168 Summary Closure, 166–167, 168 well-crafted lessons, creating, 188, 189 Cognitive strategy, CFU as a, 63–64 Collaborative learning, 208 College and career readiness, 17 Common Core State Standards, 4, 193 assessments provided for, 200, 201 on college and career readiness, 17 and Learning Objectives, 75, 82, 85 vocabulary Tier Words, 18, 19 Complete sentences label partners and cue first speaker, 51–52 public voices, 38, 55 research on, 208 sentence frames, 37–38, 51 stand and deliver, 38, 55 student creation of, 38–39 as Student Engagement Norm, 37–39 students create their own, 52 in TAPPLE, 50–51 Concept(s) Big Idea in Learning Objectives, 76, 78 using to Activate Prior Knowledge, 91 Concept Closure, 165 Concept Development, 16 EDI Circle, 105 EDI lesson design checklist, 203 example in literacy approach, 150, 151 research on, 209 in sample lesson analysis, 195, 196 well-crafted lessons, creating, 184, 186, 189 See also Concept Development delivery; Concept Development design Concept Development delivery, 121–129 CFU questions, 125 demonstrating, 122 examples, 125–128 explaining, 121–122 labeled examples, 125 modeling, 121 physical objects, 122–123 reading the concept definitions, 124 steps for teaching, 124–125, 129 time spent on, 123–124 use Student Engagement Norms, 121 use TAPPLE, 121 Concept Development design, 105–120, 129 CFU questions, 111, 114–115, 116, 118 concepts in Learning Objectives, 106 content presentation in, 106 enhancements, 115–116 examples, 117–120 Explicit Direct Instruction in, 111–120

Index  219

importance of, 107–108 ineffective, 109–111 instructional materials not used, 110 labeled examples, 111, 113–114, 116 layout for student viewing, 116 missing when lessons focus on skills or details, 109–110 non-examples, 113, 118 for state tests, 107–108 for student generalization, 107 teaching grade-level concepts, 108–109. See also Grade-level Learning Objectives teaching to fill out worksheets, 110–111, 189 written definitions, 111, 112, 116 Concept hooks, 112, 135 Consolidation phase, 210 Constructed Response Closure, in Lesson Closure, 168 Content standards, 16, 74, 75, 78–79, 84–85, 185 Content vocabulary, 18, 80, 116 Context (conditions) in Learning Objectives, 76, 77, 78 Corrective feedback. See Effective Feedback, in TAPPLE Creating well-crafted lessons, 183–192 Activating Prior Knowledge, 185–186, 189 Checking for Understanding, 184, 185 Closure, 188, 189 Closure, after, 188 Concept Development, 186, 189 creating EDI lessons from textbook, 184–188 creating your own EDI lessons, 188–191 EDI Circle, 183 example of, 1–2 explain, model, and demonstrate, 187–188 Guided Practice, 186, 189 Independent Practice, 184, 189 Learning Objective, 185, 189 Relevance, 188, 189 Rule of Two, 187 Skill Development, 186, 189 use EDI strategies all the time, 190 you have tools to change education, 190–191 Cues, 60 Curriculum Calibration, 4, 85

on discipline and random Checking for Understanding, 56 EDI for English Learners, 5 going into the classroom to teach, 191–192 instructional models, comparison of, 206 on planning for success, 172 on stand and deliver, 38 on student engagement with Rule of Two, 136–137 on time spent presenting content, 189 on whiteboards, 34 writing standards-based Learning Objectives, 82 you have tools to change education, 190 Declarative Knowledge in Concept Development, 121, 186 literacy approach in science lesson, 150–151 long-term memory as purpose, 190 in science class, planning for success, 173 in Skill Development/Guided Practice, 148, 187 Deconstruction of standards, 80–84 De-escalation of question, 61–62 Definitions, written bulletproof, 112, 186 in Concept Development design, 111, 112, 116, 184, 186 reading with students, 124 in sample lesson analysis, 194, 195 Delivery strategies of EDI lessons, 16, 17–19, 187–188, 193 Demonstrating in Concept Development delivery, 121, 122–123 research on physical demonstrations, 209 well-crafted lessons, creating, 187–188 Desk arrangements, 32, 50 Differentiation, 171–172, 210 Direct instruction research support of, 12–13, 205, 207 teacher-centered, 10, 11 Directional Tracking, 207 Directions, 77, 134–135 Discipline problems, 33, 39, 43, 56 Discovery learning, 12. See also Inquiry learning, educational philosophy of talented students, 9, 55

