Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

Gene Tavernetti: [00:00:00] Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network, shows that help you go beyond education. Find all our shows on BEPodcastNetwork.

com. I'm Gene Tavernetti, the host for this podcast, and my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once, and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching. A quick reminder, we will only be sharing only stuff that works. No cliches, no buzzwords. I was very excited today to have an opportunity to interview my good friend Zach Groeschel, who has a new book coming out. .

Dr. Zach Groshell: Let me ask you,

Gene Tavernetti: Zach, what, why now? You know, what made you think this [00:01:00] book was necessary now? Because, Zach, writing books is hard.

Dr. Zach Groshell: I think that teachers need a positive message. around doing what many of us, not all of us, but many of us believe to be common sense to be intuitive, and that's that every time we sort of try out These kind of trendy methods where you smile and walk away from the student.

You you don't give them too much help. You you hope that someone in their group will assume the role of the teacher and explain it for them. Every time we do that, it seems that the students that they're doing it. Struggle the most or the students that don't know as much as the other students in the room.

They are the ones that that suffer and we see that it be expressed in cognitive overload or in behavior issues in the classroom and. I bought in, you know, hook, line, and sinker. I bought into this idea that really giving, providing minimal support [00:02:00] can sort of grow their brain muscles and over time I realized as I gained experience and sort of dove deeper into the research I realized that full explanations have a role and doing them with precision is something we should be working on I don't know if any of the listeners here have ever had a PD that was purely on how to explain things more, more clearly and more coherently and how to, what the research implies for that part of the lesson when you're modeling.

So I wanted a book that was all about that, that focused squarely on what many people consider to be the core of being a good teacher.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, I have to laugh at how you, I have a hypothesis. You tell me if it's true. Just tell them when you first told me the title of this book, I thought there was a little bit of snark in there.

Is that what it did? Was I right? Or just tell them.

Dr. Zach Groshell: There is some snark there, right? Because if it was just tell them, we wouldn't need to write a book, right? You just, that's it. [00:03:00] That's it. The just being that the only you need to do is tell them. But. I think the, you know, taking that title and thinking about a moment you have in your classroom, a decision, real decision that teachers make hundreds of times during the day where you are sitting, you know, with a group of students, and you are seeing them struggle and grapple with the problem, and they don't know what to do, and so, I'm very confident.

I'm very with, you know, having taught for 10 years and worked with many classrooms. I'm very confident that the smile and walk away approach the leave the scene. Let's see if they can get unstuck or maybe let's gather everyone and talk about how much we need to apply our growth mindset. So we need to persist, right?

I'm very confident that doesn't lead to much of anything. The kids are guessing. The kids are copying each other, right? The kids that already know it might be gaining something from this experience. The kids who don't know it are really, they're [00:04:00] learning by rote. They're learning a very, at a very basic level, what, you know, by copying or mimicking the kids next to them what they're supposed to do.

And they're not gaining some of the insights that can come from a teacher led explanation, one that was rehearsed. In advance, one that draws on the teacher's subject knowledge. So, you know, just tell them is just in the moment when you're positioned and you see this, the student is showing any signs of struggle stop it and.

Use the power of communication to teach them.

Gene Tavernetti: And I think that is the, another paradox of your title. Just tell them it's not just stop and in exasperation, tell them one of the things that, that you talked about in there was the, how you have to speak clearly. And I've heard you talk about cognitive load theory many times, but I've never heard you talk about it the way you talk about it in this book in that [00:05:00] the.

additional verbiage that a teacher may have during the explanation can get in the way.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Yeah, and it's mainly because cognitive load theory hasn't hasn't expanded or extended to clarity of teaching. But there are a couple of papers, that do measure cognitive load. By the way, if anyone's curious, measuring cognitive load is a whole thing and it's not, you know, it's like motivating it's like measuring motivation, right?

You're just asking them, do they feel the feel the imposition of the load? And so it's not that great of a thing. But you know, cognitive load theory is one of the main things I talk about on the, you know, on the speaking trail, but hasn't really extended to the idea that. All these unnecessary words, repetitions, halts, false starts you know, vague terms, discontinuous speech, all of these are just extraneous information, and you cut it out, and you give minimal statements that include only the words that need to be said, [00:06:00] and you're funneling in fewer items into working memory at a time I think it's an important addition to the discussion, right?

