Forward Teaching

Teaching Backwards

Anticipatory Set

A mental set that causes students to focus on what will be learned.

Independent Practice

All Learning begins in text

The anticipatory set can be taken care of the first few days of class when teachers orient students to their class and how it will function. If done well, this should only be revisited on occasion. There is no need to deliver such motivational pieces 1-3 times a day all year. That design implies a disengaged and reluctant learner. Why assume disengagement?

As much as possible [by that I mean nearly all the time], learning should begin with students engaging text. It then becomes the writer’s responsibility to orient his reader and access his prior knowledge, if necessary. Believe it or not, even math books were originally written this way.

In the absence of suitable text, the teacher can write it. This is no small point. It is crucial for your students to glean ideas by decoding text and correctly deducing voice and tone, rather than for them to listen to these same ideas orally or visually presented by the teacher.

Objective and Purpose

Not only do students learn more effectively when they know what they’re supposed to be learning and why that learning is important to them, but teachers teach more effectively when they have that same information.

Guided Practice

Can you see how lesson design is turned on its head in the service of critical reading? The independent practice precedes the guided practice. Not only should all learning begin in text, but students should routinely re-read any text they have difficulty with. The guided practice begins only after teachers have given students every chance to independently master text, or, at least, to proceed as far as they can on their own.

In the guided practice portion of the lesson, the teacher displays at least a portion of the text and by modeling, demonstration and questioning, guides the students through a deeper understanding of not only what the text means, but how it means what it means.

Input

Students must acquire new information about the knowledge, process, or skill they are to achieve.

Check for understanding

The initial class discussion of the lesson concepts follows a student’s deep immersion in text-based learning. This is where the teacher can use questioning techniques to find out what his students understand. All discussions should be text-based. Displaying of text is more valuable than culling ideas from the text and transforming them into a visual display.

It is at this point in the lesson that the teacher offers scaffolds to the students who need them. These scaffolds should be for targeted and temporary use. The teacher should continually test for independence by attempting in future lessons to remove the scaffolds.

Modeling

“Seeing” what is meant is an important adjunct to learning.

Modeling

Only after the teacher has pulled all he can from the students regarding their understanding of the text does he model how this might be done differently or more deeply. This modeling can be oral or visual. It can even be the sharing of a critical piece about the reading from a secondary source, or written by the teacher himself.

Checking for understanding

Before students are expected to do something, the teacher should determine that they understand what they are supposed to do and that they have the minimum skills required.

Application

Students are exposed to new, or similar, concepts, in new texts and asked to transfer skills acquired during the lesson. The main purpose of reading any text is to become a better reader of the next text.

Guided Practice

Students practice their new knowledge or skill under direct teacher supervision.

Application/Independent Practice

The last step of a lesson becomes the first step of the next lesson.

Independent Practice

Independent practice is assigned only after the teacher is reasonably sure that students will not make serious errors.