high-impact-teaching-strategies

High Impact Teaching Strategies

Excellence in Teaching and Learning

• Curriculum planning and assessment
• Positive climate for learning
• Professional leadership
• Student achievement, engagement, and wellbeing
• Empowering students and building school pride
• Health and wellbeing
• Setting expectations and promoting inclusion
• Intellectual Excellence in teaching and learning
• Evidence-based high impact teaching strategies

Copyright Information

• High Impact Teaching Strategies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
• You are free to re-use the work under that license, on the condition that you credit the State of Victoria, indicate if changes were made, and comply with the other license terms.
• The license does not apply to images, photographs, trademarks, branding, and content supplied by third parties.
• Copyright queries may be directed to copyright@edumail.vic.gov.au.
• ISBN: 978-0-7594-0820-3

Contents Overview

• Introduction
• What are the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS)?
• This resource offers:
• What is effect size?
• Who are the HITS for?
  • Teachers
  • Professional learning communities
  • School leaders
• Using the HITS
• Providing feedback
• HITS overview table
• Setting Goals
• Structuring Lessons
• Explicit Teaching
• Worked Examples
• Collaborative Learning
• Multiple Exposures
• Questioning
• Feedback
• Metacognitive Strategies
• Differentiated teaching

Introduction to High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS)

• When teachers collaborate to improve their practice, students learn more.
• Collaboration builds collective responsibility for improving teaching practice and student learning.
• The challenge is to develop a shared understanding of excellent practice.
• High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) support collaborative and evidence-based conversations among teachers.
• HITS provide opportunities for teachers to observe, reflect on, and improve classroom practices.
• HITS are not intended to replace existing successful teaching strategies but to add to the repertoire of effective strategies.
• Since 2016, school leadership teams have used the Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO) to drive strategic and annual planning.
• FISO helps identify and address challenges for individual teachers and build collective teacher efficacy.
• HITS provide a clear link between the ‘Evidence Based High Impact Teaching Strategies’ dimension of FISO and classroom practice.
• Teachers can plan and adjust their practice in response to one or more of the HITS and monitor the impact on student engagement and learning outcomes.
• This resource focuses on the professional development efforts of individual teachers, which can be linked to the goals and feedback components of their own Performance and Development Plans.
• Teachers are encouraged to use the HITS to challenge themselves and their colleagues as part of a commitment to improving learning outcomes.
• FISO dimensions include:
  • Curriculum planning and assessment
  • Evidence-based high impact teaching strategies
  • Evaluating impact on learning
• Instructional and shared leadership
• Strategic resource management
• Vision, values and culture.

What are the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS)?

• The HITS are 10 instructional practices that reliably increase student learning.
• They emerge from studies of what has worked in classrooms across Australia and the world.
• Experts like John Hattie and Robert Marzano have synthesized these studies and ranked teaching strategies by their contribution to student learning.
• The HITS sit at the top of these rankings.
• The professional judgement of teachers determines if the HITS will work in their classroom.
• Using a HITS increases the chances that students will learn compared to using other strategies.
• The HITS will not be new to most teachers. This resource brings them together in one place, with practical examples.
• The HITS alone do not constitute a complete framework for professional practice but are part of a comprehensive pedagogical model.

What is Effect Size?

• Effect size is a measure of the contribution an education intervention makes to student learning.
• It allows us to move beyond questions about whether an intervention worked or not, to questions about how well an intervention worked in varying contexts.
• This evidence supports a more scientific and rigorous approach to building professional knowledge.
• Researchers like Hattie, Lemov, and Marzano have used different methodologies to measure effect size and identify HITS.
• Despite varied approaches, all agree on a number of powerful strategies reflected in this HITS resource and the AITSL Standards and the Classroom Practice Continuum.
• This resource offers:
  • Accessible guidance on using high impact, evidence-based strategies
  • Insights to focus on one or more HITS, and to progressively build expertise
  • Scalable possibilities, allowing individual teachers, Professional Learning Communities, and whole schools, to set goals and actions centred on the HITS.

Who are the HITS for?

