So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a college professor. My discipline is biblical studies and my area of speciality is biblical Greek and linguistics. I’m also an associate dean whose primary role focuses on providing ways for our faculty to hone their skills as teachers. So, I think a lot about teaching and learning. I thought I would use a little space here to talk about a pedagogical model that has, so far, proven itself effective in the way I’ve implemented it, and how I plan to sharpen it more for—hopefully—even greater effectiveness.

Colloquially, the model goes by the moniker "I do, we do, you do"; Fisher and Frey, in Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, call it by it’s more technical name "Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Framework" (GRR). Like many models, this one is based on a somewhat eclectic theoretical foundation, the key ones, according to Fisher and Frey, being

These theories, argue Fisher and Frey, when taken together suggest that learning occurs through interactions with others, and that when those interactions are intentional specific learning occurs (Fisher and Frey, Loc 41 of 2109 [in my Kindle reader at least!]). They go on to argue that over the course of intentional interactions, teachers should gradually move away from "teacher-as-model" (I do) to "joint responsibility of teacher and learner" (we do) to "joint responsibility of learners in a group" (you do together) to "independent practice and application by the learner" (you do individually). They display the model graphically as follows, which visually demonstrates the gradual release of teacher responsibility and gradual increase of learner responsibility (I recreated this image from Fisher and Frey):

As the model depicts, there are four phases that are necessary for deep learning to occur through GRR. If we’re honest, focused instruction ("I do it") (top of the inverted triangle on the left) is the stuff of teachers’ dreams: standing in front of a dozen or so students (everybody wants small class sizes, right [except maybe teachers of MOOCs]) waxing eloquent as s/he pontificates about lofty, abstract concepts, or demonstrates the extraction of caffeine from a tea leaf, or makes algebra and trigonometry appear as easy as 4th grade math, or parses even the most morphologically bulky passive participles extant in Hellenistic Greek! In a little less romantic language, focused instruction consists of teachers explaining, demonstrating, modeling, solving problems, or interacting with a text.

Guided instruction ("we do it") (just below focused instruction on the inverted isosceles) is the phase in which the teacher performs formative assessments of some kind. It’s where the instructor draws upon her or his mental cache of questions and cues to prompt (prod?) and skillfully to guide learners along the (sometimes thorny) path to learning. There’s a bit of awkwardness and tension here. On the one hand, the questions, prompts, and cues are intended both to nudge (push?) students into the uncomfortable position of testing their comprehension with the clear possibility of failure while, on the other hand, those same questions, prompts, and cues are a form of scaffolding designed to help them succeed at making connections and experience deep learning.

Collaborative learning ("you do it together") (middle of isosceles on the right) in this model is intended to be a sort of testing/proving ground where learners "consolidate their thinking and understanding" (Fisher and Frey, Loc 23 of 2109 [again, in my Kindle]). The authors emphasize that this phase is not the time to introduce new content to students; rather, this is the space in which students "try out" what they’ve learned in a relatively safe environment. They "help students think through key ideas, are a natural opportunity for inquiry, and promote engagement with the content" (Fisher and Frey, Loc 139 of 2109).

The fourth phase is independent learning ("you do it alone") (bottom of the isosceles on the right). For teachers, this is the holy grail of education: the ability of a student independently to apply the information, ideas, content, skills, and strategies learned in the first three phases in unique and heuristic ways. That is, in this phase students have enough of a knowledge base and enough of a grasp on critical thinking skills that they are able to do something meaningful and significant with it.

For many years, the model I used implicitly (and, if I’m honest, sometimes explicitly) was the "I do" "You do" model. For example, I might explain the formal, morphological features that signal to a reader of biblical Greek that an author chose a certain tense-form of a given verb (I do). I’d then work through a substantial number of examples on the board (I do), and then send the students away at the end of class to do the homework (you do it alone). That’s a common model in higher education; it’s also a model that doesn’t work well in many (most?) situations.

Well, I’ve changed my approach (still in process, actually) to the GRR model. One way I’m implementing it is that when I assign translation exercises from the workbook that accompanies the grammar, I pick one exercise that I do completely and another exercise (sometimes more than one) that I do partially and then ask my students to fill in any blanks/gaps. The remaining exercises are for them to work on, sometimes in their study groups, sometimes individually. When I do this, I even use the headings "I do," "We do," and "You do" so the students are clear on the process as well as my expectations. I typically use screen videos to create the "I do" segments (often with Explain Everything). For the "We do" portions, sometimes I bust out some Html and Javascript code (sometimes some server-side C# ASP.NET) and other times I create screen videos and simply ask the students to respond in a form I’ve provided. Recently (and by that I mean I started this week), I’ve begun using VoiceThread as a way to construct the "we do" segments.

Okay, well, I’ve blathered on quite enough on this, so I need to wrap it up. I’ll do that with a few things I’m thinking about to improve my method/implementation of the model. First, I’m planning to combine the model with John Medina’s (brain researcher) idea of chunking course content into 10 minute segments: 7 minutes of instruction, 3 minutes of review. Second, I want to do a better job at the collaborative learning phase. Even in this post I’ve emphasized I do, we do, you do, but I’ve neglected you do together. I have to fix that. Finally, I need to get through the focused instruction bit more quickly (but not in a way that makes it less rigorous) and get learners on to the other three phases.

I welcome your feedback.