We talk about cognitive load mainly in terms of maybe the environment having too many distractions, or we talk about it in terms of the presentation doesn't involve enough guidance, right? And the kids get overloaded. But what about the clarity of the speech? And what about what the teacher chooses to omit or exclude from their speech that will allow just the right thing, just the right information to be funneled into working memory.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, I don't think it goes back to something that we either said during this podcast or previously, and the idea of practicing and rehearsing for the teacher. When you're in the moment, I don't think you have the The bandwidth to be able to realize, I just gave this explanation and I explained it differently three different [00:07:00] times.

And so it's either rehearsal, writing things out which seems like a lot of work on the other hand. If you are prepared like that, it's going to be less work in the long run for you and for the students.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Right. And I mean, before we even started this podcast, you and I rehearsed some of the things we were going to say, right?

It seems like if there, if it's a high pressure situation, you know, you're going to speak in front of a live audience. People do this in the back, right? They're sitting here rehearsing. Like an actor, right? Sort of creating an internal script so that you have, you know, that your ideas flow, you know, in a coherent way.

pattern from one idea to the next. They want to have, you know, show confidence that they understand the subject matter and so on. And you see with teachers who are forced to rehearse their explanations through teaching the same thing multiple periods in the same day, our middle school and our high school teachers, that your [00:08:00] explanation clearly gets better and better as you practice.

So, I do emphasize in the book the importance of rehearsing what you're going to say. And that could be just speaking to an empty room. That could be speaking, you know, just an internal dialogue. You know, just some mental rehearsal that could be practicing with an instructional coach who plays, you know, as the audience member and listens and pretends to be the student.

It. It's something that we don't include a lot of times in our planning. We're always looking online trying to find things on Google, find things for the kids to do, but then that's just insufficient. You have something for them to do, but you don't know how you're going to break it down for them so that they'll be successful when they do it.

So it has to be added, I think, into the planning. And so I do emphasize that throughout the book.

Gene Tavernetti: And I think it goes both when you're working to provide some sort of scaffolding or for students who might be struggling [00:09:00] as you're providing some sort of connection to their prior knowledge in the same way that if you have higher level students, how are you going to, what's the language you're going to use to connect for them as well, so that everybody has that that opportunity.

Like you say, without. Preparing definitions, explanations and I think for teachers, one of the hard part one of the difficult parts for them is that they may have been teaching something for 20 years. or 10 years, and they don't realize the inconsistency of their explanations. They know it, and so they don't analyze what it is.

I'm gonna say, just with regards to explicit instruction you are quite a, quite an advocate. for Explicit Instruction, and you don't mind getting into discussions with folks about who don't believe in the power of explicit instruction. And one of the things that you talked about in the book as something that was very [00:10:00] important was identifying learning objectives.

I don't know how that became controversial, but talk to me about your thoughts about learning objectives and how you talk about it with teachers.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Yeah I have, I feel so, so many ways about learning objectives because, gosh, like a lethal mutation, you know, they have become something maybe of an accountability exercise for administrators who are looking for something that's easily identifiable when they do their observations and their evaluations.

For some administrators, this is good teaching. is starting with a lesson objective and having it on the board in a certain way. And you see, when I talk about it with schools, I show examples that are online, they're easily Google able examples of boards that are completely consumed by like 14 different items that include the learning objective, the success criteria, the big question, the the big idea that this is within, [00:11:00] and the assessment.

Criteria, and so on, and you see for all five subjects this elementary teacher is teaching, and I have to ask, like, I just wrote a book about explanations where I talk a lot about drawing on the board. Do you have any board space left after, after you put all this up, and are the kids getting anything out of this?

Are they reading it? I'm sure they're not, right? Oh and

Gene Tavernetti: It goes to another thing that you talk about in the book that I think If I'm going to judge it just by social media is gaining traction and that is the idea. I'm going to use my term that I've been using for 10 years and that is, you know, visual pollution.

If you've got a whiteboard that is just what you described, that is just chock full of learning objectives. Where are the kids, in addition to not having space to do the new lesson. The kids are just so distracted.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Right. You're creating that visual clutter in, in, in the [00:12:00] classroom that gives them, you know, something else to think about.

