You can look at pretty much any site and find the same research. Students with learning disabilities thrive when you instruct using explicit instruction. The problem is that it’s hard to find a place that truly explains how to use explicit instruction in a resource setting.

The best evidence-based instructional practice for students with learning disabilities is the I do, we do, you do model (also known as model, guide, independent). This process starts out with the teacher in full control of learning and moves through a gradual release until the students are in full control of learning. I learned to explain this as moving from high to low prompting. I know it sounds complicated, and to be truthful, it takes a lot of practice to get it mastered, but it is well worth the effort.

I am so excited to talk about this process. I have coached countless teachers on structuring their instruction using this model, and I believe you can be successful with it in your own practice. 

Before You Start Teaching

One of my favorite quotes by Stephen R. Covey is this, “Start with the end in mind.” This is always, always, your first step when you are getting ready to plan a lesson. When you know where you want them to end, you will know how to plan your instruction. 

“End” can mean different things for different people. For the teachers we work with, the ultimate “End” is the grade level standard. A short-term “End”/Goal could be mastering one of the steps leading to that standard. Below is an example of how you can organize the plan that will lead your students to success. To learn more, read THIS article

Example: 

I do – Teacher does the thinking, and teacher does the work

This section is also known as the modeling section. This is where you are teaching your students any and all skills, steps, and strategies that you want for this specific task. We recommend you model a couple of times. If the students are sitting without doing anything for too long, then they lose any enthusiasm and mentally check out. There are a few things you want to make sure you do in every “I do”:

1. Think aloud. Think alouds are harder than you would imagine. A lot of people think they are doing them correctly because they are stating everything they are doing out loud. But a huge part of thinking aloud is explaining why you did what you did, and the thought process that leads you to that step. This is the part where you help the students make connections and have a deeper understanding of each step (i.e. “Hm, I noticed that ____ I am going to (thought process) because I know (why behind what you are doing)”).
2. Make mistakes and “get stuck.” If you go through and model perfectly your students are not going to know what to do when they don’t know what to do. Make mistakes and show them how you problem solve. Forget steps and show them where they can look (at the procedures you have written on the board). 
3. Name your strategies. Remember when you are modeling you need to be naming every strategy you use. Are you creating a picture in your mind when you are adding details to writing? Tell them you are going to use your visualization strategy. Find you have 11 ones? Tell them you are going to regroup. 
4. Use academic language from the Gen Ed classroom. Using language that is consistent with what they hear in the classroom will keep our students from getting confused and help them generalize what you are teaching between classrooms. If you want to use a different word (for example you want to call it ‘timesing” instead of “multiplying”) then make sure you use them together often (i.e. Today we are going to practice timesing, or multiplying, multi-digit numbers.”).
5. Use your procedure. This is a list of steps they need to follow to solve the problem. It is essentially a visual prompt that will help them become more independent and give them the confidence to try it on their own. Make sure that you are explicitly teaching the students what the step is and WHY the step is important (what will it help you do). Make sure you use as little words as possible on your procedure.

We do – Three levels

Did you know that there are actually three levels to the “we do” section? We are usually met with looks of confusion and skepticism. But it’s true! There are actually three levels. The “we do” section is where you will spend the majority of your time with your students. Our goal is to get here and move to the lowest level of prompting as quickly as possible. We call this high to low prompting. 

High Prompting – Teacher does the thinking and work, Teacher and students (We) say the steps.

Think of the high prompting section like an interactive model. Now instead of just listening the students may be doing things like choral responding, tracing in the air with you, copying gestures to find syllables and any other interactive piece you can think of.

When you work through this section it is important that you are still explicitly talking through the what and the why (model), the students interactive piece may come in the how. 

T=teacher     S=students

T= My first step is write the ones, what do I do?

S= *choral response* Write the ones.

T= I start with the ones because….What do I count first?

S= The ones.

T=I do this by….count with me

Notice how in each section the teacher is still doing the thinking, telling them what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it. On every step there is an interactive piece that requires the students to participate. This is a soft step from modeling the skill to the start of the students taking over. I still recommend you make mistakes in this section and model for them how you fix it. 

Medium Prompting – We do the steps and work, students do the thinking

In this section, we move to shared thinking and shared working. This means the students are going to have more input and will be physically doing the work at the same time as you.

As the teacher it is our job in this section to start asking questions that guide their thinking to the correct procedures and the why behind those procedures. When you start into this section you might want to focus on more literal questions. For example, I might ask, “What is the next step?” This is a literal question because the students should be able to show me from the procedure on the board what the next step is. The same goes for the question, “How do you know that is the next step?” 

As your students get more confident you want to start moving to more inferential questions to test the depth of their understanding. For example, you might ask, “What do I do if I don’t know what’s next?” or “Why is that the next step?” This requires deeper thinking and a clearer understanding of the why behind each step.

T= Alright what is my first step?

S= Count and write the ones place.

T= Why do I need to start with the ones place?