Teachers

• The HITS will support teachers at every career stage.
• Each strategy is accompanied by two examples.
• The examples show teachers how to adapt the HITS to different learning goals and needs, and to respond to different school contexts.
• For beginning teachers, the HITS are a bank of reliable instructional practices they can use with confidence.
• For experienced teachers, this resource can add to their understanding of the HITS they are already using, and suggest new ways to use them in the classroom.
• Even teachers highly familiar with the HITS will benefit from this resource as they pursue mastery of these valuable instructional practices through practice, reflection, shared observation and feedback.

Professional Learning Communities

• Confined to individual teachers and classrooms, the HITS will not contribute to the collective efficacy that marks out high-performing schools.
• In these schools, teachers come together to pool their knowledge of effective teaching into a collaborative approach to planning, implementing and monitoring teaching interventions.
• By using the HITS to build their pool of knowledge, these professional learning communities can anchor their interventions in evidence-based practices and so increase the likelihood of those interventions being effective.

School leaders

• For school leaders the HITS are a professional learning opportunity.
• The HITS are linked to each other, and connected to a broader repertoire of teacher skills and knowledge.
• They can be connected to collaboration between teachers in professional learning communities and integrated into classroom and school planning around curriculum, instruction and assessment.
• Understanding the interdependencies and developing a whole of practice approach is complex work for teachers which requires classroom embedded professional learning and a supportive high performance learning culture in a school.
• A sustained focus on HITS can be supported by coaching, modeling, observation and feedback to ensure widespread use of successful teaching practices.

Using the HITS

• This resource offers teachers and school leaders an opportunity to embed and share the use of successful instructional practices by providing:
  • a common language to use in planning, monitoring and reflecting on classroom practice
  • a developmental continuum to measure proficiency across ten high-impact teaching strategies, and
  • initial resources to guide a practice improvement journey.
• The HITS will have the strongest impact on student learning when used as part of an ongoing improvement cycle embedded in professional learning communities.
• Effective teams use the improvement cycle to:
  • diagnose a classroom need
  • investigate a problem of practice
  • identify one or more of the HITS as a possible intervention
  • unpack, discuss and model the strategies
  • collectively review them as part of observation rounds.
• The review and evaluation phase of the improvement cycle is critical to using the HITS for maximum impact on student learning.
• While the strategies are reliable, their effectiveness in any particular school context can only be determined by applying a HITS to an individual or group of students and measuring its impact on student learning.
• Mastery of the HITS requires you to draw on both your deep curriculum knowledge and your skills in assessment for, as and of learning.
• Applying the HITS effectively relies on tapping into your expertise to develop and implement rich, authentic learning tasks.
• Importantly, adept application of the HITS will stimulate your students to take agency for, and reflect on, their own learning.
• The continuum of practice included with each HITS will support you to reflect on your practice, assess proficiency levels and set improvement goals, which can be linked to the performance and development cycle.
• The broader FISO continua for the ‘Evidence Based High Impact Teaching Strategies’ dimension will also assist leaders and teachers to maintain a whole of practice focus.
• Deliberate practice and feedback on HITS in a trusted and collaborative environment will help you to develop new skills and extend existing ones, impacting both teacher and student learning over time.

Providing Feedback

• This resource is the result of the generous collaboration of numerous teachers from across Victoria.
• The Department welcomes questions, comments and feedback on the HITS.
• Your engagement and contribution will contribute to the ongoing development and improvement of our resources, including future versions of this publication.
• To contact the Department with regard to HITS, contact: professional.practice@edumail.vic.gov.au

HITS Overview Table

1. Setting Goals

• Lessons have clear learning intentions with goals that clarify what success looks like.
• Lesson goals always explain what students need to understand, and what they must be able to do.
• This helps the teacher to plan learning activities, and helps students understand what is required.
• Key elements:
  • Based on assessed student needs
  • Goals are presented clearly so students know what they are intended to learn
  • Can focus on surface and/or deep learning
  • Challenges students relative to their current mastery of the topic
  • Links to explicit assessment criteria
• Related effect sizes:
  • Goals – $0.56$
  • Teacher clarity – $0.75$