That's not you know, they're looking at it. They're and usually when I see it written on the board with that many items they're, It's too abstract, right? It's not something that the teacher that is concrete in terms of what are we doing today? It is sort of like kind of the curriculum of the teacher put on the board.

And it's really oftentimes in if the teacher understands it. And to hope that the student understands all of that stuff and how it all fits in, they don't care and they don't, it's not something that they're really gonna learn from, but however I am a fan. Of using learning objectives to deliver lessons that are manageable lessons that are aligned with the independent practice and with the assessment.

I mean, I will I'll plug your book to the end of time. Your Teach Fast, the chapter on learning objectives was extremely influential. to me, because it, it said a [00:13:00] lot of the things I was thinking, right? Let's stick with one learning objective and not have multiple objectives. Let's make sure that the main thing that we are thinking about is that the reason I have chosen this is because I need to Observe it happen in the classroom through the, what you say, the independent practice, or we could say the formative assessment, right?

With the we need to be able to observe it and we need to make it so that it's manageable enough, which kind of goes back to the cognitive load piece, right? We don't want to present too much information in one lesson. We want to keep it Manageable. And so that's mainly what I talk about with teachers when I do like a day long or a, you know, a big PD on how to design learning sequences with learning objectives.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, I think when you initially described of the, with the learning objectives on the board and their, Cumbersome. They don't provide any guidance for the students because they are so complex. What that tells me is that somebody is being [00:14:00] compliant. An administrator thought, went to some training and said, Oh, learning objectives are a good idea.

They make it mandatory for teachers and they don't help anybody. Except somebody feels good that something is being compliant. I think it's important, you know, as you talk about in your book, and I appreciate you when I talk about in my book, that there's a, that there's a reason for them. It's a guidance.

It guides us through the lesson. And if we don't have that learning objective, how do we know what's excess verbiage?

Dr. Zach Groshell: Yeah,

Gene Tavernetti: so it allows us to keep it more concise

Dr. Zach Groshell: and you know, a lot of times we are we want to give students enough information so that they are going to be successful in the independent practice, right?

Without the learning objective, I would argue that you were opening it up to a lot of tangents, a lot of anecdotes, a lot of stories that are outside of [00:15:00] what the lesson really is. I mean, when we give an explanation that could last a short amount of time, just enough for students to receive it, and then they can go do something for it.

And that would be the more efficient way, or we could hold them back from being able to go and apply what we just taught, right? So having the lesson objective, for me, is it's a manner in which we can align what we're going to say. And really reduce it to the to the fewest amount of things we need to say so that we can really get them to the part release them to the part that is perhaps more exciting or that's the part where we can see them do something with it.

So maybe, you know, I wrote a whole book about explanations, but in the end, it's it's finding. It's finding a way in which the explanation lands and doesn't overload them and gets them to do the critical thinking and creative piece that we all want them, you know, to be able to get to.

Gene Tavernetti: So we just talked about learning [00:16:00] objectives in with respect to how they can populate a whiteboard and edge out room for anything else.

You also talk about a couple things in there and. I can't believe, again, we're getting into some controversy, the idea of seating where students can actually see the teacher. That was one thing and how the distractions and how easily distracted they are. And I'm going to throw one more thing in there because I want to get your I know you have opinions on these things, and I think they all go together.

And this idea that we're finally banning cell phones because of the distractive nature. And so your book talks about all the different ways that we don't even think about that kids can become distracted, and with cell phones being one of the latest that's in the news.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Well, I, right, I start, I have a chapter that says explain with undivided attention, [00:17:00] and the provocation at the start is that none of the tips or strategies that are in the book will work.

You know, for explanation, if the students aren't listening, right? And I know you and I were as instructional coaches, right? We, you know, we can go into, you know, into debates around whether the instructional coach should have already taught that material or be the subject area of the thing they're coaching and so on.

There's all these, there's all these debates in the instructional coaching. World, but I would say that in most lessons that I see that are falling apart, the students just simply aren't listening. They're not listening to the teacher. And so the, they're not successful when they're meant to go do something with what the teacher said.

