Guided Practice in Explicit Instruction: A Guide

November 25, 2024

Guided practice is a critical phase in explicit instruction, bridging the gap between teacher-led modelling and independent student work. When done effectively, it ensures that students build confidence, grasp essential skills, and achieve mastery. However, creating impactful guided practice activities can feel overwhelming—especially when trying to plan for all abilities, manage engagement, and save planning time.

If you've been searching for guided practice examples, explicit instruction lesson plans, or ways to streamline your "We Do" phase, this guide is for you. Let’s explore actionable strategies, practical examples, and how to make guided practice work for you and your students.

Looking for Guided Practice examples and ideas for explicit teaching? Access the Guided Practice Deep Dive

What Is Guided Practice in Explicit Instruction?

Guided practice happens during the "We Do" phase of an explicit lesson plan. Essentially, this phase is when the teacher supports students as they practise the skill or concept taught during the modelling phase (I Do). The primary goal is to scaffold learning, provide feedback, and ensure students are ready to transition to independent work.

Here’s what an effective guided practice activity includes:

Collaboration: Students practise with support from the teacher or peers.
Structure: Clear steps or processes guide students through the activity.
Immediate Feedback: Teachers provide real-time corrections or adjustments.
Gradual Release: Responsibility shifts to students as confidence grows.

Why Guided Practice Matters

If your explicit instruction lesson plan skips or rushes this phase, then students might struggle when working independently. For this reason, guided practice is essential because it:

Reinforces key concepts through repeated application.
Reduces cognitive overload by breaking tasks into manageable steps.
Provides opportunities for feedback, helping students fix mistakes before moving on.
Builds confidence as students see success with scaffolded support.

Examples of Guided Practice Activities

So, what do guided practice activities look like in action? Let’s explore a few ideas that you can implement in your classroom:

1️⃣ Problem Pairs
Create a side-by-side model: one problem solved by the teacher (or previously completed during the I Do phase) and one similar problem for students to solve. This keeps the task familiar while challenging them to apply the skill.

2️⃣ Fill-in-the-Gaps (Faded Guidance)
Provide partially completed graphic organisers, flowcharts, or equations. Students fill in the missing steps, gradually taking on more responsibility.

3️⃣ Think-Alouds with Pairs
Model your thought process aloud as students follow along. Then, have students verbalise their thinking in pairs, ensuring they understand the reasoning behind the steps.

4️⃣ Shared Writing
Collaboratively write a paragraph, essay, or response as a class. Take student suggestions while guiding the structure and content.

5️⃣ Step-by-Step Group Tasks
Break down multi-step problems using a flowchart or checklist. Complete each step together before moving on to the next.

Looking for Guided Practice examples and ideas for explicit teaching? Access the Guided Practice Deep Dive

How to Plan Guided Practice Activities Efficiently

Struggling with finding time to plan your guided practice? You’re not alone. Teachers often spend hours after school or on weekends searching for useful examples or creating their own.

Here’s how to streamline your planning process:

Use Graphic Organisers: Graphic organisers act as a visual framework, making it easier for students to follow along. They can be used repeatedly for modelled, guided, and independent practice.
Leverage Templates: Pre-designed templates, like question banks or editable slides, save you from reinventing the wheel.
Plan for Differentiation: Create levels of complexity within the same activity, so all abilities are challenged appropriately.
Set Clear Expectations: Explain how to use tools like manipulatives, graphic organisers, or whiteboards to keep students focused and productive.

Subject-Specific Guided Practice Examples

Need inspiration for specific subjects? Here are some guided practice activities tailored to different content areas:

📚 Literacy:

Compare characters using a Venn diagram.
Build a shared response to a comprehension question.

➗ Maths:

Use flowcharts to solve multi-step word problems.
Practise fact families with visual graphic organisers.

🔬 Science:

Annotate diagrams collaboratively (e.g., labelling parts of a plant or the water cycle).
Complete steps of an experiment as a class, recording observations together.

🌍 Humanities:

Create a collaborative timeline of historical events.
Analyse a primary source using sentence stems for scaffolding.

How the Guided Practice Deep Dive Teacher Manual Can Help

Feeling like you’re spending too much time planning guided practice activities? That’s why I created the Guided Practice Deep Dive Teacher Manual. This comprehensive resource takes the stress out of the "We Do" phase with ready-to-use strategies, examples, and tools to save you time and keep your students engaged.

💡 Here’s what’s included:

Step-by-step instructions and flowcharts.
Collaborative activities like Problem Pairs, Shared Writing, and more.
Editable graphic organisers and question banks.
Subject-specific examples for Maths, Literacy, Science, and Humanities.
Strategies for differentiation, feedback, and real-time monitoring.

Get Ready to Transform Your Lessons

Stop spending your evenings and weekends searching for ideas. The Guided Practice Deep Dive Teacher Manual has everything you need to streamline planning and make this phase more impactful.

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