I have seen this implemented, and been to professional development run by Kennedy, and the approach is much more nuanced. The 80% idea has been misconstrued; the idea of this is you work through a series of problems and then stop when roughly 80% of the students struggle. This is to give you a starting point - an idea of where the students are capable of doing, and where they need help. Kennedy believes that explicit instruction is part of the overall strategy, but, for example if your students are struggling to place numbers on a number line correctly, then there are bigger issues at play. You can explicitly teach these skills, but their conceptual understanding is not there.
I'll give you an example from my own experience. I had a Year 10 student who didn't know what 4 x 4 is. They would count up by 4 on their fingers, but didn't trust the count and so often went 4-8-12-16-20. This student had struggled for years, and would just break down in tears at not knowing it. I could have explicitly taught them the time tables, but in using some of the strategies from Kennedy I discovered there were many bigger issues at play for this student. We worked on strategies to improve their understanding of what multiplication is about, and then place value etc. Considering this student needed to pass our state's numeracy test to graduate from high school I wanted to give them the best opportunity. Thankfully they were able to do so on their third attempt.
That's a great story. Can you give an example of what explicit teaching looks like in this model e.g. what you might teach and how you might teach it?
In your comment above, it seems that you worry that explicitly teaching students things then they will lack conceptual understanding. So that makes me wonder how explicit teaching can be reconciled with it at all.
This was at a school which ranked amongst the best in the state in ATAR Mathematics, and had many experienced teachers who had been teaching for 20+ years. It was clear these students had fallen through the gaps; and it wasn't due to a lack excellent teaching. I could say that they had been explicitly taught content in Year 7-9, and were still getting 20-30% in all their assessments, so it could be argued that explicit teaching had not worked for these students. However, I think that's a very simplistic view and there's a lot more to it.
This Year 10 class was one of two created as our state has a Numeracy test that they need to succeed to graduate and get into TAFE/apprenticeships. These students were fast approaching round one of this test - they were stressed about it and putting them in a regular class would not have given them the necessary support. I wanted these students to succeed and feel like they could do mathematics after years of failing. I used the Back to Front Maths resources to help support student development of concepts and develop understanding. I then explicitly taught content once we had worked on their background knowledge. I knew what the end point was, and we worked towards that end point in a way that supported the students.
These were not students with behaviour issues or learning difficulties, or inconsistent attendance. The main thing I observed was that these students were not able to access the curriculum at the level we were expected to teach it at as they had so many gaps and misconceptions that we were building on poor foundations. I could explicitly teach the content to them, but their understanding of place value, basic number facts, fractions, percentages was so poor (or non-existent) that I made a decision to go back to basics with these students.
We even got up to Pythagoras and right angle trigonometry - something I never expected these students would succeed at - but they now had confidence and a willingness to give it a go. It was explicitly taught but there was a lot of support and building of their conceptual knowledge - and when issues with fractions etc. arose I used Back to Front to support them.
I have seen this implemented, and been to professional development run by Kennedy, and the approach is much more nuanced. The 80% idea has been misconstrued; the idea of this is you work through a series of problems and then stop when roughly 80% of the students struggle. This is to give you a starting point - an idea of where the students are capable of doing, and where they need help. Kennedy believes that explicit instruction is part of the overall strategy, but, for example if your students are struggling to place numbers on a number line correctly, then there are bigger issues at play. You can explicitly teach these skills, but their conceptual understanding is not there.
I'll give you an example from my own experience. I had a Year 10 student who didn't know what 4 x 4 is. They would count up by 4 on their fingers, but didn't trust the count and so often went 4-8-12-16-20. This student had struggled for years, and would just break down in tears at not knowing it. I could have explicitly taught them the time tables, but in using some of the strategies from Kennedy I discovered there were many bigger issues at play for this student. We worked on strategies to improve their understanding of what multiplication is about, and then place value etc. Considering this student needed to pass our state's numeracy test to graduate from high school I wanted to give them the best opportunity. Thankfully they were able to do so on their third attempt.
That's a great story. Can you give an example of what explicit teaching looks like in this model e.g. what you might teach and how you might teach it?
In your comment above, it seems that you worry that explicitly teaching students things then they will lack conceptual understanding. So that makes me wonder how explicit teaching can be reconciled with it at all.
This was at a school which ranked amongst the best in the state in ATAR Mathematics, and had many experienced teachers who had been teaching for 20+ years. It was clear these students had fallen through the gaps; and it wasn't due to a lack excellent teaching. I could say that they had been explicitly taught content in Year 7-9, and were still getting 20-30% in all their assessments, so it could be argued that explicit teaching had not worked for these students. However, I think that's a very simplistic view and there's a lot more to it.
This Year 10 class was one of two created as our state has a Numeracy test that they need to succeed to graduate and get into TAFE/apprenticeships. These students were fast approaching round one of this test - they were stressed about it and putting them in a regular class would not have given them the necessary support. I wanted these students to succeed and feel like they could do mathematics after years of failing. I used the Back to Front Maths resources to help support student development of concepts and develop understanding. I then explicitly taught content once we had worked on their background knowledge. I knew what the end point was, and we worked towards that end point in a way that supported the students.
These were not students with behaviour issues or learning difficulties, or inconsistent attendance. The main thing I observed was that these students were not able to access the curriculum at the level we were expected to teach it at as they had so many gaps and misconceptions that we were building on poor foundations. I could explicitly teach the content to them, but their understanding of place value, basic number facts, fractions, percentages was so poor (or non-existent) that I made a decision to go back to basics with these students.
We even got up to Pythagoras and right angle trigonometry - something I never expected these students would succeed at - but they now had confidence and a willingness to give it a go. It was explicitly taught but there was a lot of support and building of their conceptual knowledge - and when issues with fractions etc. arose I used Back to Front to support them.
Thank you. You haven't quite answered my question. You are under no obligation to, of course, but I do find this interesting.