Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

Gene Tavernetti: Hello, everyone.

Today's episode of Better Teaching is going to be a little bit different in that I will not be interviewing any guests, but rather my friend and colleague, Andrew Bixler will be interviewing me and we'll be talking about how My book, Teach Fast, focused,
adaptable, structured teaching, and for those of you who are new to this podcast, or just wondered who the heck is Gene Tavernetti, I thought I would give a little bit of an introduction of myself, just as if I were giving an introduction to any guest.

So, Just to let you know, I've been involved in education for more than 35 years as a teacher, counselor, coach, administrator, and consultant.

I've authored two books, Teach Fast, Focused Adaptable Structured Teaching, which is what we will be talking about today, and also Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles, a book about how to get the most out of coaching.

Teachers and getting the most out of your coaching program that you've invested in at your school in 2006.

I partnered with my former high school teacher and mentor.

Dr. Randall Olson.

To found test consulting group, which is stands for total educational system support focus of test has always been training teachers and those who support teachers in how to provide the best instruction.

My belief about children and adults is that given the right environment and the proper support, everyone can improve and succeed.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode of better teaching only stuff that works.

Welcome, everyone, and welcome, Andrew.

I have to thank you one more time for being my guest host for this episode of Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, to allow me to reintroduce my book, Teach Fast.

So thank you, Andrew Bixler.

Andrew Bixler: More than happy to.

I very much enjoyed the book, so this should be fun.

Gene Tavernetti: All right great.

Andrew Bixler: So, just to start, how did you come up with FAST, Focused Adaptable Structure Teaching?

What is the FAST framework, and why did you write the book?

Gene Tavernetti: Well, the title, of course, is Focused Adaptable Structured Teaching but to be very clear, TeachFast is a book about explicit instruction it's a book about designing and delivering Explicit instruction lessons because for years explicit instruction has been criticized for being
boring, for being spoon feeding, for being just lecture, all the things we continue to hear today all the, all what all the critics have to say about explicit instruction, but over 20 years ago, when I began to work with teachers across the country, I found that many teachers were teaching in a manner
that these critics we're exactly describing, you know, in other words, the lessons that many teachers were describing as explicit teaching or direct teaching were not well designed, they were not well delivered, and certainly not lessons that I would in any way describe as solid, explicit teaching.

And I think there was an an assumption by administrators, by publishers By teachers themselves that teachers had been trained in how to teach explicit lessons, but they hadn't at least not trained how to do it well.

So teachers were given textbooks or curriculum guides and many times in the guide themselves.

It would say at this point, teach a direct lesson about X, whatever was the content of the day.

And the assumption was that teachers do how to do that.

They knew how to design a teach a direct lesson.

So what happened?

Teachers presented lessons that were way too long.

The teacher talked too much or, on the other hand, they didn't talk enough.

The teacher didn't explain well.

The students, or the students weren't getting enough practice.

Or the students were assigned practice and activities that they weren't being provided adequate explanations to do them well, or the teachers just tried to cram way too many concepts into one lesson, and many times they did that because that's what their textbook, their their guide told them to do.

So it wasn't that there hadn't been anything written about explicit instruction before I wrote TeachFast, but it didn't provide good content.

for teachers because most of the books made the teaching way too complicated that someone either couldn't understand the book or they couldn't understand how to teach the lesson in the manner the book described.

And look, teaching is one of the most complex things there is to do, but explanations about how to do it well.

It doesn't have to be complicated.

So, TeachFast captures the complexities of teaching, but presents them in a simple way.

So, it was my job, me as the author, I assumed the responsibility for understanding all the complexity.

And I created a lesson structure that was less complex, simple.

So, TeachFast, in the book, there are clear tips for designing and delivering lessons, explicit lessons, with examples from different content areas.

But the tips, the design and delivery tips, are not tied to any one content area.

They can be generalized to, to all the content areas.

Andrew Bixler: Yeah, I found the simplicity of the delivery of information to be super helpful, and still coming away with Something really substantial substantial and having experienced many of the things that are in the book myself as a teacher.

I can tell that the complexity does come across really well.

Speaking of complexity, how did you get the lesson structure to be evidence based, but you don't really discuss a lot of the research in the actual book?