Daily review, 180 DataWORKS, 2–3, 4, 9 in Australia, 5–6 in China, 6

Echo as former strategy in Effective Feedback, 56 Echo reading, 24, 27 EDI. See Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI)

220   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) Educational Leadership (Wolfe), 210 Educeri, online EDI lesson bank, 5, 6, 7, 16, 19, 193, 196 Effective Feedback, in TAPPLE, 56, 59–64 planning for success, 174–175 strategies when students cannot answer, 60–63 students are not allowed to not know the answer, 60 teach for 80% success, 59, 67 whole-class errors vs. individual student errors, 59–60 ELA. See English Language Arts Elaborate, in Effective Feedback, 56 Elementary school Activating Prior Knowledge, 95–96, 98–101, 101–102 Concept Development delivery, 125–128 Concept Development design, 117–118, 119 Learning Objectives presented, 86–87 Lesson Closure, 168 Lesson Relevance, 157–158 letter sounds to help readers recognize words, 27 planning for success in science class, 173 Skill Development and Guided Practice, 137–138, 142–147 track and read, 24–25, 27 Engagement. See Student Engagement Norms English EDI for English Learners, 5, 6, 21–22 language translation in pair-sharing, 49 as a second or foreign language, 6 English Language Arts (ELA) online curriculum, 7 standards-based Learning Objectives for, 4, 81–82, 83 See also Language arts lessons English Language Development (ELD), 7, 82 Equal opportunity to learn, 84–85, 176 Errors by students sub-skill, 67 whole-class vs. individual students, 59–60 Evidence for author’s argument, 96–98 Exit Ticket, 188, 201 Experience, Universal. See Universal Experience Explaining in Concept Development delivery, 121–122 in Effective Feedback, 56 and justifying answers, by students, 55–56

by students, how they got their answer, 62 well-crafted lessons, creating, 187–188 Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) beginnings of, 3–7, 11 classroom use, 19 Concept Development design, 111–120 content presentation, 106 defined, 16 EDI Circle, 15, 16, 41, 73, 89, 105, 131, 153, 163, 171, 177, 183 for English Learners, 5, 6, 21–22 intervention approach, 175–176 lesson delivery strategies, 16, 17–19, 187–188, 193 lesson design checklist, 202–204 lesson design components, 16–17 literacy approach, 148–149 as metacognitive teaching, 20 planning for success, 174 putting research into practice, 205 as teacher-centered, direction instruction approach, 10, 11 used in Activating Prior Knowledge, 94 well-crafted lessons created from textbooks, 184–188 well-crafted lessons created on your own, 188–191 what it is not, 11, 12 See also Lessons Explicit Direct Instruction for English Learners (Hollingsworth & Ybarra), 5, 22 Extended Thinking, in Lesson Closure, 168, 201 Facts and information. See Declarative knowledge Faking the stick, 63 Feedback. See Effective Feedback, in TAPPLE Foreshadowing clues in text, 92 Formulas, tracked reading of, 25–26 Fractions, Activating Prior Knowledge for, 98–101 Gagne, Robert, 206 Gaps of what students know, 92 Generalizations, 107 Gesture with me, as Student Engagement Norm, 29–31 cueing students, 30 importance of gestures, 30–31 research on, 208 steps in, 29 in teaching Concept Development, 124 using to visualize text, 31

Index  221

Good, Thomas L., 206 Grade-level Learning Objectives, 79, 84–85, 108–109, 176, 189 Graphic organizers, 148–151 Group work, 13 Grouws, Douglas A., 206 Guided Practice, 17, 131–152 Checking for Understanding, 44, 138–141 for declarative knowledge, 148 defined, 132 ECI Circle, 131 EDI lesson design checklist, 203 how to implement, 134 how to teach, 141–151 Learning Objectives and, 76 for procedural knowledge, 147–148 research on, 209 Rule of Two, 134–137 in sample lesson analysis, 195–199 variations, include all, 137–138 well-crafted lessons, creating, 184, 186, 189 whiteboards and worksheets, 138 Handbook of Research on Teaching (Rosenshine & Stevens), 12 Hattie, John, 12 Higher-order questions and thinking, 31, 38, 65, 114–115, 133, 156, 196 High school Concept Development design for, 120 Learning Objectives presented, 87–88 track and read, 25 Hints, 60 History/social science lessons Activating Prior Knowledge for, 93 Concept Development for, 119, 123 example in literacy approach, 149–150 research support of direct instruction, 207 standards-based Learning Objectives for, 84 Hollingsworth, John, 1–7, 191–192 Homework. See Independent practice How the Brain Learns (Sousa), 13, 207 Hunter, Madeline, 205, 208 Hyperbole, 92 “I do, You do” strategy, 209 “I’ll come back to you,” 61 Importance, 17, 154. See also Relevance In-class interventions, 175–176, 180, 188 Independent Practice, 177–180 defined, 178 EDI Circle, 177 EDI lesson design checklist, 204

