Classroom Non-Negotiable Focus: Instruction Involves Input and Modeling

This week's Lyon Academy Instructional Blog post focuses on the classroom non-negotiable of Instruction Involves Input and Modeling.

Over the course of a lesson, students should experience a "gradual release of responsibility." This occurs through the I Do-We Do-You Do process. The model below shows how a lesson looks when following this model:



The pictures below from Ms. Richards' classroom demonstrate how "I Do, We Do, You Do" was implemented in a fractions lesson.

I Do
In a previous lesson, students reviewed fractional parts and created a flipbook that represents the numeric fraction (i.e. 1/2), the term ("fourth," "fifth") and a strip that showed what the fractional part looked like.

Next, as the I Do portion of the lesson, Ms. Richards modeled how to plot fractions on a number line using chart paper in the mini-lesson.



We Do
For the guided practice portion of the lesson, students had problems that were the exact same. Students worked on the problems and the teacher circulated to provide feedback to the partners during their work.


You Do
Finally, for independent work, students practice problems on their own. This is a sample of a work product from another lesson that students created independently.


When thinking about I Do-We Do-You Do, a critical component is the Ratio of work that students are completing. Teacher should be reduced over the course of the lesson and student thinking must be pushed. Here are some techniques that can be implemented to support Ratio:

• Require students to support answers with evidence from the text.
• Feign ignorance (for example, write wrong answer that student gives on the board, let students find the error rather than correcting it yourself; pretend you don't even know the answer is wrong). 
• Ask students: "put it in your own words" about a classroom definition, concept, and so on.
• Reword question to force students to think on their feet about the same skill.
• Use Wait Time to give more students the chance to think through the answer.
• Model "Right is right": press to 100 percent correct answer.
• Check for student use of specific strategies and not just correct answers. 
• Ask "what if" question: "What if" I took away this information from the problem, how would you approach it? 

For additional Ratio strategies to support the implementation of I Do-We Do-You Do, see the links below:

http://teachlikeachampion.com/?post_type=workshops&p=2020 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuTK10wUCu0