2. Structuring Lessons

• A lesson structure maps teaching and learning that occurs in class.
• Sound lesson structures reinforce routines, scaffold learning via specific steps/activities.
• They optimise time on task and classroom climate by using smooth transitions.
• Planned sequencing of teaching and learning activities stimulates and maintains engagement by linking lesson and unit learning.
• Key elements:
  • Clear expectations
  • Sequencing and linking learning
  • Clear instructions
  • Clear transitions
  • Scaffolding
  • Questioning/feedback
  • Formative assessment
  • Exit cards
• Related effect sizes:
  • Scaffolding – $0.53$
  • Formative evaluation – $0.68$
  • Teacher clarity – $0.75$

3. Explicit Teaching

• When teachers adopt explicit teaching practices they clearly show students what to do and how to do it.
• The teacher decides on learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to students, and demonstrates them by modelling.
• The teacher checks for understanding, and at the end of each lesson revisits what was covered and ties it all together (Hattie, 2009).
• Key elements:
  • Shared learning intentions
  • Relevant content and activities
  • New content is explicitly introduced and explored
  • Teacher models application of knowledge and skills
  • Worked examples support independent practice
  • Practice and feedback loops uncover and address misunderstandings
• Related effect sizes:
  • Goals – $0.56$
  • Worked examples – $0.57$
  • Time on task – $0.62$
  • Spaced practice – $0.60$
  • Direct instruction – $0.59$
  • Teacher clarity – $0.75$

4. Worked Examples

• A worked example demonstrates the steps required to complete a task or solve a problem.
• By scaffolding the learning, worked examples support skill acquisition and reduce a learner’s cognitive load.
• The teacher presents a worked example and explains each step.
• Later, students can use worked examples during independent practice, and to review and embed new knowledge.
• Key elements:
  • Teacher clarifies the learning objective, then demonstrates what students need to do to acquire new knowledge and master new skills
  • Teacher presents steps required to arrive at the solution so students’ cognitive load is reduced and they can focus on the process
  • Students practice independently using the worked example as a model
• Related effect sizes:
  • Worked examples – $0.57$
  • Spaced practice – $0.60$

5. Collaborative Learning

• Collaborative learning occurs when students work in small groups and everyone participates in a learning task.
• There are many collaborative learning approaches. Each uses varying forms of organisation and tasks.
• Collaborative learning is supported by designing meaningful tasks.
• It involves students actively participating in negotiating roles, responsibilities and outcomes.
• Key elements:
  • Students work together to apply previously acquired knowledge
  • Students cooperatively solve problems using previously acquired knowledge and skills
  • Students work in groups that foster peer learning
  • Groups of students compete against each other
• Related effect sizes:
  • Peer tutoring – $0.55$
  • Reciprocal teaching – $0.74$
  • Small group learning – $0.49$
  • Cooperative learning vs whole class instruction – $0.41$
  • Cooperative learning vs individual work – $0.59$
  • Cooperative learning vs competitive learning – $0.54$
• Months of progress:
  • Collaborative learning +5
  • Peer tutoring +5

6. Multiple Exposures

• Multiple exposures provide students with multiple opportunities to encounter, engage with, and elaborate on new knowledge and skills.
• Research demonstrates deep learning develops over time via multiple, spaced interactions with new knowledge and concepts.
• This may require spacing practice over several days, and using different activities to vary the interactions learners have with new knowledge.
• Key elements:
  • Students have time to practice what they have learnt
  • Timely feedback provides opportunities for immediate correction and improvement
• Related effect sizes:
  • Time on task – $0.62$
  • Spaced practice – $0.71$
  • Feedback – $0.73$
• Months of progress:
  • Mastery learning +5

7. Questioning

• Questioning is a powerful tool and effective teachers regularly use it for a range of purposes.
• It engages students, stimulates interest and curiosity in the learning, and makes links to students’ lives.
• Questioning opens up opportunities for students to discuss, argue, and express opinions and alternative points of view.
• Effective questioning yields immediate feedback on student understanding, supports informal and formative assessment, and captures feedback on effectiveness of teaching strategies.
• Key elements:
  • Plan questions in advance for probing, extending, revising and reflecting
  • Teachers use open questions
  • Questions used as an immediate source of feedback to track progress/understanding
  • Cold call and strategic sampling are commonly used questioning strategies
• Related effect sizes:
  • Questioning – $0.46$