in-class intervention during, 180 Learning Objectives and, 76–77, 84 Lesson Closure before, 164, 170 matching the lesson, 178 modify Closure to plan for success, 175 motivating students to do homework, 179 purpose of, 178–179 research on, 209, 210 in sample lesson analysis, 201–202 strategies for implementing, 180 from unstructured to structured, 180, 188 well-crafted lessons, creating, 184, 189 Inferences, drawing from text, 142–147, 194–202 Inquiry learning, educational philosophy, 11 Instructional approaches and models comparisons, 205, 206 criteria and guidelines, 10–11 research support of direct, 3, 4, 12–13, 205 Instructional Calibration, 4 Instructional materials for Concept Development, 110 Instruction, effective criteria and guidelines for instructional approach, 10 examples of, 1–2 philosophies about education, 10–11 research on, 3–4, 12–13, 205 talent discovery versus talent development in, 9–10 teaching/learning dilemma in, 10 Interactive lessons, 11, 43–44, 49 Internal Rule of Two, 140–141, 196 Interventions, in-class and out-of-class, 175–176, 180, 188 Kinesthetics with physical objects, in demonstrating, 122 pointing to the answer, 33, 52 See also Gesture with me, as Student Engagement Norm; Whiteboards, as Student Engagement Norm Knowledge. See Activating Prior Knowledge (APK); Declarative Knowledge; Procedural Knowledge Labels/labeling “attaching a label” to a concept, 91 “labeled examples” in Concept Development, 111, 113–114, 116, 125 matched problems in mathematics lessons, 136 partners in pair-share, 51–52

222   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) Language arts lessons CFU questions in Skill Development and Guided Practice, 139 and Concept Development, 110, 117–118, 125–128 Guided Practice for, 139–140 See also English Language Arts (ELA) Language translation for beginning English speakers, 49 Launch to Literacy (Hollingsworth & Ybarra), 7 Learning Objectives, 16, 73–88 Activating Prior Knowledge and, 91 in Concept Development, 106, 125 EDI Circle, 73 EDI lesson design checklist, 202 in Lesson Relevance, 155 pre-reading, 44 research on, 208 in sample lesson analysis, 194, 195 standards-based. See Standards-based Learning Objectives well-crafted lessons, creating, 185, 189 See also Learning Objectives, presenting to students; Learning Objectives, well-designed; Learning Objectives, writing standards-based Learning Objectives, presenting to students, 85–88 for elementary school, 86–87 for high school, 87–88 how to present, using Engagement Norms, 86 for middle school, 87 Learning Objectives, well-designed, 75–79 components of, 76 concepts (big ideas), 76, 78 context (conditions), 77, 78 defined, 74–75 grade level, 79 skills (verbs), 76–77 standards-based, 16, 75–76, 78–79 Learning Objectives, writing standards-based, 4, 16, 79–85 deconstructing content standard into specific, 80 examples, 83–84 on grade level, 84–85 how to write, 80 from standards to Learning Objectives, 82 written for pre-existing work, 84 Lecturing, 11 Lesson Closure. See Closure of lesson Lesson Relevance. See Relevance

