We concluded our post on feedback by claiming that “It is impossible to be excellent if you don’t know what excellence looks like and you are not given a clear path on how to get there.” As we begin to move from conceptual learning to assessments with specific criteria, it might be a good time to practice modelling in our lessons.
A. Clearly Decoding Tasks
Through modelling responses to assessment questions, the teacher explicitly shows students how to perform a certain skill by describing each step with a clear rationale, providing them with a visual and verbal example of what they are expected to do. It can take many forms: showing students how to write an effective analytical paragraph in a structured manner, solving an equation step-by-step while explaining the principle and logic behind every decision, or deconstructing an exemplar response in detail.
B. Why Modelling is Essential
Modelling places a premium on articulating clear and specific learning goals. In doing so it:
- Establishes a benchmark for excellence, by conveying to students the quality they should be aspiring to.
- Makes abstract success criteria concrete. Simply placing the success criteria alongside a task or exemplar response can be relatively meaningless for students. They need to be able to see how each criterion is actively fulfilled in the act of individual response; how a top band response balances all elements of the success criteria.
- Displays the thought processes of experts. Students may not know how to approach a problem or may believe, incorrectly, that understanding comes immediately and completely. By modelling our thinking with them out loud we help them to develop their own thinking processes. E.g. By students seeing us overcoming a problem, it makes it okay for them to struggle through a task.
- Introduces students to academic styles or registers. In essay-based subjects (or any subject that involves writing) many of our students may not know how to switch from a colloquial register to a scholarly one. By modelling style through common but important phrases and transitions we introduce them to the necessary stylistic conventions of the task.
C. Types of Modelling
- ‘Live’ Modelling – ‘think-out-loud’ modelling allows the teacher to explain the mental process behind decisions. The teacher can model, “questions I ask myself” at certain points before proceeding to the next aspect of the task.
- Student Exemplars – using ‘messy-but-workable’ student exemplars can be more powerful than using polished teacher ‘products’ that have been produced under timeless conditions, as shown in Figure 1. Working with an inevitably flawed by high quality response produced by a peer will seem more achievable.
- Comparative modelling – it is often far easier for students to pick out what is good about a piece of work if they have something less than good to compare it to. Actively working through top, middle, and bottom band student responses, explaining where students went right or wrong respectively, can be beneficial in clarifying the necessary steps to producing a high-quality response.
- ‘Gradual Release of Responsibility Modelling’ – part of a broader model of instruction, this comprehensive method provides a structure for teachers to move from assuming “all the responsibility for performing a task…to a situation in which the students assume all of the responsibility” (Duke & Pearson, 2004, p.211). Employing the ‘I do, We do, You do’ format the teacher may model some examples using the steps shared above, moving slowly to joint responsibility (students begin practicing collaboratively with the teacher guiding the process as the teacher checks for understanding), to independent practice and application by the learner (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). Figure 2 illustrates how this process works.
