In 2012, educational psychology professor Barak Rosenshine published his article . It quickly became one of the most popular resources for teachers, because it combines a solid research basis with actionable guidance on how to level up your instruction in the classroom.
These principles work best when applied consistently, and Examplary can help you extend them beyond your instruction in class, to the practice students do outside of it.
Always begin with a short review of previous learning
Daily repetition and review help solidify the connections between the things we've learned.
In the classroom: Spend 5–8 minutes reviewing past knowledge and concepts with your students, or let students review each other's homework. Focus your review on concepts that need to become automatic and that will help students in further learning.
Using Examplary: Copy over a key question from a previous test, or let Examplary generate a variation on a previous question, as the start of any practice test. You can also use practice spaces to focus specifically on review, by including topics from previous lessons, which Examplary's AI will intelligently mix in with questions about newer material.
Present new material in small steps with student practice
Our working memory is limited, and learning works best if it's bite-sized.
In the classroom: Check students' understanding of each point of new material you introduce before moving on to the next, and provide many concrete examples for each concept.
Using Examplary: Create focused practice spaces, spanning no more than the content of one or two lessons. Examplary automatically divides your content into small topics, so students can practice each one and get insight into how well they understand it.
Ask a large number of questions
Teachers who spend more of their instruction time asking questions tend to be more successful at transferring knowledge.
In the classroom: Ask factual and process questions during your instruction, and involve all students. In a large class, you can do this for example by asking students to tell their answer to the student sitting next to them.
Using Examplary: Use practice tests or practice spaces containing Persona chat questions. These let a student start a conversation with an AI tutor, who can guide them step by step to a deeper understanding of the material.
Provide models and worked examples
When teaching new concepts, start small: provide a prompt, then give a worked example, guide practice, and eventually supervise independent practice.
In the classroom: Take things one step at a time. Talk through your thinking as you show how to solve a specific problem, then guide the students to solve a similar problem on their own.
Using Examplary: Start with a practice test where you ask questions about an example problem. Don't ask the students to solve the problem yet, but prompt them to think about the boundaries and properties of the problem. Go deeper step by step, and end with a question where the student has to fully solve the problem themselves, without training wheels.
By attaching labels to the questions in your practice test, you'll get a quick overview of where students are getting stuck.
Examplary can also suggest how to group students for further practice, in three groups: reteach, practice and stretch.
Guide student practice
It is not enough simply to present students with new material. Students need to practice this new material again and again to really make it their own and store it in long-term memory.
In the classroom: Give many examples, but also intersperse instruction with practice. Introduce a new concept, give examples and elaboration, and then let the students practice with this new concept before moving on to the next one.
Using Examplary: Generate more practice exercises by reusing the same source materials for a new practice test or practice space. The power of Examplary is that you can generate lots of high-quality exercises with minimal effort, giving your students more practice material than you might have been able to create in the past.
If you have generated a practice test and want to use it as the basis for more practice, you can turn that test into a practice space and invite your students to it in a few clicks.
Check for student understanding
Frequently checking whether all of your students are learning the new material is important, but often difficult to do in larger classes, and students might end up developing misconceptions you only find out about during the next test or exam.
In the classroom: Ask frequent questions, and ask students to do a 'processing' task with the material, for example summarising your explanation back to you, or repeating the steps or directions you've given. This gets students to elaborate on their understanding of the material and create better connections to other material.
Using Examplary: Mix and match subject matter from a few different lessons in a single practice space. This applies the best practices of interweaving and spaced repetition, which improve long-term understanding and help students make connections.
Students get personal insights, and you get a clear overview of the strengths and areas for improvement of each student and of the class as a whole.
Obtain a high success rate
Students learn best when they get most of their practice right. Rosenshine found that the most effective teachers aimed for a success rate of around 80%: high enough for students to build confidence and fluency, while still challenging enough that they are learning.
In the classroom: Teach in small steps, check for understanding before moving on, and reteach when too many students get things wrong.
Using Examplary: Practice spaces adapt to each student. Every question has a difficulty level, from baseline to expert, and Examplary picks the next questions based on how the student is doing on each topic, so every student gets questions at their own level: challenging, but within reach.
Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks
Scaffolds are temporary supports that help students get through tasks they can't yet do alone, like cue cards, checklists or sentence starters. They are gradually removed as students gain skill.
In the classroom: Break complex tasks into steps, provide prompts or a checklist, and fade the support over time.
Using Examplary: Start with hints and structured questions on a difficult topic, and move to open questions as students get more confident.
A practice space is a good starting point, as it gives students hints and feedback when they get stuck on a question.
Eventually, graduate to a practice test with feedback turned off, to test what the student can do without scaffolds.
Require and monitor independent practice
Independent practice is where knowledge becomes fluent and automatic. It only works well after students have had enough guided practice.
In the classroom: Give students time to practice on their own, and monitor their work.
Using Examplary: Practice spaces are a natural fit for independent practice. Students can practice at their own pace, as often as they need, and you can see who practiced and where they still struggle.
Examplary automatically gives you a summary of each student's strengths and areas for improvement, so you know what to focus your next instruction on.
Engage students in weekly and monthly review
Regularly reviewing material over longer periods strengthens what students have learned, and makes it easier to recall later.
In the classroom: Plan cumulative reviews at the end of each week and month, and revisit earlier material in later lessons.
Using Examplary: Add the topics from past weeks to a practice space, and Examplary will mix them in with new questions. This spaced repetition happens without you having to build a new review test each time, or spend time creating materials.
If you want to create a review test, you can build up a question bank over time, with questions on various topics, and quickly put them together in a single test, or ask Examplary to generate variations on those questions.