Lessons design and planning for success, 172 EDI lesson delivery strategies, 16, 17–19, 187–188, 193 EDI lesson design components, 16–17 example of well-crafted lesson, 1–2 interactive, 11, 43–44, 49 online, 6–7 See also Creating well-crafted lessons; Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI); Learning Objectives; Sample lesson analysis Lessons on specific subjects history. See History/social science lessons language arts. See English Language Arts (ELA); Language arts lessons mathematics. See Mathematics lessons social science. See History/ social science lessons Link to Literacy (Hollingsworth & Ybarra), 7 Listen Carefully to Response in TAPPLE, 56 Literacy approach, 148–151 Checking for Understanding in, 149 examples, 149–151 Explicit Direct Instruction in, 148–149 importance of, 149 Long-term memory of students, 63–64, 90, 164, 178–179, 190 Main idea of paragraph, 112 Marzano, Robert, 12 Matched problems, 17, 135–138 Mathematical equations, tracked reading of, 25–26 Mathematics lessons Activating Prior Knowledge for, 91, 93, 98–101 CFU questions in Skill Development and Guided Practice, 139 Concept Development for, 113–114, 119, 123, 128–129 gesture with me, perpendicular lines, 29 Guided Practice of, 137–138 labeling matched problems, 136 Lesson Relevance, 157 multiplication facts, 67, 179 research support of Concept Development, 209 research support of direct instruction, 207 standards-based Learning Objectives for, 80–81 whiteboard examples, 68–69 Memorization, 63–64. See also Remembering Metacognitive teaching, EDI as, 20

Index  223

Middle school Activating Prior Knowledge in, 96–98 Concept Development design for, 118 Learning Objectives presented, 87 Lesson Closure, 168–169 Lesson Relevance, 157 Mirror problems, 136 Modeling Checking for Understanding, 133 in Concept Development delivery, 121 in Guided Practice, 132–133 importance of, 133 research on, 209 well-crafted lessons, creating, 187 Multiple-choice answers, 61–62, 64 Multiple Measures: Accurate Ways to Assess Student Achievement, 3 Multiplication facts, 67, 179 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), 209 The New Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano), 12 Next Generation Science Standards, 82, 193 No Child Left Behind (2002), 3 Non-volunteer, picking in TAPPLE, 53–56 Note taking, 134 Nouns, as concepts, 106 Objectives. See Learning Objectives Online lessons and curriculum, 6, 7, 16. See also Educeri Opinions of students, 47 Outcomes in learning, as educational goal, 11 Out-of-class interventions, 175–176 Over learning, 179 Pacing calendars and guides, 78, 181 Pair-share, as Student Engagement Norm, 31–33 presenting Learning Objectives, 86 research on, 208 techniques for, 31–33 using sentence frames in complete sentences, 37–38 Pair-share, in TAPPLE, 48–53 complete sentences, 50–51, 52 follow-up questions, 53 importance of, 48–50 label partners and cue first speaker, 51–52 length of time, 53 limit teacher help, 52 point to answer, 52 sentence frames, 51

strategies of, 50 when students cannot answer, 61 with whiteboards, 66 PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), 201 Park your boards, 35 Pause, and wait time, 48, 49 Periodic Review, 103, 180–181, 185 EDI lesson design checklist, 204 research on, 210 Personal Relevance, 154–155 Philosophies about education, 10–11, 12–13, 205, 206 Physical demonstrations. See Demonstrating Physical objects, in demonstrating, 122–123, 187 Pick a Non-Volunteer in TAPPLE, 53–56 Planning for success, 171–176 after the lesson, modify at Closure, 175 amount of content to teach, 174 anticipate difficult areas for students, 173 differentiation, 171–172 EDI Circle, 171 example, 173–174 in-class interventions, 175–176 length of lessons, 174 lesson design, 172 during the lesson, modify so students are successful, 174–175 out-of-class interventions, 175–176 response to intervention, 176 scaffolding, 171–172 before teaching, 172–174 Point and explain in pair-sharing, 33, 52 Popsicle sticks for random student selection, 54, 63, 86 Practice. See Guided practice; Independent practice Pre-existing work, writing Learning Objectives for, 84 Pre-reading, 23, 44 Prior life experiences, 90 Procedural Knowledge in Concept Development delivery, 121–122 literacy approach in science lesson, 150–151 in Skill Development/Guided Practice, 147–148, 187 Process improvement, 3 Process questions, 133, 138–139 Progressive philosophy about education, 11, 12 Prompts, 60

224   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) Pronounce with me, 22–23, 24, 207 Public voices, 38, 55 “Pull a stick,” to randomly select students, 54, 86 Questions Ask a Specific Question in TAPPLE, 47–48 CFU and higher-order, 114–115 follow-up questions in pair-share, 53 process, 133, 138–139 strategies when student cannot answer, 60–63 See also Answers Random selection of students for CFU, 53–54 faking the stick, 63 presenting Learning Objectives, 86 random name generator apps, 23, 54 Reading choral, 23, 24, 207 literacy approach to learning, 148–151 rates, 24 research support of direct instruction, 207 Read with me, as Student Engagement Norm, 23, 86 air-tracking, 27 pre-reading, 23, 44 remembering improvement, 28 research on, 207 tracked reading formulas and math equations, 25–26 tracked reading importance, 28 tracked reading variations, 23–24 tracking reading procedure, 24 using letter sounds to help readers recognize words, 27 Real-life Relevance, 155 Relevance, 17, 153–161 academic, 155 CFU questions, 156–158 Checking for Understanding, 44 concrete reasons, 159 EDI Circle, 153 EDI lesson design checklist, 203 example of, 159–161 how to design Lesson Relevance, 155 how to teach Lesson Relevance, 158–161 importance of, 154 personal, 154–155 provide examples, 156 real-life, 155

