Practice provides students the chance to use and firm up reading skills. It requires students to actively engage in the lesson by reading, writing, speaking, and/or completing tasks. In order to get all students practicing together, teachers can use unison responding techniques. Unison responding allows all students to respond together through choral responding (all students say the answer aloud together) and response cards (students use a card to write down the answer or select the correct response).
Practice happens throughout an explicit instruction lesson (e.g., I do, we do, you do teaching sequence). During instruction (I do), the teacher models the skill and prompts students to practice by responding together (using unison responding techniques) during the initial instruction. During guided practice (We do), students have a chance to practice with teacher support. As students practice the skills, the teacher is closely monitoring and providing feedback. During independent practice (You do), students have the opportunity to practice the skills on their own. By working independently, the teacher is able to monitor if students understand and have mastered the skills. Practice is necessary to strengthen skills, but is always best supported with feedback from the teacher.
Students need opportunities to practice skills until they become automatic. Practice should be supported through guided practice before moving into independent practice and always followed up with feedback. The more students accurately practice a skill (with feedback), they better they become at that skill.
Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Explicit Instruction. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Hattie, J. A. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of 800+ meta-analyses on achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.
https://www.winginstitute.org/does-reading-practice-correspond