Does your seatwork/homework practice the target skill?

The latest addition to our lending library is Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching. Although this book is designed primarily for classroom teachers, in that it contains very detailed descriptions of how to implement the most powerful explicit instruction, it also lays out the basic principles of effective instruction - along with their basis in the research. I had a really hard time choosing an excerpt from the book, because it contains so much great material, but I finally decided to take a bit from the chapter "Providing Appropriate Independent Practice" (pp. 202 & 210-211). 

"Although some educators decry the use of extended practice of skills as an instructional tool, research on how people become experts or elite performers indicates that even the most gifted among us reach their pinnacles through practice - and lots of it. It appears that world-level expertise in an area (e.g., sports, chess, music, academics) is not due simply to innate capacity or ability, but to a large degree depends on frequent (i.e., every day), deliberate (i.e., to achieve a specific goal) practice over a long period of time (i.e., about 10 years), along with supervision (i.e., feedback on performance) of that practice. We are not suggesting that the typical learner needs to practice academic skills that long and that often; however, this research stresses that in order to achieve proficiency, both practice and feedback on the quality of that practice are necessary. It behooves us to remember the old adage: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice'."

The authors then go on to discuss the best way to provide students with practice - for example, adding related skills to skills that were previously acquired in such a way that all of the skills are practised together and distributing practice over sessions that are of short duration and spaced over time. Here's an excerpt from the section on how to design good homework.

"One of the first considerations in designing or selecting practice activities is to ensure that the task matches the skill you have taught. The skill is what you have taught your students to do (e.g., how to add two-digit multiplication problems, how and when to end a sentence with a question mark, describing what an adjective is, how to add an ending to a root word, carrying out the steps of a paragraph-writing strategy). The task is the way students will practice the skill (e.g. completing a worksheet with multiplication problems to solve, adding necessary punctuation to a series of sentences with no end punctuation, circling words that are adjectives within sentences, writing spelling words with endings when dictated by a partner, writing a descriptive paragraph when given a prompt. It is essential that the task requre students to perform the target skills. For example, if the instructional objective is that students can write specific manuscript letters, the task should require that they actually write the letters; a task that asks students to circle words beginning with a particular letter is not an appropriate match between skill and task.

"Similarly, consider this scenario: A spelling book offers four practice activities for learning a list of spelling words:

• Alphabetize the words.
• Complete a word search of the spelling words.
• Solve a crossword puzzle with the words.
• Study the words, using Read-Cover-Write-Check: Read and spell the word (say the letter names orally); Cover up the word; Write the word from memory; Check the spelling of the word (compare with the original word).

"Although the students' skills at alphabetizing, doing word searches, and solving crossword puzzles may improve as they participate in the first three activities - the fourth activity, direct studying of the spelling words - is the only activity that requires students to spell words from memory. Thus it has the highest probability of increasing students' spelling proficiency in the least amount of time.

"The importance of matching the task to the skill may seem obvious; however, worksheets and other practice activities provided in commercial curricula often don't entail use of the actual target skill. As a result, due diligence is required of teachers."

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