So, I mean, Distractions are key to, you know, getting rid of them, getting rid, cutting irrelevant information from the environment. So the student can just focus on the essential information. To me, that's the, that is one of the main principles of explicit [00:18:00] instruction, right? You want to highlight what they need to learn about, but they can't learn about it if they're, if that is in competition with the things that they shouldn't be learning about.

And we can divide, you know, what should they not be learning about? Things that are unrelated to the learning objective, right? Right. So, I mean, that's why I spend so much time talking about cell phones and talking about classroom seating, because if the students are facing towards their friends.

If the students are socializing or if they're talking to people at home on their phones or planning after school activities or fights on campus and so on as teachers who've worked in tougher schools have experienced they are not focused on the learning and it's just critical to get attention right.

Gene Tavernetti: One of the things that I have shared with teachers many times, especially teachers in difficult classrooms, or I've worked in, it's very difficult, I think, to have a class of 32 all [00:19:00] attend. at the same time, which brings it back to how critical it is that your explanation is going to be consistent because you know you're going to have to do this explanation, check for understanding, and you know not everybody's going to have it and you're going to need to do it again.

So that consistency and some reality for the teachers is you're not a bad teacher if you have the attention 100 percent from 32 kids 100 percent of the time, but you need to do these things to have an opportunity to get all of them at some point.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Well, I think related. To what you said, you know, is this idea of response to intervention or this idea of, you know, if we're going to do interventions, we really want to start with prevention, right?

We don't want, 80 percent of kids to require a second [00:20:00] explanation if we can narrow it down to just 15 percent of kids, right? And so getting that first explanation correct or that first series of explanations you know, as smooth and as streamlined as possible, making sure you include the best examples that really illuminate the material, making sure you have those visuals that, that pair perfectly with what you're saying, getting that right, allows you to target.

The students that perhaps have incomplete prior knowledge that they needed to understand the explanation, or perhaps just struggle to pay attention, even in the best of conditions that you've set. So, right. A lot of this is thinking about, you know, what's the first thing I'm going to do in a lesson?

That's typically if you're, especially if you're using explicit instruction. Yeah, sure. It might be a do now, but right away, we've got to start by. Explaining to the students what we're going to be doing today and showing them what it is. And so, getting that correct helps. All the other things you're going to do [00:21:00] afterwards.

Otherwise, you're just, otherwise you're just reacting and you're fighting against and you're struggling against the fact that you didn't get it right in the first place.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, that's, I think that's one of the great things about explicit instruction is we want to do the best job we can. We want to plan.

We want to practice to get it right the first time. And. You know it's not going to happen. And one of the things you talk about in your book is the ability to have various methods to check for listening, to check for understanding, because you know you're going to have to say it again, but you don't want to have to, you know, to say you don't want to go on for 10 minutes, do some sort of check for understanding and realize, wait a second, they didn't get what I said in minute two.

So you talk about a lot of different ways to do that checking.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Right. And I, you know, I talk a lot about discovery learning in the book, [00:22:00] but I think there's a form of teaching that is perhaps more prevalent than just setting everyone loose with minimal.

Explicit teaching. And that's a type of teaching in which the teacher explains 11 things or so. and then gives them a big assignment that has them trying to apply all 11 things. And like you said if you do that, if you do like a continuous monologue where you are just presenting and presenting information, you don't know which of the items have been attended to, you don't know which of the items that you presented have been understood.

So. Teaching, teaching in a way that just overloads the student through lots and lots of transient information, extra words and so on it, It's very common in classrooms, and it's something that it's something that we all need to work on, right? And what is the size of a chunk of an explanation that, you know, that is [00:23:00] appropriate?

And what, you know, what does it mean to present in small steps? How much should I alternate? Right? That, I think that's just critical to explanation. It might not look like what people picture, which is a really good TED talk, but it is teaching is different. then then standing up and lecturing, right?

It involves, involve, it involves it getting the student to take turns with you and involving them in the process so that you can see and verify that your explanation is landing.

Gene Tavernetti: I think that what you just said is so critical because you could plan that as a teacher and then you present what you think is a connection to their prior experience, and it doesn't happen.

I was doing a lesson in a friend's classroom. I wanted to see how it was going. And it was about Persuasive, writing persuasive essays. My question to these fourth grade students was, [00:24:00] have you ever asked Have you ever tried to convince your parents to allow you to stay overnight at a friend's house?