Gene Tavernetti: Well,

Andrew Bixler: So why did you decide to do that?

Gene Tavernetti: Well, I There are a couple reasons.

I didn't want to include a lot of the evidence But like you said it is totally evidence based and the first reason was I didn't want to write a textbook about research You know number one.

I am NOT There are people way more qualified to do that, to write about the research, and there are a lot of people doing that.

I wanted to give teachers a practical book, a book that embedded all of Rosenstein's principles, and with real guidance, how to do explicit teaching well.

If a teacher knows the research what, you know, we colloquially call the science of learning today, they will recognize the research when it shows up in the book and how I operate, operationalize that.

So those folks, great, they see it, you know, they're happy with that.

If you don't know it, that's fine, too, because the second reason I didn't include a lot of research in the book is that the book is based on my experiences of nearly 20 years working, training, coaching teachers, working with real kids.

I wanted that experience to come across in the book.

I wanted teachers to read explanations and have them make connections to their own practice.

I wanted their experiences to be the reason they realized that what they were reading made sense and was worth trying, not because some researcher who may be unknown to them thought it was a good idea.

Andrew Bixler: There are many different.

approaches and what would you say is different about the FAST approach compared to other lesson structures?

Gene Tavernetti: Well, as you say, there's there are other approaches to explicit instruction other organizational frameworks.

You know, I think of people, many people are familiar with Robert Slavin older folks like me are familiar with Madeline Hunter.

So there are a lot of similarities and, okay.

Again there's nothing wrong with those other structures, but the reason that, that I think mine is mine, the FAST approach for people who know me, they understand that in every conversation, there will be a time in the conversation where I tell them how smart I am, and this may be one of those instances, but

Andrew Bixler: vouch.

Gene Tavernetti: the main differences are four, they're coherence in the lesson design, How we talk about modeling, and we, me, talks about modeling, how we talk about guided practice, and the fact that there are some guidelines for time.

So, so, those four main differences, all four address the common problems.

that I see in lessons that are not as successful as they could be.

Namely, they go way too long, or the teacher is trying to teach way too much content.

So the FAST framework addresses those issues of, we could call them cognitive load and limited attention.

So, the first one, as I said, is coherence.

Now, the FAST framework in the book describes how all the lesson elements are related.

So when I say lesson elements, we could call them lesson components, such as and again, these are things that everybody's familiar with.

Lesson objectives, review, modeling, guided practice, et cetera.

So all of these components are planned in such a manner that they are very closely related.

And so this allows.

teachers to produce lessons that contained very little extraneous cognitive load.

The second difference that I said was modeling.

We talk about modeling and we describe how teachers should model, and modeling can be done much more efficiently than most books and articles talk about it.

In fact, most books and articles on how to model content promote methods that run literally counterproductive to what we know about learning.

Third difference is how we design and deliver guided practice.

And the way we describe guided practice or the way it's described in many resources is not really responsive.

To teachers who get lessons very quickly.

You know, they just get it.

That's not a real academic term, but everybody knows what it means when a kid gets it.

So, the kid that gets it very quickly or to students who need more instruction.

We need to be responsive to both of those groups.

And if the guided practice doesn't work for those students, those two groups, which is basically everybody, then it's not working for the teacher.

The lesson's just not working.

And the last difference is TeachPASS provide guidelines.

for how long parts of a lesson should take.

Knowing how long something should take I think provides another parameter that makes lesson planning easier because It helps teachers make decisions about how to eliminate bluff from their lessons.

And I think parameters aren't restrictive.

I think, I believe that when you have parameters, it makes you more creative.

So those are the four.

Coherence, modeling, guided practice, and then having guidelines for The how long things should take.

Andrew Bixler: Yeah, I found the timing to be really helpful throughout the book to kind of give structure within which you can be More creative.

And speaking of which you mentioned those four, what were, what would be some examples, because I really liked a lot of the examples in the book, the examples of differences and how they would manifest a bit more concretely in the lesson.

Gene Tavernetti: Okay.

Well, let's take them in order.

So let's start with coherence So as I said earlier each lesson component is related to another component so for example Most lessons will have a review component Now, when I'm working with teachers, I'll ask them, Do any of your students have learning gaps?

And of course they laugh, because all students have learning gaps.

