Explicit Teaching in Science

Years ago, I attended some professional development where we watched a video of Dr Anita Archer using explicit instruction to teach vocabulary (Vocabulary Instruction 2nd.mp4 (youtube.com). I sat there, knowing that this was excellent teaching, knowing that I could learn a lot from this. However, I was completely unable to translate what I saw on the screen into practice in my own classroom, because Dr Archer was teaching vocabulary to a primary class, and I was teaching Science to secondary classes. Fortunately, soon after a colleague shared a blog post that he had found by Adam Boxer on how to explicitly teaches practicals (The Slow Practical – A Chemical Orthodoxy) and demonstrated how they had applied this in a department meeting. Seeing Explicit Teaching, in my subject, in the context that I was teaching, allowing me to see how to use Explicit Teaching in my classroom and it has made such an enormous difference in student’s understanding, achievement and behaviour in my science lessons. I share how I use Explicit Teaching in my lessons, not because I am the expert but because it makes such an impact on student learning.

Why use Explicit Teaching?

Explicit teaching has been in the news a bit this year, and the Department of Education chose to make it a focus for Term 2, 2024, for very good reasons. Explicit Teaching is suitable for teaching all manner of knowledge, including factual, procedural, or conditional. Explicit Teaching promotes high levels of success in guided practice with the teacher, which in turn increases quality of independent learning in a lesson. Most importantly Explicit Teaching improves access for students with disabilities, students from disadvantaged background and students who are struggling. It’s a highly adaptable approach that can work in any classroom to effectively support our students.

What is Explicit Teaching?

The first thing to mention is that the Explicit in the name is not because the teaching is R rated! The Explicit comes from the clear, comprehensive, and thorough explanation. By the end of the lesson students know exactly what has been taught and how and where to use this knowledge.

The main features of Explicit Teaching

It's Teacher Led

The teacher plans and leads the lesson/s, breaking down knowledge and tasks into their component parts and explains each part fully and clearly. As they are teaching, teachers will be questioning and checking for understanding to ensure that students understand each part before moving onto the next section. At this point in the lesson, examples are used to show the breadth of where the knowledge would be applied e.g. a range of examples where the acid-carbonate general reaction would be used. Non-examples are used to define the boundaries of the knowledge, that is where not to apply the knowledge e.g. a range of situations when the acid-carbonate general reaction would not be used. The result is a clear explanation with no ambiguity in our student’s minds about what has been learnt.

Guided practice

Students practice the target knowledge or skill with a high level of supervision and a high level of success. If students are not able to complete tasks at this point, the teacher will go back and reteach.

Independent Practice

The teacher led explanation and the guided practice build towards the student completing independent practice to build their skills, confidence and to consolidate their knowledge.

Before we get into how I use this in my classroom, I do need to give you a word of warning, Explicit Teaching is an approach, not a script. You will need to adapt your teaching to your class, your school and the content that needs to be covered. You will find that what works for me may not work for you.

Applying Explicit Teaching to the Secondary Science Classroom

For the sake of brevity, I am going to focus on the main teaching component of the lesson. This means I am assuming that you have already checked that all your students have the critical prerequisite skills or knowledge for the lesson.

Modelling (‘I do’)

The first part of Explicit Teaching is Modelling, this is often referred to as ‘I do’. Here a teacher is demonstrating the target knowledge or skill, giving students step by step instructions to follow. Typically, a teacher would start by demonstrating the task in its entirety to allow students to see the end goal. You would then redemonstrate the task or knowledge (usually a few times) increasing the complexity of the questioning of your students as you go. As you work through the content you provide a range of examples, ensuring that your examples cover the scope of the independent practice that will be provided later in the lesson. Non-examples help to prevent students from over generalising the knowledge and applying it to the wrong situation. Using non-examples and modelling common errors at this point really helps students to understand how to use the knowledge correctly.

For example, I teach the naming conventions of salts when we introduce the acid – metal general equation as a word equation. I explicitly teach that the name of a salt has two words, the first word comes from the metal and the second word comes from the acid. After checking for understanding, I check that students can correctly identify a metal and model putting that as the first word in the salt. I then teach that if the acid is hydrochloric acid, then the second word of the salt is chloride, nitric acid gives a nitrate and sulfuric acid gives a sulfate and then model putting this as the second word in the salt. I am continually checking throughout my explanation that students are understanding and can correctly apply this knowledge. I would use a range of examples, ensuring that some difficult to identify metals are used, along with examples of every acid that they will encounter in their independent practice. For non-examples I might include a word equation of a metal with a base.

Guided Practice (‘We do’)

Students gain valuable experience by practicing with the teacher guiding and supporting them, this is also known as ‘We do’. As students are practicing, the teacher is gradually removing scaffolding and support while they are monitoring, providing feedback, and acknowledging success. If students are not able to complete almost all questions correctly at this point, you will need to go back to the modelling section of the lesson and reteach your students.

Often you will find that there isn’t a distinct boundary between the modelling and guided practice parts of the lesson (or for the guided practice and independent practice parts too!). I find that I tend to seamlessly move into guided practice as I am working through the examples with students. As I am working through the examples with students, I am getting them to do sections of the question in their books, give me a signal for the right answer or using mini-whiteboards to check that all students can do that part before moving onto the next step. For the word equations discussed above, I focus on students correctly identifying the metal in the reactant and successfully writing that in the correct location in the products. Once students are consistently and correctly writing the metal part of the name, I move onto the acid part of the name and finally will get them to identify that hydrogen is also produced in this reaction.

Independent Practice (‘You do’)

During independent practice students are working without scaffolds, supports or prompts. The questions will be gradually getting harder so that students can experience success and gain confidence before they are presented with really challenging problems. Throughout this practice, you will still need to be checking student work regularly to make sure that they are able to complete the work by themselves.

The three parts of the lesson are flexible, and you will find that you will need to move back and forth between them as required when students are revealing misconceptions and areas of confusion. The fantastic thing about Explicit Teaching is that it is highly adaptable and will work in any classroom.

Two final pieces of advice, Explicit Teaching is much easier if you understand how your programs are building upon each other. If you are an early career teacher, I would really recommend chatting with an experienced teacher in your department to help you identify critical prerequisite knowledge and how your programs build upon each other. Explicit Teaching needs to be specific to your situation and it needs to be highly responsive, if you haven’t used Explicit Teaching before, then I would also recommend working with other members of your department to break down the knowledge and tasks, plan the examples and non-examples and develop the independent practice questions together. It will take more time at the start, but you will improve so much faster.

I hope you find Explicit Teaching to be as powerful as I have, it is the single biggest thing to have improved my teaching.