Raise your hand. And it was just absolute crickets. And I thought, oh my goodness, that was my big tie into their world. And after about 30 seconds with nobody responding, a kid yelled out, I've never tried to do that, but I have tried to convince my, Parents to take me to McDonald's and everybody raised their hand.

So the idea of that just piggybacking on what you said is that, yeah, you have to be agile. You have to, you know, to be able to tie into what the kids know and realizing that it's your responsibility as the teacher to find that connection, not the kids. So,

Dr. Zach Groshell: and I think it's like a lot of times we're doing things on the fly, right?

And if you're doing, if you're teaching on the fly, you're trying to come up with examples on the [00:25:00] fly, come up with analogies, you're going to get into, you're going to get stuck. You're going to it's already extremely taxing on the teacher's working memory to be attending to all of the things that are in the classroom environment, right?

The students who are not paying attention, the social dynamics you know, the peer pressure the time on the clock, you know, is ticking and we've gotta, we've gotta get through this and I have all these things I prepared that I have to think about. Why add to that? You know, a lot of opportunities to improv or to select at on the fly, an example or an analogy much better, I think, to prepare much better to think through what what you're going to say and.

I'm sure you've seen this in instructional coaching. I've I've worked with teachers who are teaching vocabulary and I noticed they don't give a non example, right? They don't give, like, what is it not? And if you stop the teacher and say, Oh, I, Ms. Smith, I love this explanation. I [00:26:00] just can you give me a non example of this?

Oftentimes that's very tricky for the teacher, right? It's not something that you just. You know, that you can spontaneously think up. You have to have thought about it privately, perhaps, or with a coach before you taught the lesson. So that that, that's definitely an emphasis. And I go into a whole, there's a whole chapter about using examples which it's a tough area of teaching, but it deserves our focus.

Gene Tavernetti: You also talk about using stories, and you talked about analogies, which stories if we're going to use stories, I'm guessing that's why we are using them, to be able to tie into what kids already know, and that they can use these stories, but those analogies have to fit perfectly, otherwise, they're just a story that's a distraction because you have the teacher, you have to show how these things fit you know, and so you talk about using stories So now I'm going to be Devil's Advocate.

We're talking about, up until now, Zach, we talked about precise language and [00:27:00] making sure that we don't use extra language. Tell me about explaining with stories, how that fits in, how this is not a contradiction.

Dr. Zach Groshell: I know, isn't it funny? It does feel like a contradiction. And maybe that's why I sort of gradually build to it because I think first and foremost, we've got to make sure we are parsimonious, minimalist with our explanations.

We got to make sure that we just say the right things that need to be said. But stories, right, that you're going to be elaborating on a concept by giving lots of sort of background information, and you're going to be hanging that in a story structure. And the story structure involves. character development, or it involves it involves things that are interesting, but don't necessarily tie to the main learning objective directly.

They just kind of give, they just kind of give an extra bit of, you know, flavor and background knowledge for the student. Why use stories? I think psychologists would say that we [00:28:00] are Stories fall in the category of psychologically privileged or they're just we process them very easily. We understand as humans, maybe through our evolution of passing down stories that we understand a basic story structure, right?

And it, I like to go into the idea that, you know, we talk a lot about engagement in teaching, but stories for me are a way to you. Engage or to, you know, to grab on to students attention and cognition in a way that is still focused, right? It's not using sort of gimmicks and Legos and having them touch a bunch of things with their hands.

They are, they, for whatever reason, probably based on our evolution stories are draw people's attention. They're interesting. And so, they have to be in the explainer's toolkit. You can explain something a lot, oftentimes, like, here is a definition. This is something that you need to know. That, you know, this is just a fact, a piece of [00:29:00] declarative knowledge.

By only doing that, you are essentially presenting them with the instruction manual for what they need to do. But That could, that, that can be dry. We often need to give them some context, some sort of some sort of like basis for the learning that, that we're gonna launch them into.

And so we can use a story to. To do that, and whether you want to call that as a hook, you want to call that, you know, sort of that beginning exposition phase of a story arc, where you're highlighting this big conflict. I give the example in the book of when I talk about this time when I was, me and my brother were tasked with eradicating this invasive plant called hogweed, right?