And they laugh and tell me they have learning gaps, even in the highest performing.

So, so of course they have learning gaps.

So, so what's the implication, of course, for the lesson, or rather the implication for the lesson, is that there will be content that needs to be reviewed before we introduce new material.

So the question in designing a lesson, though, is not that they have learning gaps, but what specifically, what specific content for this lesson needs to be reviewed.

Now, the only way to determine what needs to be reviewed is to already have planned what the students are going to have to do to learn the new task.

What are those constituent skills that they're going to need?

So what that means is the teacher needs to look.

At the new task and ask themselves what's the minimum amount of prior knowledge students need to do today's lesson and they need to ask the minimum amount.

What specifically do they need to know?

Because the teacher doesn't have time.

They're not able to remediate all the content students don't know, or they're not necessarily proficient in, but the teacher can design a review that exactly supports the new learning.

And conversely, the teacher designs the new learning, anticipating where the students are going to be needing support in certain areas of the lesson.

So, again, you could see the, how they are interrelated and again, by limiting the review to exactly what needs to be reviewed, this limits extraneous content being added to the lesson.

So, planning the review directly relates to the new content.

And that's an example of that.

Coherent planning.

Let me give you, let me give you another example.

Another example is that independent practice in a lesson exactly matches the learning objective.

So what this means is that guided practice in the lesson must match or closely resemble independent practice.

So if students are be successful in the, if students are going to be successful in the guided practice, the problem types must match.

What the teacher presented in the modeling.

So as the lesson proceeds, each component is related to other components, thereby creating this coherence in the lesson.

So, all the components are related and interdependent on one another.

So, huge benefit of coherent lessons.

It helps them make, it helps the teacher make decisions about what should be in the lesson.

And when we are conscious of not putting too much content in a lesson and this extraneous cognitive load, it also helps the teacher decide what isn't going into the lesson.

So.

Okay.

Andrew Bixler: start with coherence because then the line of reasoning follows making what I found to be.

Another strength of the book is the speed at which you can plan once you have this down.

But there are two more.

There's the third one was guided practice.

So what would be an example of guided practice?

Gene Tavernetti: let me talk about, let me talk about modeling first before I forget.

Okay.

So we had modeling.

Modeling is a difference.

And a question comes up from teachers is, you know, how many problems should I model?

And in the book, we tell them.

Model two and they'll say, well, wait a second.

You don't know my kids, you know, you don't know my kids.

They're a little bit slower.

I need to do more models.

Hey, you know what?

Students don't learn when they watch a teacher model.

They learn when they perform the task, when they start to practice.

So if the teacher chooses two excellent examples, two problems are sufficient to model Before students are asked to practice.

So, another thing about modeling in addition to the number of problems, which is different from what many people say in addition to the number of problems.

Which is a function of the design.

We need, we tell teachers that students are not active participants in the modeling.

And when we say active participants we tell them that their job during the modeling is to listen and watch.

And I jokingly tell teachers you know, in your nicest teacher voice tell the teachers, sit down, shut up and watch.

And it's the only time during the lesson and I want to emphasize.

It's the only time during the lesson that students will not be asked to respond to something, to say something, or encouraged to ask questions.

So students do not ask questions or comment, and the teacher does not ask questions of the students.

So why is this so important?

If the teacher's not asking any questions or taking questions, teachers can model Two problems very quickly, usually within a couple of minutes.

Now, this is important because students have very limited attention spans.

So we want students to see an uninterrupted by questions by either the students or the teachers.

Let's see, an uninterrupted fluent model.

And the more efficiently we can model those two problems, the faster we can get students practicing.

And as we know, practice is where the students begin to learn and begin on the road to mastery.

So that's some of the differences in the modeling.

Andrew Bixler: I'm sorry, I skipped over that one.

That one's really important, obviously.

And I think it's a really important distinction to make because, you know, so many people are confused about what explicit instruction entails.

People think, oh, it's just a lecture, but If you're only at the front of the room modeling in a silent room where everyone's watching for a couple of minutes and you're immediately getting into practice, that gives a lot more time for practice, actually.

So, I liked the way that that part of it made it very clear.

the third one is guided practice.

So, how is the guided practice different?

This one was big for me.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, this is, I think, one of the most important differences in the book guided practice, you know, as many people think of it is as is the we do have the lesson.