8. Feedback

• Feedback informs a student and/or teacher about the student’s performance relative to learning goals.
• Feedback redirects or refocuses teacher and student actions so the student can align effort and activity with a clear outcome that leads to achieving a learning goal.
• Teachers and peers can provide formal or informal feedback. It can be oral, written, formative or summative.
• Whatever its form, it comprises specific advice a student can use to improve performance.
• Key elements:
  • Precise, timely, specific, accurate and actionable
  • Questioning and assessment is feedback on teaching practice
  • Use student voice to enable student feedback about teaching
• Related effect sizes:
  • Feedback – $0.73$
• Months of progress:
  • Feedback +8

9. Metacognitive Strategies

• Metacognitive strategies teach students to think about their own thinking.
• When students become aware of the learning process, they gain control over their learning.
• Metacognition extends to self-regulation, or managing one’s own motivation toward learning.
• Metacognitive activities can include planning how to approach learning tasks, evaluating progress, and monitoring comprehension.
• Key elements:
  • Teaching problem solving
  • Teaching study skills
  • Promotes self-questioning
  • Classroom discussion is an essential feature
  • Uses concept mapping
• Related effect sizes:
  • Teaching problem solving – $0.63$
  • Study skills – $0.60$
  • Self-questioning – $0.64$
  • Classroom discussion – $0.82$
  • Concept mapping – $0.64$
• Months of progress:
  • Metacognition and self- regulation +8

10. Differentiated Teaching

• Differentiated teaching are methods teachers use to extend the knowledge and skills of every student in every class, regardless of their starting point.
• The objective is to lift the performance of all students, including those who are falling behind and those ahead of year level expectations.
• To ensure all students master objectives, effective teachers plan lessons that incorporate adjustments for content, process, and product.
• Key elements:
  • High quality, evidence based group instruction
  • Regular supplemental instruction
  • Individualised interventions
• Related effect sizes:
  • RTI - $1.07$
  • Piagetian programs - $1.28$
  • Second and third chance programs - $0.5$
• Months of progress:
  • Individualised instruction +2
  • Mastery learning +5

High Impact Teaching Strategy: Setting Goals

• Strategy overview: Hattie found an effect size of 0.56 for setting goals (Hattie, 2009).
• What is it? Lessons need clear learning intentions with goals that clarify what success looks like. Lesson goals always explain what students need to understand, and what they must be able to do. This helps the teacher to plan learning activities, and helps students understand what is required.
• How effective is it? Research shows goals are important for enhancing performance. It is important to set challenging goals, rather than ‘do your best’ goals relative to student starting places (Hattie, 2009).
• Considerations Learning goals must provide challenge for all students. By setting challenging goals, the teacher develops and maintains a culture of high expectations. Learning goals should be achievable for students of varying abilities and characteristics. They must also have a firm base in assessed student needs. Assessment provides teachers with evidence of prior learning, and the information they need to set goals that offer each student the appropriate level of stretch/challenge.
• Effective teachers design assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate knowledge and skills at many levels. Tasks will include lower order processes like comprehension, and higher order processes like synthesis and evaluation. When teachers explain the connections between learning goals, learning activities and assessment tasks, then students can use learning goals to monitor and progress their learning.
• This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
  • assesses students’ prior knowledge
  • uses evidence to differentiate learning goals for groups of students based on need
  • demonstrates a purpose for learning by linking a specific activity to the learning goals
  • provides realistic but challenging goals, and recognises effort towards achieving them.
• This strategy is not demonstrated when the teacher:
  • implies by words or actions that some students are not expected to achieve the learning goal
  • praises all work regardless of quality and effort
  • assesses student work against other students’ work, rather than against prior achievement and individual learning goals.
• This strategy is demonstrated when students:
  • actively engage with the learning goals to plan their own learning
  • self-monitor their progress, and provide evidence they believe demonstrates they have achieved their goals
  • frame future learning goals based on identified strengths and areas for improvement.
• Effective teachers set and communicate clear lesson goals to help students understand the success criteria, commit to the learning, and provide the appropriate mix of success and challenge.

