Independent practice

In this post Skills and Drills, I explore the idea that, in order to play ‘the match’ – an analogy for a complex area of learning – students need to balance learning component skills and engaging in match=play, putting the skills to use in context.  The essence of this is the idea of practice.  Increasingly I feel that teachers should devote more time and energy to this and also make the need for practice a much more explicit feature of their mental model for how learning happens.

A review of all of the Rosenshine's strategies and how teachers move through the phases of practice, moving into the Independent practice phase.

Independent practice is also known as the “you do” component of an explicitly taught lesson. Independent practice provides an opportunity for students to practise the skills or concepts from the lesson. Its purpose is to increase students’ fluency, enabling for a more automatic recall of the skills that have been learnt as well as freeing up space in working memory so that higher-order tasks can be applied. Independent practice should be meaningful and directly link to the key concepts and learning intentions of the lesson. Students should be able to complete independent practice tasks with a minimum of teacher assistance. During this component of teaching however, teachers should still check for student understanding and provide effective feedback.