And the distinction in Teach Fast is that during the guided practice, the teachers aren't doing the work with the students.

The distinction is the teachers are directing the students.

But from the first guided practice problem, The students are doing 100 percent of the work.

Now, this is different.

Let me say that again.

From the first guided practice problem, after the teacher has modeled, the students are doing 100 percent of the work.

And many teachers don't think this is possible.

And it is possible.

They are able to do the work because the teacher only directs them to do one small chunk of the entire task.

So, for example, if the teacher modeled how to do a procedure you know, that has four steps in the first guided practice problem, the teacher would initially direct students to only do one step and stop.

Do one step and stop.

The teacher would check the student's work, provide feedback, then direct the students.

to perform another step and stop.

They're doing small chunks, but they are doing 100 percent of the work from the very beginning.

Now, this process, by having the students do 100 percent of the work, provides excellent formative data to the teacher.

Now, in the book, there is a more complete explanation, of course, about, you know, and many more tips about how to do this directed practice.

But the important thing is that the students are doing 100 percent of the work, getting more practice.

Now this is just one way that, in which guided practice is different.

Another important difference is the number of guided practice problems.

that are necessary to do during the guided practice.

So how many problems should the teacher plan for?

Again, we provide an answer.

The answer is three and in some instances four.

So why?

Well, guided practice has two purposes.

The first purpose, or one of the purposes, I'll say, is for the students, and the other is for the teacher.

So, for students, guided practice provides the necessary practice to do the new content with teacher feedback.

So the first purpose for the students, to provide necessary practice with teacher feedback.

Now, what does the guide of practice do for the teacher?

It provides formative data at a granular level.

The teacher will be able to determine exactly what the students do not know.

So many times we hear guided practice, the formative data tells the teacher what the students know.

That's wonderful to know that.

What they need to know to do any sort of remediation is what they don't know.

So, how many problems?

Three problems.

Now, after three problems, what happens with a class is they, there will be this natural bifurcation into two groups.

One group that is ready for independent practice.

This is the group that gets it and a group that needs immediate in class intervention.

Now the group that's ready to move on is happy because they can start practicing.

They're ready.

They want to show their stuff.

The group that needs remediation gets it without having to wait.

And when the teacher does this in class remediation, Because of the granular level, the the information, the formative information that they received, the teacher knows exactly what part of the lesson needs to be remediated, and they don't need to reteach the entire lesson.

They go and remediate, reteach, do more practice on those.

areas where the student needs, where the students need to work.

So those are two real differences, we think, in the guided practice that allows teachers to be more successful.

Andrew Bixler: Awesome.

I think one of the big things that teachers might not have a firm grasp on is how much time is actually lost by not checking for understanding in a more systematic way.

Because when you do a big chunk of the lesson, and maybe you should have broken up into two parts, now you have to go back and potentially be reteaching those moments when TeachFast is already kind of set up into a system.

And speaking of address, addressing lesson planning and lesson delivery, you do this in every chapter.

Why did you include Both lesson planning and delivery.

Gene Tavernetti: Well, the, we want to address the reasons why.

Lessons don't go well.

And again, I want to state again, the main reasons why lessons don't go as well as they could is because they're too long and or there's just too much content, which is exactly what you're talking about, you know, in your previous comment.

So the problem of too much content.

That's addressed in the design of the lesson.

That's why I need to talk about design in every chapter, because we need to be sure that there's just not too much content.

Now, lessons being too long that can be a function of lesson design, but mostly, It's related to how teachers deliver the lesson, and specifically how long any component of the lesson may take or even just a part of the component may
take and so we have some guidelines to let teachers know how long something might take and let me give you an example of something that we see all the time of something that Frequently, that takes way much more time than it needs to be.

So, and a real important component of the lesson is critical to every student learning is having students activate prior knowledge.

Because they're going to have to pull this knowledge from long term memory into their working memory to learn new content.

Now.

This can be done in the design of the lesson by choosing a question that all students can relate to.

So, let's imagine you're a language arts teacher.

Not too big a stretch for you, Andrew, but imagine you're a language arts teacher, and you're going to be teaching about characterization.

And you're going to be talking about how authors develop characters.

