Standard addressed in this lesson:
- NBT.6 - Find whole-number quotients of whole numbers with up to four-digit dividends and two-digit divisors, using strategies based on place value, the properties of operations, and/or the relationship between multiplication and division. Illustrate and explain the calculation by using equations, rectangular arrays, and/or area models.
Instructional Interventions:
- Explicit Instruction Description
- “The National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) defines explicit instruction as an approach in which teachers provide:
- clear demonstrations and models for solving problems,
- multiple examples for solving the problems, and
- extensive practice opportunities of the newly learned skills and strategies.
- The panel also notes that explicit instruction involves:
- having students engage in talking through the decisions they make and steps taken to solve problems.
- Finally, the panel emphasizes that explicit instruction includes:
- extensive feedback from the teacher to enhance student understanding and success.
- The explicit instruction model is frequently operationalized through systematic and sequential lesson components (e.g., advanced organizer, demonstrations/think alouds, guided practice, independent practice, feedback).” (Mancl, Miller, & Kennedy, 2012, p. 153)
- Gradual Release of Responsibility Description
- The gradual release of responsibility instructional framework purposefully shifts the cognitive load from teacher-as-model, to joint responsibility of teacher and learner, to independent practice and application by the learner (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983).
- It stipulates that the teacher moves from assuming “all the responsibility for performing a task … to a situation in which the students assume all of the responsibility” (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 211).
- This gradual release may occur over a day, a week, a month, or a year.
- Graves and Fitzgerald (2003) note that “effective instruction often follows a progression in which teachers gradually do less of the work and students gradually assume increased responsibility for their learning.
- It is through this process of gradually assuming more and more responsibility for their learning that students become competent, independent learners” (p. 98).
- The gradual release of responsibility framework, originally developed for reading instruction, reflects the intersection of several theories, including:
- Piaget's (1952) work on cognitive structures and schemata
- Vygotsky's (1962, 1978) work on zones of proximal development
- Bandura's (1965) work on attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation
- Wood, Bruner, and Ross's (1976) work on scaffolded instruction
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility, 2nd Edition. ASCD. [
link to purchase]