research on, 210 in sample lesson analysis, 199, 200 student motivation, 154 well-crafted lessons, creating, 188, 189 when to teach, 154 written reasons and vocabulary, 155–156 Remediation, 85, 108, 175, 189 Remembering improvement with Read with me, as Student Engagement Norm, 28 memorization, 63–64 in pair-sharing, 49 as purpose of Independent Practice, 178–179 repetition with declarative knowledge, 148 Repetition for learning, 148, 178–179, 180–181 Repetitive tasks in pair-sharing, 33 Research on classroom instruction, 3–7 on direct instruction, 12–13, 205, 207 instructional models, comparison of, 205, 206 put into practice with Explicit Direct Instruction, 205–210 on student achievement, 2–3 Response to Intervention (RTI), 176, 210 Reteaching Activating Prior Knowledge by sub-skill review, 90 in Checking for Understanding, 49, 56, 185 in effective feedback, 60, 66, 69 Retention of information. See Remembering Rosenshine, Barak, 12, 206 Rowe, Mary Budd, 205 RTI (Response to Intervention), 176, 210 Rule of Two, 131–152 Activating Prior Knowledge, 94, 98 defined, 17, 132 examples, 136, 137–138 importance of, 136–137 Internal Rule of Two, 140–141, 196 planning for success, 172 research on, 209 in sample lesson analysis, 196 in Skill Development and Guided Practice, 135–137 use EDI strategies all the time, 190 well-crafted lessons, creating, 187 Rules, as concepts, 106

Index  225

Sample lesson analysis, 193–204 Activating Prior Knowledge, 194–195 Closure, 200 Concept Development, 195, 196 EDI lesson design checklist, 202–204 EDI lesson layout, 193–202 Guided Practice, 195–202 Independent Practice, 201–202 Learning Objective, 194 Relevance, 199, 200 Skill Development, 195–202 subscription service, Educeri EDI, 193 Summary Closure, 201 Sample word banks, 167 Scaffolding, 167, 171–172, 210 School reforms, 2, 3, 173, 191, 207 Science lessons Concept Development for, 119–120, 123 example in literacy approach, 150–151 gesture with me, plate tectonics, 30 planning for success, 173–174 research support of direct instruction, 207 standards-based Learning Objectives for, 83 tracked reading in, 26 whiteboard example on plate tectonics, 70 Scripted lessons, 12 Sentence frames using complete sentences, 37–38, 51 Sequential order text, 92 Sharing between students. See Pair-share Skill Closure, 165, 168 Skill Development, 17, 131–152 CFU questions, 138–141, 149 and Concept Development design, 109–110 declarative knowledge lessons, 148 defined, 132 design, 134–138 ECI Circle, 131 EDI lesson design checklist, 203 literacy approach, learn by reading, 148–151 note taking, 134 procedural knowledge lessons, 147–148 research on, 209 Rule of Two, provide matched problems, 135–137 in sample lesson analysis, 195–199 slow release, 142–147 steps and directions, 134–135 teaching, 141–151 variations, include all, 137–138 well-crafted lessons, creating, 184, 186, 189