S= Well, you need to start with the ones because if you have enough you can make a ten, and if you have another ten and you started with the tens you put the wrong number down. 

Low Prompting – Students do the thinking, students do the steps, students do the work

This is the final step before students move into the independent work stage. On this stage the students essentially become the teacher fully taking over and guiding the lesson. I personally like to act like a student who has never seen this before. I make the students teach me and I ask A LOT of clarifying questions. The students love it because they feel confident that they know what they are doing. They also love feeling like they know more than the teacher – even when they know I’m pretending.

You need to determine how many problems your students need to complete correctly before you are comfortable with them moving to the independent stage. For me it was after they were able to correctly teach me the how and the why of 2-3 problems independently. 

Another great way to check on your students during the we do section is to have them rate themselves. With some tasks I would regularly ask my students to put their hand to their chest and rate themselves. All eyes had to be on me. A 1 meant I would still like you to model. 2 was I am getting it and would like to keep practicing. 3 meant I could teach this to someone else/I’m ready to do this on my own. This helped me gauge who was where and what level of support I needed to be providing. 

This was also helpful when we were at the low prompting stage. My students who were chomping at the bit to move on, could, and my students who wanted more practice could stay with me. It put them in charge of their own learning. It helped them understand that asking for more practice doesn’t mean I’m dumb or slow, it means that I am making sure I really get it before I move on.

You do – independent work

DON’T SKIP THIS SECTION! I want to address another common misconception, that is that the independent work is the part where you give the students some problems, they solve them, and you check them. There is so much more to it than this. I want you to really think through this for a minute. What is the purpose of independent work? It’s a time for the student to practice what they have learned, self monitor, and make corrections. They should be getting regular and consistent feedback, if not instant feedback. If you give them an assignment and then check it when they are done, they may have forgotten a step on problem 3 and completed the next 22 problems wrong. When a student knows they will have quick feedback, and can change their work based on that feedback, they are more willing to put in the independent effort and make those mistakes. Mistakes should be viewed as an opportunity to learn.

As the teacher you have to ask yourself the big question, “How can I best provide my students with regular and consistent feedback while they work?” There are ample ways you can do this, but here are my top favorite:

1. Provide the students with the answer key. I know a lot of teachers shudder at the thought of this. I’m usually met with, “My student will just copy the answers.” They can copy the answers all they want, but if they are required to show their work I can look to see if they actually solved it correctly. I also loved this because it gave my students an opportunity to self-check. They would see if they got the answer right, if they did you would see their confidence grow because they knew they really did understand the concept we had taught. If they didn’t get the problem right, they had the opportunity to self-check, or walk back through their process. You also want to provide the opportunity for them to reflect on those mistakes and state what they learned (example: “I figured out that I keep forgetting to add the one I carried. Now I make sure I touch the one I carry and count it”).  If the student couldn’t find their mistake they had a neighbor check it. If neither of them could find it they could come ask me. Giving them the answer key helps them become more independent by teaching them to problem solve on their own.
2. Solve and compare. Another fun activity is to put a problem up, have the students solve, then give them 2-3 minutes to compare not only their answers, but their work to a peer. I loved watching students who had different answers discuss who was right and why. This teaches them that our classroom is a safe place to make mistakes. They learn mistakes are not a bad thing, it’s just a part of the learning process. In fact mistakes are exciting because it is visible proof we are learning.  
3. Solve and debrief. This is very similar to the second example but instead of doing this with a peer we talked through our answers as a whole class. We had hand signals that would allow the students to express themselves without interrupting others. They had signs for, “I agree,” “I disagree,” “I did it the same way,” “I have a different strategy,” and “I don’t understand.” Having hand signals helped ensure my students were still listening and interacting even if it wasn’t their turn to debrief. We also had sentence starters that taught the students how to express their thoughts and strategies. Using sentence starters helped guide appropriate discussions between the students. Some of our sentence starters were, “A strategy I used…” “I disagree because…” “Can you explain…” “I noticed that…”

Assessment

Obviously, your last step is the assessment. This is the step that you started with. You should have had your assessment planned out before you even began writing your lesson plan. At this stage, the students took their test, and I corrected it later and gave feedback. Make sure you use that data to drive your instruction. After each test, you have a decision to make – do my students get it? If so, what is my next step (look at your task analysis)? Did my students not get it? If this is the case, do I need to accommodate, differentiate, modify, or simply reteach/give them more practice?

When you are first getting used to this model you may feel like you need to write out your lesson plans. Do it! It is so worth it. Writing everything out step by step for the first few lessons will help you understand and solidify each step so that this process will become a more natural part of your teaching.

*As educators, we all know the importance of quality teaching resources and materials to support student learning. Our store is filled with a variety of resources, including lesson plans, activities, assessments, and more, that we have personally used and found to be effective in the classroom.

Whether you are looking for materials to supplement your current curriculum or you are simply looking for fresh ideas to engage your students, we are confident that you will find something that will meet your needs.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT OUR STORE.