Focus 2 - Modelling

Our collective focus for staff professional development at DHSB for term 3 is around live modelling. A central feature of an instructional teaching process is for a teacher to show their students how to do something so that they can then do it themselves. This applies to countless elements of learning from learning to tie your shoelaces, executing a basketball lay-up, writing a sentence, composing an essay, factorising an expression in algebra and making a neat dovetail joint. The challenge is to ensure that the hand-over is successful. At DHSB our staff our exploring and practising the key ingredients of high quality modelling in order to support students as they move to becoming confident scholars in each subject discipline.

This focus builds on the work we have all been doing around high quality questioning.The research tells us that the most successful teachers ask many questions, involving as many students as possible, probing in more depth to check for understanding. Furthermore, students who were asked more questions following instructional activity performed better academically than students who were asked less.