What is explicit instruction teaching?
Explicit, or direct instruction, is a teacher-led teaching method. The way it works is that the educator gives clear, guided instructions to students from the front of the classroom or lecture hall. This teaching strategy works best for development of particular skills and not necessarily those that require experimentation.
How does explicit teaching work?
When you adopt explicit teaching practices, you are clearly showing your students what to do and how to do it. You are not relying on students to construct this information for themselves.
There are several steps to explicit instruction teaching:
- A teacher decides on a learning intention for a class and sets specific, transparent success criteria. These criteria are shared with students and explained in detail.
- The teacher clearly shows students what to do and how to do it through a clear physical demonstration.
- The teacher checks for student understanding periodically. At the end of the lesson, the teacher will revisit what was covered to summarize understanding and learning.
- In the content of an ongoing task or assessment, students are provided with all the information they need to complete this independently.
Benefits of explicit teaching in the classroom
Fast-tracked performance
Explicit teaching is effective in fast-tracking student performance. Explicit teaching aims to move beyond rote learning and to attempt to sequence learning for students.
Increased flexibility
Explicit teaching can be done in real-time or with video content, an excellent option for students to then revisit beyond the classroom. This content can be created from scratch and tailored to your specific class or an existing ClickView video resource.
Clear expectations
Explicit teaching is a useful teaching strategy for making sure all students are clear about the criteria. Part of the process is setting the scene for each lesson or session, recapping previously taught information and stating aims and objectives moving forward.
Systematic and sequential
Explicit teaching is always systematic and sequential. By directly supporting guided practice using a series of steps, it’s ideal for teaching practical hands-on skills rather than more abstract concepts.
Explicit teaching ideas for teachers
Explicit teaching involves a high level of teacher-student interaction, incorporating targeted feedback. Teachers need to take an active role in supporting students to achieve success as they move through the learning process. By carefully monitoring student understanding, you can offer targeted individual support.
ClickView’s interactive video feature can be used to create your own teaching videos. Just add an interactive layer of questions or steps to any video to help students better understand the content as they learn.
Learn more about interactive videos
Top 2 ways ClickView can help you with explicit teaching
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Create your own step-by-step videos
It’s so easy to create your own video content to demonstrate specific skills for your students. These might include how to draw a spiral pattern for elementary art students, how to cut wood correctly for a high school woodworking lesson, or even how to perform a dance sequence.
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Access sample explicit teaching content
You can also take advantage of the extensive library of explicit teaching strategy content that already lives on ClickView. ClickView houses many video examples of explicit teaching uploaded by our users, to inspire you in your classroom.