Examples that illustrate the strategy (Setting Goals)

• Example 1: Secondary – Health and Physical Education
  • The Health and Physical Education (HPE) Team at a Melbourne secondary school invited the Professional Learning Coordinator to their Team meeting to discuss using goal setting and success criteria for the upcoming Year 8 Dance Unit.
  • The Team wanted to ensure students developed the required knowledge, understanding and skills identified in the achievement standard. Discussion during the meeting underlined the importance of providing students with clear learning intentions, success criteria and a common assessment language. The Team decided to create a unit plan that included a proficiency scale for the unit, with clear learning intentions and success criteria for each lesson in the unit.
  • At the start of the dance unit teachers presented their students with a unit overview, and provided them with opportunities to demonstrate their current knowledge and skills on a proficiency scale. Students were also introduced to the unit’s learning intentions and success criteria so they could self-monitor their progress throughout the unit.
  • At the end of the dance unit, students reviewed the proficiency scales, and self and peer-assessed their gains in knowledge and skills. Teachers supported individual students to identify their strengths and areas for improvement, and to set new learning goals. HPE teachers collected the data and used it for overall student assessment, and to support reflection on the impact of their teaching practice.
  • Using proficiency scales allowed students and teachers to recognize prior learning levels, and created opportunities to reflect on student growth in engagement and academic outcomes. Consistently articulating learning intentions and success criteria allowed teachers to set challenges that fostered student commitment to learning, and built their confidence in attaining the learning intentions.
• Example 2: Secondary – Whole school approach
  • At an outer suburban secondary college, the Attitudes to School Survey results revealed a high level of student disengagement. Students reported learning was not engaging. Parents complained their children were often unable to articulate what they learnt at school. The school leadership team decided to respond with a suite of whole school initiatives that would roll out progressively through the year. The interventions focused on making learning visible to students. The first step was to implement a consistent approach in every lesson to setting goals and success criteria.
  • Resources were allocated to support the initiative. Over the summer holidays all classrooms were fitted with small whiteboards with pre-set sections for learning outcomes, success criteria, activities and review questions. During the professional development and planning day at the start of Term 1, all teachers were trained to use the mini-whiteboards, and to develop learning outcomes clearly linked to lesson activities and success criteria.
  • During Term 1, Professional Learning Communities focused on supporting implementation of the strategy and monitoring its impact on student learning.
  • By the end of Term 2, after achieving a high level of consistency and precision in using the mini-whiteboards, teachers reported an increase in student engagement. The results of a student survey were even more promising, showing a sharp increase in engagement with learning, even when teachers had not yet noticed shifts in performance.
  • In Term 3, teachers continued to evaluate the effectiveness of their practice, monitor student engagement and learning, and seek feedback from colleagues and students to gauge the impact of changed practices.

Continuum of practice (Setting Goals)

• 1. Emerging
  • Teachers set learning goals that explain what students need to understand, and what they must be able to do.
• 2. Evolving
  • Teachers use student assessment data and prior learning to set learning goals.
  • Teachers design learning activities and assessment tasks that reflect the learning goals.
• 3. Embedding
  • Teachers set explicit, challenging and achievable learning goals for all students, drawing on students’ backgrounds, interests and prior knowledge.
  • Teachers work together to design learning activities and assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate knowledge and skills at many levels.
  • Teachers make explicit the connections between learning goals, learning activities, and assessment tasks.
• 4. Excelling
  • Teachers develop and maintain a culture of high expectations for all students by setting challenging learning goals.
  • Teachers use moderation of student assessment tasks to refine learning goals, and to provide appropriate levels of challenge for each student.
  • Teachers support students to use learning goals to monitor and progress their learning. They encourage students to review and set their own learning goals.
  • A culture of high expectations for all students is embedded. Students regularly set their own learning goals, self-reflect and evaluate, and share feedback with peers.
  • Teachers support students to use evidence to personalise and revise their learning goals, based on identified strengths and areas for improvement.
  • Teachers use data to evaluate the impact of setting goals to raise achievement and engagement levels.

