Rosenshine writes that review ‘can help us strengthen the connections among the material we have learned’ (p. 13). An idea Rosenshine emphasises throughout his principles is that recalling prior learning should ideally be automatic. ‘Automaticity’ is the stage where learning and practice has been undertaken such that recall is effortless, thereby freeing working memory capacity (p. 13). Working memory is the area of memory where we process information. It has very limited capacity and can only handle a few pieces of information at once (p. 13). Mainly, it’s the contradictions. In the conclusion the author shares some ‘improvement agendas’ which roughly focus on each strand of principles. Sherrington makes it clear that teachers and leaders should focus on one thing at a time, rather than aiming for improvements across multiple areas. This contradicts his earlier comment that there is likely crossover between the principles themselves, making it hard to focus on development in one particular area. If you are focusing on developing scaffolding techniques then you might well end up working on ways to support learners moving from guided/controlled practice to independent practice. There doesn’t seem a need to focus on developing individual strategies only, just an awareness that you can’t focus on everything at once. The teacher provides students with temporary supports and scaffolds to assist them when they learn difficult tasks’ (p. 18).

This strategy aims to give those students who don’t know the answer or get an answer incorrect opportunities to learn from others in the class and to practise. It also avoids fostering the defensive habit of ‘I don’t know’. Sherrington offers six questioning strategies based on Rosenshine’s principles. Sherrington outlines the objective of each and how it should be undertaken in practice. He recommends that teachers work on one or two of these strategies with students, accompanied by students engaging in ‘deliberate practice’ until these strategies ‘form a set of … default modes for engaging in responsive teaching’ (Sherrington, p. 28). ‘Deliberate practice’ is a systematic method of effortful, highly focused, goal-oriented practice which aims at improving performance. [3] It is sometimes described as ‘intentional engagement in skill-based learning’. [4] (On deliberate practice, see our recent blog post.) Our blog last week offered a brief introduction to Barak Rosenshine’s influential ‘Principles of Instruction’ and Tom Sherrington’s division of Rosenshine’s principles into four ‘strands’, in his book, Rosenshine’s Principles in Action. Sherrington uses the strands to explain Rosenshine’s principles, by connecting the principles with those to which they bear the closest relations, illustrating how the principles complement and support one another, and offering practical advice for their implementation, in addition to that offered by Rosenshine. This week’s blog post explores Sherrington’s strands and Rosenshine’s principles in more detail.

The idea behind scaffolding is that ‘cognitive supports’ are provided and are gradually withdrawn as a student gains competency. In this way, scaffolding can help to develop a student’s expertise and mastery in a subject. Rosenshine writes that thinking aloud is an example of ‘effective cognitive support’ (p. 15). Rosenshine’s ‘Principles’ provides a highly accessible bridge between educational research and classroom practice. The principles are research-based, extensively drawing upon research in education and cognitive science. Rosenshine expresses the principles succinctly and offers suggestions for the implementation of the principles in the classroom. He provides many examples of activities employed in the teaching practices of ‘master teachers’ – i.e., teachers whose students made the highest gains in achievement tests (p. 12). Yes, to varying degrees. I can’t think of a subject where ideas about review, modelling, questioning, sequencing concepts and practice don’t apply. The Principles will be more directly relevant to the parts of a curriculum where the learning relies on teacher modelling; when there is a specific knowledge base that is best delivered by teacher instruction; where learners are more definitely novices relative to the teacher. Where there is more emphasis on collaborative learning, open-ended project work, devising, making and so on, then instructional teaching will be less of a focus. Arguably all these things are forms of practice so it depends on how you want to define things. The cognitive load involved in a task is the cognitive effort (or amount of information processing) required by a person to perform this task. If the cognitive load needed for learning becomes excessive, little or no learning can occur’. [1] Sequencing concepts and modelling: Sherrington’s third strand, involving Rosenshine’s second, fourth and eighth principles

If students ‘don’t know or get things wrong, they should be given the opportunity to gain confidence by consolidating correct or secure answers’. No. It’s really important not to think of the Principles as some kind of lesson plan. Different lessons in a learning sequence will require a different focus: some might have more explanatory modelling; more questioning or more independent practice. You might have whole lessons of practice and whole lessons of teacher modelling and questioning. You might not literally do ‘daily review’ every day. However, over a series of lessons that relate to a secure sequence, you might expect all elements of the Principles to feature in some form. Re: ‘explicit to implicit’ and the connection between the two (if any)… while this may be equally refutable, I feel more aligned with Ullman’s research on this one – these are distinct memory systems that play different roles (I’m referring to declarative v procedural knowledge there). Yes, my views do tend to flit around, but the idea that declarative knowledge leads to procedural knowledge has always seemed a bit convenient/simplistic in all honesty. It has been a long while since I formally studied this area though so my current views are a tad bitty.Sherrington adds some detail to the strand summaries in the poster above in a blog post where he argues that Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’ is ‘THE must-read for all teachers’. In future blog posts this term, we’ll explore Rosenshine’s principles and Sherrington’s strands in closer detail.

Sherrington calls his second strand ‘questioning’ and writes that this strand concerns the following instructional procedures: I’ve just read a book by @teacherhead (Tom Sherrington) on Rosenshine’s ‘Principles in Action’ ( John Catt Publications). It’s a pretty good resource, the first half is Sherrington’s take on Rosenshine’s principles and how to apply them. The second part is the original pamphlet that outlines those principles.Rosenshine and Sherrington recommend that teachers provide many worked examples and then leave students to finish problems by themselves. The extent to which students complete tasks by themselves depends how far along they are in the process of mastery over the task or skill in question (Sherrington, p. 21). The extent to which students complete problems by themselves is expressed by Rosenshine in terms of the number of steps in a learning process students are expected to complete by themselves. research from cognitive science – specifically, research concerning how the brain acquires and uses new information; Sherrington recommends that teachers should make ‘it the default that, in any given exchange, [teachers] are asking each student three/four/five questions, before moving on’.

After listing the seventeen instructional principles above, Rosenshine outlines his ten principles of instruction (pp. 13-19 and 39). The principles are clearly illustrated and briefly summarised in the poster below, by Oliver Caviglioli: Each of Sherrington’s strands contains two or three of Rosenshine’s principles. Sherrington argues that these four strands run throughout all of Rosenshine’s principles: The more complex and interconnected our schemata are, the easier it is to make sense of and organise new information which relates to our existing schemata. An example of a daily review practice exhibited by the most effective teachers is that ‘they would begin their lessons with a five- to eight-minute review of previously covered material’, and would provide ‘additional practice on facts and skills that were needed for recall to become automatic’ (p. 13). At the end of ‘Daily review’, Rosenshine offers an additional five recommendations for classroom practices, the final of which recommends that teachers should ‘Review material that needs overlearning (i.e., newly acquired skills should be practiced well beyond the point of initial mastery, leading to automaticity)’ (p. 13).

Rosenshine’s principles of instruction, divided into Sherrington’s four strands (image by Oliver Caviglioli) Agree a focus on small number of the principles – perhaps one of the four strands I explore – with individuals committing to develop and practise them in a specific series of lessons. There is a danger that by suggesting this is a ‘basic flow of many learning experiences’, the author (as an experienced teacher) is suggesting it is preferable, and it is very much taken out of subject context. As our schemata become more fully formed and interconnected, we can explore our knowledge and retrieve it more fluently.