Dear Anxious Teacher

So you’re putting your lesson plans together. How do you start your lesson? What’s the hook? A simple way of thinking about your teaching is to follow the model: I do, We do, You do.

I do: This will include your Do Now (hook), your instruction, modeling, and direct teaching. Keep this portion of your lesson to 10–15 minutes. Sometimes we make the mistake of lecturing too long, losing our students’ interest. You should target all sensory modalities (vision, hearing, and touch) to help students gain, process, and make use of new knowledge. Your lesson should start with something interesting and fun. Relate it to your students as much as possible. Knowing your students’ abilities is crucial to teaching them. If something is very abstract, make it concrete by providing plenty of analogies or metaphors to help students understand your content. Visuals will help with abstract concepts too. Music and YouTube videos can also assist with getting ideas across. Humor and good stories can make learning enjoyable and memorable. Think about what the most important concept is that you want students to walk away with. They will forget all the extras, so what is the one thing you want them to remember? Focus on your lesson goals and get after it. If you feel confident, move on to We Do. If you feel students need more understanding, reteach and try other methods to help them learn.

We Do: Here comes the guided practice. This model is based on Lev Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development” theory. We, as teachers, are going to provide the support to help learners achieve the learner goals and standards of your lesson. Thinking aloud, modeling, demonstrations, and assisting students with more challenges should take place during this time. For example, when students write in my class, I write with them and model paragraph structures. When I revise paragraphs for meaning, I reveal my thoughts on my writing. Providing practice, practice, and more practice is the crux of this portion of the teaching model. You may also need to reteach here, show more examples, target a different modality, and give or remove support as needed or as necessary. This is the teaching dance, as I call it. This should be 10-15 minutes, but it may be a lot longer if students need a lot of help or work in an area. Your goal is to assist and try to release the responsibility to them (gradual release of responsibility). This is where providing graphic organizer support can be useful. If you have students with special needs, I would adapt and change class materials to help with any disability. Getting them to be successful is the major goal here. Start with some simple questions to build their confidence and then increase the difficulty.

A tremendous amount of formative assessment should happen here to direct your teaching. Formative assessments can include teacher observation, class discussion questions, hinge-point questions (almost like a Do Now or Exit Ticket but in the middle of a lesson), multiple choice, conferences with students, writing samples, whole class hand gestures (thumbs up or thumbs down), Do Now assignments, Exit Tickets, quizzes just for information, polls, Google Forms, etc. These assessments will allow you to diagnose and change your teaching speed. This is a lot of fun because it allows you to fine-tune your teaching and reevaluate what you do. To me, good test scores reflect my teaching.

You Do: This is the last segment in the teaching model. This should be the remaining time of your class, or maybe the following day. Students will complete the learner aim without help now. I generally have them show their learning and then follow up with a performance quiz or test. My class-wide benchmark is 75% before moving on. If the performance is below 70%, then I know I have to adjust and try other methods to get my students to perform and learn better.

If you follow this model in teaching, it will also help slow down your teaching. I believe it’s better to teach less and more thoroughly than to move from one concept to the next. You may need to think about your curriculum and then decide what to prioritize. 10 months sounds long to us, but time goes fast, and when you teach, there is never enough time in the school year. So focus on core concepts and figure out what the major concepts are that you want to address in your school year.

The superb thing about the “I do, We do, You do” model is that you will move back and forth in all 3 areas. This will make you a better and more cognizant teacher. Remember, more and more practice is a good thing. Consider using Bloom's Taxonomy verbs to help create projects and to develop more challenging materials to show evidence of learning. Have fun teaching!