29 Ways to Apply Explicit Teaching Today

Explicit teaching is an acquired teaching skill because it not only requires extensive knowledge of a specific lesson design, but also requires a specific way of instruction. Even without this knowledge, there are actionable steps that can be taken to ensure that you are explicitly teaching new concepts to students. Below I have listed 29 simple steps that you can take today to apply explicit teaching in your classroom.

Simple Ways to Apply Explicit Teaching

1. Communicate learning intentions and success criteria at the beginning of a lesson.
2. Teach one skill per lesson.
3. Use one action verb in your lesson objective.
4. Ensure that your lesson objective is actionable and measurable.
5. List a success criteria as a checklist at the beginning of your lesson.
6. Write your success criteria as a guide for or steps to complete a task.
7. Link the current learning to previously taught content.
8. Check for understanding throughout the lesson as you teach.
9. Use mini whiteboards to check for understanding as you teach. This allows you to see how all students are progressing through the skill acquisition.
10. Define key concepts before you teach a skill.
11. Define concepts using visuals.
12. Define concepts using examples and non-examples.
13. Model a skill before expecting the students to do it themselves (I Do).
14. Verbalise your thoughts as you model a skill.
15. Show the students, don't tell them how to do it. Use worked examples during modelling. Complete an example in real-time.
16. Have students participate every five minutes with read along, tracking, gestures, short response, check for understanding, pair-share.
17. Complete a guided example with all students (We Do).
18. Have students respond on their whiteboards during guided instruction to track understanding.
19. Scan whiteboards and give verbal feedback to individual students.
20. Refer to the success criteria during modelled and guided instruction.
21. Ensure majority of students can successfully complete the guided instruction on whiteboards before moving to the Independent Practice (You Do).
22. Reteach a skill if the majority of students don't get it.
23. Allow independent practice time and give feedback against the success criteria.
24. Gives reasons for why the skill is important (Relevance)
25. Collect evidence of learning.
26. Have students self-reflect on their achievement of the success criteria.
27. Summarise the lesson with key vocabulary at the end of the lesson.
28. Use a warm-up (recite, recall, apply) at the start of the next lesson to consolidate learning.
29. Use a lesson template to design your lessons (See an example below).

Explicit Teaching Lesson Design - Free Resources

Use this FREE infographic and lesson template to design lessons in explicit teaching.

Have Your Say

Which of these steps have you used in your own teaching? Which work best for you?

What explicit teaching steps would you add to the list?