High Impact Teaching Strategy: Structuring Lessons

• Strategy overview: Hattie (2009) found an effect size of 0.53 for scaffolding.
• What is it? A lesson structure maps teaching and learning that occurs in class. Sound lesson structures reinforce routines, scaffold learning via specific steps/activities, and optimise time on task and classroom climate using smooth transitions. Planned sequencing of teaching and learning activities stimulates and maintains engagement by linking lesson and unit learning.
• How effective is it? The way teachers structure lessons can have a large impact on student learning. Some research shows student achievement is maximised when teachers structure lessons so that they:
  • begin with overviews and/or review objectives
  • outline the content to be covered and signal transitions between lesson parts
  • call attention to main ideas; and
  • review main ideas at the end (Kyriakides et al, 2013).
• A 2013 meta-analysis found an effect size of 0.36 when lessons are structured by summarising main points, gradually increasing the difficulty level, and connecting to previous lessons (Kyriakides et al, 2013).
• There is no specific measure of the effect size of structuring lessons. However, a sound lesson structure contributes to effective scaffolding of student learning, which has an effect size of 0.53.
• Considerations It is useful to integrate structuring lessons with other High Impact Teaching Strategies. By coherently organising teaching and learning, sound lesson structures create synergies between the strategies, cumulatively enhancing their effectiveness.
• Teachers must also consider sequencing and the pace of the curriculum.
• This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
  • explains to students the steps in the lesson, including presenting learning intentions, explicitly presenting new knowledge, identifying planned opportunities for practice, outlining questioning techniques the class will use, and describing the assessment formats
  • makes clear connections between the learning goals, activities and assessment tasks
  • creates transparent, predictable and purposeful routines for students
  • identifies clear transitions between each step in the lesson
  • plans the sequence of steps to scaffold student learning
  • monitors student understanding and provides feedback.
• This strategy is not demonstrated when:
  • lesson structures keep changing, producing unhelpful unpredictability in the classroom environment.
• This strategy is demonstrated when the students:
  • understand the learning goals and success criteria
  • understand the lesson routine and confidently negotiate the sequence of steps/activities.
• Effective teachers plan and deliver structured lessons which incorporate a series of clear steps and transitions between them, and scaffold learning to build students’ knowledge and skills.

Examples that illustrate the strategy (Structuring Lessons)

• Example 1: P-9 – Science
  • A graduate Science teacher in a P-9 metropolitan school is working with a mentor teacher to ensure their Plate Tectonics lessons are structured, succinct and aligned to the Science Understanding and Inquiry Skills standards. The teachers devise a lesson structure that ensures each lesson links to previous student learning, has clear learning intentions, details specific activities, and provides opportunities for assessment of learning.
  • After gauging student prior knowledge through questioning, the teachers collaboratively set appropriate learning objectives and success criteria. They are presented as the lesson begins using acronyms: WALT (We Are Learning To) refers to learning objectives, and WILF (What I’m Looking For) refers to success criteria.
  • The teacher sets clear expectations by defining WALT and WILF at the start of the lesson, ensuring students understand the lesson’s objectives and content. As the class moves through the activities, the teacher provides opportunities to measure student learning. Using Traffic Light questioning, students indicate their level of content understanding. The teacher has structured the lesson to allow time to work with the students requiring additional support. At the same time, those who indicate they have understood the concept are working on an extension activity. When students demonstrate a clear understanding of the concept they can transition to the next activity.
  • At the end of the lesson, the teacher summarises and reinforces the main ideas, then poses a question to students in the form of an Exit Card. The teacher analyses their answers to assess whether they have grasped concepts well enough to progress in the unit.
  • The lesson design reinforces routine through a scaffolded approach to learning informed by clearly identified goals and formative assessment. Time on task is optimised and student engagement maintained.
• Example 2: P-12 – Performing arts
  • A Performing Arts teacher at a regional P – 12 school emphasises lesson designs with clear learning intentions and success criteria. This approach embeds a sequential structure students can rely on as they build skills and content knowledge. The scaffolded approach provides smooth transitions between activities, ensuring students build on prior knowledge, identify links between lesson activities, and can discern the relevance of the activities.
  • In a Miming unit, lesson and unit structures are designed to scaffold student learning. Opportunities are created to build their improvisation skills, and to demonstrate competence against the achievement standards in the level 5/6 band.
  • To begin, the teacher identifies students’ prior knowledge through questioning and a short performance. Students perform a short mime in front of a small audience so the teacher can gauge individual skill levels. The teacher then provides a brief overview of miming with worked examples. The unit’s focus then turns to skill development. Each lesson has clearly articulated success criteria – a set of activities scaffold the learning and explicitly address the learning intentions, with clear transitions linking to skills developed in previous lessons. Lessons are designed so students can participate in mime games and activities that furnish opportunities for self-assessment, peer feedback and teacher feedback. The teacher’s clear instructions assist all students to build skills. This scaffolding approach is intended to make learning visible and predictable, helping students to feel comfortable, prepared and capable of presenting a short mime by the end of the unit.
  • The unit concludes with a summative assessment. Students perform a short mime in front of an audience, similar in design to the initial assessment activity. By comparing both performances, the teacher can assess and provide feedback on individual student growth and skill development.