Every time I told that story to my To my fourth graders it made them all understand this was a type of plant that the city said you needed to remove it. The reason why is because it's dangerous to children who often play with it. It gives you burns and it has like, it has an acid [00:30:00] that it omits that that that can really Be dangerous for your eyes, especially if you're in the sun.

You tell this as a story and you get these smiles, you get people leaning forward, and you have brought them into what we're talking about. And then you're going to give them examples of other types of invasive plants.

Gene Tavernetti: The story that you tell, it's not only engaging, it's purposeful. It includes the elements that you need the students to know if they're going to make any generalizations from the story.

So, as you were giving your explanation for that, about how it's not a contradiction. I see it's even stronger than what you explained, you know, because it does go back to it was kind of the last sentence of your explanation there. It goes back to, it's going to allow students to make further connections when we get to the content.

It's not just a look how funny it was. Mr. Groeschel and [00:31:00] his brother were.

Dr. Zach Groshell: And you and we've seen it too on, on you know, by delivering PD to schools that right. If you put up a slide of here's the things you need to know That's great. No one will remember it, right? How do we make the experience more immersive?

How do we get them to think of themselves in that story, right? Imagine that you were walking, you know, in the you know, on the Inca Trail as you head towards Machu Picchu and you see it in the distance, right? This was the experience of the first explorers who came to Peru back in 19 whatsoever, right?

You bring, you basically are illustrating and giving students imagery that they can think about that, still drives home the message of your day's learning objective. And I think stories are particularly important for teaching history and social studies, but they belong in other, in, in other subjects as well, because they get, you know, I use them all the time in my PD.

They [00:32:00] give the, they, they give the learner Something to connect to, and the story structure itself is familiar so that they know, you know, what are sort of the certain checkpoints that they need to follow along. It's just super important.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, I think it's important, as you just mentioned, that you just listed for the learning, but I think it's also important for the teachers to realize that this, Explicit instruction.

You're not just some soulless creature up there because you have teachers and, you know, like social studies teachers. Some of those folks are just awesome storytellers and they need to know that something that they know that's their strength. And yeah, go for it. And even something else that you talked about in your book is not only telling stories but humor, like it's okay to, it's okay to be funny when you're teaching.

Dr. Zach Groshell: Yeah, and you know, importantly, the humor really should should help to teach the material, right? [00:33:00] We've also seen the teacher who's just the stand up comedian, right? And they keep on You know, they just keep on going on and telling all these stories that are totally irrelevant to the message, right?

I think that's one of the things that people have pushed back on me on social media, is when I talk about, like, seductive details, irrelevant details, and people want to say, like, well, I, I like that stuff. And it really, the nuance is very simple. It needs to be used in service of illustrating or conveying the material.

Adding it on just to talk to the kids, you know, it's it, you're not people. People want to connect with kids and have relationships with them. You just need to be fo, have a focused a focused desire to get the material to them, because that's your job as the teacher. And in doing so, you're going to build relationships because they're gonna see you're into it.

They're gonna see, you're invested in this stuff and they're gonna learn it and feel successful.

Gene Tavernetti: One of the things that [00:34:00] a description of explicit instruction by people who do not use explicit instruction use in almost a derogatory way the I do, we do, you do. And I know that people who use and are advocates of explicit instruction talk about I do, we do, you do as almost a holy grail, like that's how you do it.

What do you think is the, how is that Misused, I guess, or is there a misunderstanding of the I do, we do, you do, to such an extent that people that say they're doing it miss the boat?

Dr. Zach Groshell: Well, it's impossible in a single catchphrase to describe everything a teacher does, right? And I do, we do, you do is a Anita Archer term, and I include it in the book.

Because it, it goes a long way to describe the gradual release of the focus is on the teacher's [00:35:00] role of conveying the information to, the focus is on the student. Practicing what they've been taught of course, just because it's a just it's a bit simplistic, like, like anything, right?

It's a catchphrase that describes that gradual release, but it doesn't include all of the elements in it. And if you think about it, there's three, three stages. I do, we do, you do, like, maybe it could be interpreted that each of those needs to have equal amounts of time, or that you could never start a lesson with a do now, which would be a you do, you must start with a model.