Skills sub-skill errors, 67 sub-skill review, to Activate Prior Knowledge, 90, 92–94, 98–102, 189 using to Activate Prior Knowledge, 91 as Verb in Learning Objectives, 76–77 Slavin, Robert E., 206 Slow release, 142–147 Smarter Balanced questions, 108–109, 200, 201 Social science lessons. See History/social science lessons Sousa, David, 13, 207 South Carolina Department of Education, 4 Speed up or slow down dilemma, 10 Stand and deliver, 38, 55 Standards. See Common Core State Standards; Next Generation Science Standards; Testing Standards-based Learning Objectives content, 16, 74, 75, 78–79, 84–85, 185 creating well-crafted lessons using, 185, 189 writing, 79–85 Steps, strategic, 134–135 StepUP Academy, 5, 22 Stevens, R., 12 Strategic steps vs. directions, 134–135 Strategic thinking, 132–133. See also Higher-order questions and thinking Structured Independent Practice, 180, 188 Student engagement, creation of, 21 Student Engagement Norms, 18, 21–40 attention signal, 33–34 in Concept Development delivery, 121 gesture with me, 29–31 history of, 21–22 importance of, 39–40 in Lesson Relevance, 158 pair-share, 31–33 planning for success, 174 presenting Learning Objectives, 86 pronounce with me, 22–23 read with me, 23–28 research on, 207–208 in sample lesson analysis, 193 in Skill Development and Guided Practice, 141 track with me, 23 training students, 39 use complete sentences, 37–39 used in Activating Prior Knowledge, 94

226   Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) use EDI strategies all the time, 190 whiteboards, 34–37 Student motivation, and Relevance, 154 Subscription service, Educeri EDI. See Educeri Sub-skill errors, 67 Sub-Skill Review, 90, 92–94, 98–102, 189 Success to reach 80% and 100%, 59, 67, 165, 172 Summary Closure, 17, 166–167, 168, 201 Support Vocabulary, 19 Talent discovery and talent development, 9–10, 55 TAPPLE, 18, 45–57 Ask a Specific Question, 47–48 in Concept Development delivery, 121 Effective Feedback, 56 example of, 57 in Lesson Relevance, 158 Listen Carefully to Response, 56 Pair-Share, 48–53. See also Pair-share, in TAPPLE Pause, 48 Pick a Non-Volunteer, 53–56 planning for success, 175 research on, 208 in Skill Development and Guided Practice, 141 Teach First, 45–46 use EDI strategies all the time, 190 Teacher-centered, direct instruction, 10, 11 research on, 12–13, 205, 207 Teach First in TAPPLE, 45–46, 57 Teach for success (80% and 100%), 59, 67, 165, 172 Teaching. See Delivery strategies Teach their partners in pair-sharing, 33 Testing Concept Development importance for, 107–108 goal shift from access to outcome, 11 high-stakes, 11, 80, 84, 107, 142, 165, 185, 198 Textbooks creating EDI lessons from, 184–188 instructional materials for Concept Development, 110 Thinking focus on, vs. directions, 135 See also Higher-order questions and thinking Tiered instructional model, 176, 210 Tier Two and Three Words, 18, 19

Timing Activating Prior Knowledge, 94 Checking for Understanding, 43–44 length of lessons, 174, 189 for teaching Concept Development, 123–124 Touching the words, 23 Tracked reading air-tracking, 27 procedure, 24 reading formulas and math equations, 25–26 research on Directional Tracking, 207 tracked reading importance, 28 tracked reading variations, 23–24 training students in, 39 Track with me, as Student Engagement Norm, 23, 86, 207 Understanding, checking for. See Checking for Understanding (CFU) Universal Experience, 90, 91–92, 94–98, 189, 194 Unstructured Independent Practice, 180 Variations in problems, 137–138 Verb (skill) in Learning Objectives, 76–77 Verbs, as concepts, 106 Visible Learning (Hattie), 12 Visualization of text, gesture with me, 31 Vocabulary Academic, 19, 49, 80, 208 content, 18, 80, 116 development of, 18–19, 116, 118 in sample lesson analysis, 194 in standards, 80 Support, 19 in written reasons for Relevance, 155–156 Volunteers for Lesson Relevance, 159 strategic use of, 54 Wait time, 48, 49, 205, 208 Warm-up problems, 103, 180, 185 Well-crafted lessons. See Creating well-crafted lessons Well-designed Learning Objectives. See Learning Objectives Whiteboards, as Student Engagement Norm, 34–37 apps for, 36–37 chin-it, 35 for nonwriters, 35–36

Index  227

park your boards, 35 research on, 208 use papers as, 35 Whiteboards, in Checking for Understanding, 64–70 advantages of, 64 example, 68–70 how to use, 65–66 summary, 67 when to use, 64–65 Wolfe, Pat, 210

Working memory of students, 178–179. See also Long-term memory of students “Working the page,” 125–126 Worksheets, 110–111, 138, 189 Written definitions in Concept Development design, 111, 112–113, 116, 184, 186 reading with students, 124 Written reasons for Relevance, 155–156 Ybarra, Silvia, 2–7, 191–192

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