Continuum of practice (Structuring Lessons)

• 1. Emerging
  • The teacher identifies the learning goals, sets learning activities, and assesses student understanding.
• 2. Evolving
  • The teacher explains the lesson structure, including timeframes for learning activities.
  • The teacher plans and delivers structured lessons that include reviewing previous lessons, signposting new content to be covered, explaining learning activities, and checking for understanding at the end of the lesson.
  • The teacher ensures the lesson’s steps are clear transparent and predictable for students.
• 3. Embedding
  • The teacher assesses prior knowledge, signposts new content, and clearly explains the learning goals of the current lesson.
  • The teacher designs sequenced learning activities that scaffold the learning.
  • Teaching is adapted during the lesson in response to students’ understanding.
• 4. Excelling
  • The teacher ensures all students understand the learning intentions and success criteria.
  • The teacher reinforces routines, scaffolds new learning via specifically selected steps/activities, and uses smooth transitions to optimise time on task and classroom climate.
  • The teacher spontaneously adjusts instructions during a lesson to increase learning opportunities and improve students’ understanding.
  • In closing the lesson, the teacher reviews, clarifies and reinforces key points, and assesses student understanding.

High Impact Teaching Strategy: Explicit Teaching

• Effective teachers use explicit teaching to provide instruction, demonstrate concepts and build student knowledge and skills. In explicit teaching practice, teachers show students what to do and how to do it, and create opportunities in lessons for students to demonstrate understanding and apply the learning.
• Strategy overview: Hattie (2009) found an effect size of 0.59 for direct instruction.
• What is it? When teachers adopt explicit teaching practices they clearly show students what to do and how to do it. Students are not left to construct this information for themselves. The teacher decides on learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to students, and demonstrates them by modelling. In addition, the teacher checks for understanding, and at the end of each lesson revisits what the lesson has covered and ties it all together (Hattie, 2009).
• How effective is it? Explicit teaching is effective in accelerating student performance. The aim is to teach generalisations beyond rote learning, and to sequence learning. In explicit teaching practice, teachers constantly monitor students’ progress towards challenging goals.
• The effects of explicit teaching are similar for students in all school settings. It also has the highest effect size for reading among students at every year level. It supports both low-level word-attack and high level comprehension.
• Considerations Explicit teaching is systematic and sequential. It directly supports guided practice using a series of steps. First, teachers are explicit about the learning goals and the success criteria. Teachers then demonstrate how to achieve them by modelling and providing examples. The final step is to provide students with opportunities to practice and to demonstrate their grasp of new learning.
• A high level of teacher-student interaction characterises explicit teaching. Teachers actively support students to achieve success as they move through the learning process. Teacher feedback is critical. Teachers closely monitor student understanding and target further individual support when it is needed.
• This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
  • explains what students need to know and be able to do by the end of the lesson or unit
  • uses worked examples to show students how to do something
  • allows students sufficient time to practice what they have learned
  • guides student practice by monitoring their work and providing help when it is needed
  • reinforces the main points at the end of the lesson.
• This strategy is not demonstrated when the teacher:
  • is didactic, using teacher-centred, uninterrupted monologue with few opportunities for students to be active in the learning
  • restricts class discussions and student input is discouraged
  • responds judgmentally to students’ attempts at problem solving activities rather than treating each attempt as an opportunity for further learning.
• This strategy is demonstrated when students:
  • understand the learning goals and success criteria
  • have access to multiple examples before undertaking the learning task
  • master the new knowledge and skills before moving on
  • receive feedback as needed.

Examples that illustrate the strategy (Explicit Teaching)

• Example 1: Primary – English