What I think the main, the key is that we want students to do stuff. with the things we teach them. We can't continuously be stuck in a place where everything is, let's see if you can handle this. This is my, you know, this is my assessment of your prior knowledge. Let me activate your prior knowledge.

Let's have you try to think critically with this. And you're constantly just giving out tasks that you [00:36:00] do. And you're circulating that leads to really weird things like explaining the same thing 30 times to kids as you circulate, right? It leads to kids misbehaving and you having to reprimand everyone.

You'll stop what you're doing. You're not doing it correctly. People aren't doing it anymore. So, the sequence in terms of the teacher should model the material early and often, and then we're going to go to a very substantial portion of the lesson which is dedicated to guided practice, checking for understanding, the we do, and then finally you're going to do it so I can see that you can do it.

That sequence, for me, stands, although there, you know, There's lots of nuances. I mean, what are some of the nuances you talk about?

Gene Tavernetti: Well, I think one of the things that, that I talk about in the, we do is that after when you've done the, I do, you have modeled. And I tell teachers only model twice and the reason that I tell them that is because kids don't learn where they're listening, they have to learn while they're doing, [00:37:00] and kids, adults as well, they think they get it while they're watching, but they don't know that they don't know it until they start doing it.

So one of the things that I talk about in the we do is, as soon as we begin to do the guided practice, the students are going to be doing. 100 percent of the work, but I'm only going to ask them to do a small piece. If they can't do that small piece, I'm going to go back and remodel that small piece, and then we're going to check again.

So, I think that's a, and then we're going to do After I'm satisfied that everybody's progressed in that first piece, then we're going to do the next piece in an isolated way, so that I can see that they know how to do the next piece, and so on. So, so I think how that differs is having the teacher model, and now saying, okay, let's do this one together get started on it, and then I'll walk around and help.

[00:38:00] Or, we're going to do this one together, work on it with a partner. I still have an issue as a teacher being able to isolate the data in what they don't know. So that's how I talk about it a little bit differently. Being able to have, mandating that the students immediately do 100 percent of the work with me checking.

And then, Progressing based on how they're doing.

Dr. Zach Groshell: I love it. Yeah, it's such a tough area, which I don't find there's any. Perfect Answers. The idea that like, we don't want this knowledge that they learn to be learned in isolation. We don't want to atomize, over atomize their knowledge so that, yes, they can do this one thing, this one component of the whole task, but they, it's never integrated for them.

And so, I it's like one of those big questions. Is it something that you do right at the beginning. Is it something that, even though you know they won't understand all [00:39:00] of what you're doing and, or be able to replicate what you're doing, maybe this is giving them some prior knowledge by giving them an overview of the whole thing, and that will allow them to connect certain things afterwards when I'm talking about the part tasks, or another way to approach this is To not show them at the beginning, it's sort of a, it's a useless exercise.

Kids might be shouting out, they don't even understand what you're talking about. And so this is just a waste of a few minutes. Let's get them successful right away. Let's get them working on that individual part. And they go, wow, look, I know that. Wow, look, I know that. But still, I, there, you still have to reintegrate.

Those parts. Otherwise, you're just talking about a partial schema, isolated elements, and you're not, and without the reintegration, the recomposition, they'll never, you know, they'll never fully, truly understand what they were doing, and you never get them to use it together.

Gene Tavernetti: I don't think there's ever a reason to start a new lesson [00:40:00] without Modeling.

If it's familiar, guess what? It's going to go faster. The guided practice will go faster, but I just think it's good. I just think it's good practice for that to have a good solid I do as a foundation to go back to when questions when questions come up during the we do.

Dr. Zach Groshell: I absolutely agree. But you know, that does go against the current advice of a lot of education gurus out there that really like most of your lessons should be having them in a productive struggle around often a single problem or a few problems around a whiteboard, right?

I hope, you know, as we end our discussion here, I hope that teachers who are interested in a different line of thinking that, that really want to learn about the research into cognitive load theory and explicit instruction and modeling in particular, that they take a look at this book that they, I think I tried to [00:41:00] make it as practical as possible, but also to distill insights from research so that you have one you have one book that, that contains what you need to know when it comes to delivering and communicating efficiently and effectively.

Gene Tavernetti: If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.

Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon