Teaching to Remember: The ‘I do, We do, You do’ Strategy for Improved Learning

Reading Time: 5 minutes

If you teach a practice or a skill – say a math-based lesson in business, health care, trades or engineering – you likely want them to apply that practice or skill successfully at some point in during the course.  In fact, the Universal Design for Learning framework urges educators to provide incremental support, enabling students to develop fluency through guided practice and performance. Let’s look at a simple teaching strategy you can use in any lesson that provides support to build those important fluencies.

Building Fluency Through Participation

Fluencies don’t arise naturally or organically.  Nor are they built by presenting knowledge in a lecture-style format. They are built using strategic approaches to teaching and learning that include student engagement. The BOPPPS lesson design promoted at Conestoga College includes a critical element for building fluency: participation.  This is where your students actively engage with the material you present during a lesson either through practice problems, think-pair-share, or conducting small group work. From a neuroscience perspective, these participatory activities are an important step in creating those neural pathways that develop into long-term memories for students to easily access and apply when needed (Oakley & Sejnowski, 2021).  

Let’s look at one participatory process that builds those important fluencies during the teaching of a lesson.  It is called the I do, We do, You do strategy. The strategy has been shown to be effective for improving learning in math-based courses (Saligumba & Tan, 2018; Casas et. al., 2023), science education (Fuentes & Casinillo, 2024), and language development (Lin & Cheng, 2010).

The ‘I Do, We Do, You Do’ Strategy for Engagement

The I Do, We Do, You Do strategy (or sometimes called gradual release of responsibility framework) emphasizes not only clear instruction of the practice or skill, but ensures opportunities for students to practice that skill during instruction and immediately afterward (Fisher & Frey, 2013).  Let’s look at how this process might look like in your own teaching.                     

I Do

This is your time to shine!  You have created a BOPPPS designed lesson, established the outcomes and purpose of the lesson, prepared the presentation, and are ready to deliver.  Understandably, you are going to want your students to concentrate on the skill you are trying to teach them.  It will help to have broken down the lesson into small ‘chunks’ for easier processing and learning so as not to overwhelm their working memory (Oakley & Sejnowski, 2021). Furthermore, you are ready with further examples to demonstrate the skill. 

During the ‘I do’ stage, consider using the ‘think-aloud’ protocol as you demonstrate the problem-solving portion of that lesson.  Think-aloud means you authentically model your thinking out loud to your students so they can not only see the cognitive effort required but also hear the thought-process needed to arrive at a solution.  

To give you an idea of how the think-aloud protocol works, watch the short video below. Listen to how she would demonstrate the skill to her student. How might think-aloud look like during your lessons?

We Do

Let’s imagine a scenario where you have just delivered a lesson on the Pythagorean Theorem – the ‘I do’ section of the lesson. During the lesson you taught about right-angled triangles and demonstrated how to apply the formula to calculate the length of various sides of that triangle. You have modeled the thinking and process required to apply the skill and added in the think-aloud protocol for good measure to make the thinking visible.

It’s now time to have the students practice the skill under your guidance.  Here you will present another problem but release some of the cognitive responsibility onto your students.  This part is often referred to as the ‘guided practice’ portion of your lesson.  

What does guided practice look like? With the knowledge fresh in their minds, students should have an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding immediately after the lesson.  Your leadership in guided practice might unfold in the following way:

 Teacher: “Now let’s do another problem but this time together.  Here is a triangle I would like you to solve with me.”

[Present a similar problem to the one(s) you have just demonstrated]

 Teacher: “Let’s identify the hypotenuse first.  Thinking silently to yourself, which of these sides is the hypotenuse and how do you know?”

[Give wait-time of 3 seconds or longer.  Then ask for an answer hand-raising or a shoutout. Framed this way will allow ALL students an opportunity to engage with the question]

Teacher: “Right! We look for the longest side and identify that as the hypotenuse. Now if A = 2, and B = 3, how can you set up the formula to solve for side C?  I’ll give you a few minutes to work independently then take up the problem with you.”

Continue your art of question-asking with the students prompting them to solve the remainder of the problem, always a few steps behind so the students bear the cognitive efforts to understand and apply the skill. 

During this time, wander around the room (or breakout room) observing the students practicing the skill.  Continue providing one-on-one coaching, or small group tutoring as needed.  As you wander, you will get important feedback on whether your lesson has been understood by the class.  Based on your observations, you may choose to do another guided practice problem (recommended), perhaps increasing the level of difficulty. 

Finally, during ‘We do’, consider encouraging students to ‘pair-up and lean in’ with a trusted peer as they complete the problem.  In this way, they lend support to each other by checking their understanding and correcting each other as they solve the problem.

You Do

Now that you have established a general sense of understanding from your students, give them time to practice on their own.  Often referred to as ‘independent practice’, this is where students take full cognitive responsibility for practicing the skill or task.  They typically work alone with either worksheets, assignments or physical materials along with their notes and what they remember from the lesson.  That said, consider again having students ‘pair-up and lean in’ where they might provide cognitive and social support as they progress toward competency and fluency. 

Continue to establish your teacher presence during this time as well by walking around the room (or breakout room) during independent practice.  In this way, you can provide further one-on-one support such as re-explaining some steps, checking a solution, or providing some small group instruction as needed.

Conclusion

As educators, we sometimes confuse teaching with learning.  If we do a lot of teaching and no opportunity to build fluencies with that knowledge, then little learning will take place.  That is why the ‘I do, We do, You do’ process is an important strategy for creating long-term memory of those skills you think are important for your students to remember.  When you create your lessons, ensure opportunity for skill-building during the lesson where students take on much of the cognitive efforts needed to build those fluencies for their courses and professions.  

References

Casas, A. L., Casas, M., Evardo Jr, O. J., & Abina, I. L. (2023). Integration of Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Model (GRRIM) in the Development of Learning Module in Geometry.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. A. N. C. Y. (2013). Gradual release of responsibility instructional framework. IRA e-ssentials, 1-8.

Fuentes, A. G., & Casinillo, L. (2024). Assessing the Effect of the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) Model in Teaching Science. Asian Journal of Assessment in Teaching and Learning, 14(1), 15-24.

Lin, N. C., & Cheng, H. F. (2010). Effects of gradual release of responsibility model on language learning. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 1866-1870.

Oakley, B., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2021). Uncommon sense teaching: Practical insights in brain science to help students learn. Penguin.

Saligumba, I. P., & Tan, D. A. (2018). Gradual release of responsibility instructional model: Its effects on students’ mathematics performance and self-efficacy. International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 7(8), 276-291.