So, Maybe during that lesson, you're going to be talking about indirect characterization, how an author might just have a character do something that tells you about them.

So, for example, you might ask a question to the entire class.

You might ask the students to think of something that a very tall person might do.

And again, it's related to, you know, this indirect characterization.

So they might say, well, he bends over or she bends over to talk to somebody or her knees when she sits down her, you know, the knees are way up or they have to duck going through a door.

Okay.

Every student has to have pulled something from their long term memory to, to answer that question.

And they all have those experiences.

Now, every person has to do it, but not every person has to share with the class.

So many times, you know, we ask the class to think of something and then we go from student to answer the question.

That's not necessary.

So, in the book, there are delivery tips that will allow a teacher to accomplish what's necessary for the lesson.

And what's necessary?

Students accessing schema about descriptions in a very short period of time.

What's that short period of time?

In the book, the guideline for how much time this should take is about three minutes.

So, both design and delivery are important to combat the reasons that most lessons don't go well.

Andrew Bixler: Yeah.

If one kid shares about how this character can dunk a basketball, mostly everyone in that class is going to be able to infer that person's probably tall.

You know, unless it's a biography about Muncie folks, I really love the examples in the book.

They're so like simple, but they do exactly what they need to do and nothing else, again, all tying back to being able to teach quickly once we've accomplished the goal at whatever component it is, we can move on.

And we share actually an obsession with efficiency and maybe that's why I keep harping on how the speed and the appreciation of time.

But why do you think efficiency is so important given that you mention it so often throughout the book?

Gene Tavernetti: couple of reasons.

You know, the first is something that is in the news a lot these days is that limited attention span of students.

I mean, you know, even before the the impact of the digital landscape up today, digital screens, design of social media attention spans have always not been great, but they're reduced even further now.

So efficient lessons.

are focused lessons.

Efficient lessons are focused lessons.

Efficient lessons provide instruction the way that matches the way student learns.

So, efficient lessons, almost by definition are student centered lessons.

So, the other reason for efficient lessons is there are so many things that as teachers we want our students, you know, to do that we need students to do.

One of those things is we need to remediate, we need to fill gaps, and we need time for that.

So efficient lessons allows us time to do that.

We need time to do structured retrieval practice to make sure students, you know, actually are remembering and learning the content that we want them to know.

And so, and there's a need.

To have, for time, to allow students to apply what they learned in their lessons through projects, through labs, through various extended learning activities.

So, I'm obsessed because efficiency is important.

Andrew Bixler: mean, that sounds good to me.

I think it's a really good distinction to make that while we acknowledge attention as being in short supply and just time in general in school within a lesson, you know, sometimes your period is only 40, 45 minutes.

And it's not about the quote unquote engagement, but it's about making sure that your lessons are so focused and so organized that, and quick, as we've said, that there, there's much less time, there's fewer opportunities to even be distracted because you're just moving on to the next component.

So that's another one of the great strengths of the book is how quickly, but also efficiently and focused each component, each chapter outlines this practice.

So, like I said I really enjoyed the book.

I mean, I think I reached out to you halfway through it and was like, this is so great.

And That only continued as I finished it.

So I'm excited for people who haven't read it to, to get their hands on it.

Gene Tavernetti: You know, I and thanks, Andrew.

I appreciate, you know, the opportunity to talk about it.

And you know, I tried to give examples, but of course I gave short examples.

You know, the everything that I talked about is go, you know, I go into a lot more detail.

About how to do these things, because, um, if you aren't clear, if you aren't concise and give specific advice it's not clear.

It's just another book that, that you read.

And, you know, how do I apply this?

So,

Andrew Bixler: You know, you gotta leave some meat on the bone.

And.

I said I'm thrilled to get the opportunity to, talk to you about it because I know that it was very helpful for me in a book that I'm definitely gonna go back to continually in the future,

Gene Tavernetti: well, again, thank you.

And a book that was beneficial to an experienced teacher.

And I think new teachers will get a lot out of it as well.

Andrew Bixler: more so even.

Gene Tavernetti: All right.

Thank you.

Andrew.

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You can follow me on BlueSky at gTabernetti, on Twitter, x at gTabernetti, and you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, BlueSky.

Tesscg.

com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.

Talk to you soon