Research School Network: Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction #2 Present new material in small steps


Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction #2 Present new material in small steps

Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction #2 Present new material in small steps

When I started teaching in the early 2000s, I fell into the trap of moving rapidly through a large amount of information at the start of the lesson so that students had the maximum amount of time to do” activities. I would often find that some of the students in the lesson would complain that they didn’t understand or would carry out the task incorrectly. My default conclusion would be that they weren’t listening properly or weren’t trying hard enough, after all I had explained everything quite clearly and the instructions were on the board. Even more frustrating, were the situations when I was teaching higher ability groups that seemed unable to do the tasks that lower ability groups had successfully achieved. At the time I didn’t question that the issue might lie in the way I was presenting information to the classes. With the groups that had students with Dyslexia and Moderate Learning Difficulties, I carefully structured my teaching so that instructions and information were broken down into smaller steps – I did not do this with the higher ability classes as I felt that there was no requirement to do so.


Armed with my learning from Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction (Rosenshine, 2012; Sherington, 2019), I have now ensured that for all classes that I teach, I present new material in small steps. This is leading to greater success for the students in my lessons and significantly reducing my stress levels in lessons.


There is a wealth of evidence and theory from the psychology of learning (often referred to as cognitive science) that supports the view that presenting new material in small steps is an effective strategy to use with all learners. Sweller et al. (2011) have summarised the research and theories relating to the concept of cognitive load and the applications of this for educational practitioners. Cognitive load theory builds upon the multi-store model of human memory (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) where the working memory receives, rehearse and retrieves information from either the sensory memory or the long-term memory.

Memory

The working memory has limited resources to use when processing information. The aim is to maximise the germane load’ on the resources available to produce schema, which will be explained later, in the long-term memory; manage the intrinsic cognitive load- the resources required to process the information to be learnt; and to reduce the extraneous cognitive load on the working memory resources needed to understand instructions. It is important not to overload’ the working memory resources by requiring more than are available. If this happens then information cannot be processes and learning is prevented. This cognitive overload’ can be observed when students give up, stop listening or become annoyed when they don’t understand”.

Cog load 191218 205111

Sweller et al. (2011) refer to aspects of learning as elements and sub-elements, which when learnt integrate into schema in our long-term memory. Schema can be understood as mental representations of the world we live in. First described by Piaget (1931), these models enable us to interact with the world around us. Imagine our schema for driving a car, an element would be the parallel park and the sub-element would be each phase of the manoeuvre. In the process of learning to drive, each of the sub-elements will have an intrinsic cognitive load which, as mentioned above, requires working memory resources.


When the sub-elements can be taught independently and sequentially the intrinsic cognitive load will be low and can be processed and learnt easily. In our driving schema this would be using the clutch, putting the car into gear and releasing the hand brake. In Science, this could be learning the symbols for the elements in the periodic table, in history the key events in the Cold War. The intrinsic cognitive load increases, requiring more working memory resources, when the elements interact simultaneously e.g. reversing during the manoeuvre when parallel parking, constructing and balancing symbol equations in science, determining the causes of the events in the Cold War.


In the classroom there are ways in which we can reduce the intrinsic cognitive load of the content and skills that students need to learn and support Rosenshine’s Principle of presenting new material in small steps:

  • Use a graphic organiser to chunk, sequence and organise information. Oliver Caviglioli has some excellent examples here.
  • A well-sequenced curriculum that introduces key knowledge in a sequential manner, with increasing complexity over time.
  • Using knowledge organisers to signpost the key concepts and ideas that are required.
  • Use of structure strips and scaffolds to support the sequencing of complex concepts during writing.
  • Breaking learning into chunks’ followed by opportunities for students to practice and rehearse their learning before moving on.
  • Rote learning of complex information initially, so that processing can take place. Later, introduce the skills of analysis and evaluation of the relationships.

January’s blog will look at the next stage in Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction; the use of questioning that occurs before, during and after the introduction of new material that has been discussed in this blog.

Emma Whillis

(Evidence lead)


References
Atkinson, R. and Shiffrin, R. (1968) Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes’, in Spence, K and Spence, J.(eds.) The psychology of learning and motivation.2. New York: Academic Press. pp. 89 – 195.

Piaget, J. (1931) Retrospective and prospective analysis in child psychology’, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 1 (2), pp.130 – 139.

Rosenshine, B. (2012) Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know’, American Educator, 36 (1), pp.12 – 20.

Sherrington, T. (2019) Rosenshine’s principles in action. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational Ltd.

Sweller, J., Ayres, P., Kalyuga, S. (2011) Cognitive Load Theory. New York: Springer.

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