Just Tell Them: Explicit Teaching with Zach Groshell, Mind the Gap, Ep.93 (S5,E9)

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of Mind the Gap with me, Emma Turner and John Hutchinson. Good evening, John! Good evening, hello, how are you? I'm very well, thank you. I have been very excited today because we have got an international international episode with the very lovely, the very talented, the very wise, the very wonderful Zach Groschel. Welcome Zach. Thank you for having me, Emma and John. Oh, this is uh this is a

I'm I'm here on this side of things. Um so great to be here.

Oh, it's an absolute delight to have you. And for obviously you're very well known over in the US, but for people over here who may not have stumbled across your work, those poor unfortunates who've yet to encounter your work, Zach, who haven't been lucky enough to interact with it. Just give us a flavour of who you are, what you do, and how you've got to the point where you've written this wonderful book, Just Tell Them.

Yeah. Well, in terms of being well known, remember we've got fifty states here and we've got a cajillion districts. Um I'm sort of, I hope, part of something that's bubbling up here in the United States, which is a kind of a of a a refocusing around uh academic learning, around sort of

consistency and routines and and curriculum, uh a a a movement that I think most parents kind of already thought was in schools and now we're just sort of kind of we're catching up maybe to to to some other movements around the world.

Uh but uh my job I guess uh I was a teacher for ten years. I got into sort of leadership and kind of intervention, small group instruction for another four years working in working in collaboration with with with leaders at at uh at my schools, public schools, also a during COVID, a couple of private schools.

And uh and now I am uh tr having a hand at trying to get this book out there and working with schools directly in partnership to kind of bring the science of learning and explicit instruction to them. So yeah, that's me. Zach, yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r?

Mostly elementary, uh second, third, and fourth. You know how it goes where uh you just kind of take on what the school uh thinks is the biggest need. It was always kind of that for me, like Oh, we we we have all brand new teachers in second grade. Zach, can you go be the be the third wheel over in second grade? So yeah.

I've also taught middle school and a lot of le all of my leadership in terms of like uh organizing schools to be safe and and and and calm and productive have actually taken place in middle school.

You spoke a little bit about your teaching journey there. But I wanna dig in because I felt a little bit like I was reading your private diary when when I was reading just the introduction of the start. Because you're you're quite hard on yourself. You talk about the first sort of few years of of teaching and then this kind of It's like a Damascene conversion at the moment that you sort of have. So, could you tell us what those first few years of teaching were like for you?

uh um how you feel about them now, like when you reflect back on them, sort of how you how you sort of feel about them and make sense of them and what it was that caused you to, I guess, you know, change your mind quite qu i in quite a significant way. Yeah, I mean I'm just i i naturally hard on myself about everything.

I'll be honest. I'm always that's just how when I finish a PD, you guys, like when I finish like giving this thing, I could have a standing ovation and and everyone writes in those evaluations like get Zach back, you know, kind of thing. And afterwards I just go That example I gave to that one guy at that one point was so off base. Like I confused him more than anything. And I go home and I sit in my hotel in the middle of Wyoming somewhere and just go,

Oh, just you know, turn to basketball. Let's watch basketball as my soothing, you know, kind of sport. Um, but I I guess it I guess the word is mostly just like embarrassed a little bit, embarrassed of um of Of making mistakes uh that I think I could have prevented or or going down a path like really hardcore i in the world of um kind of looser we we could we could maybe call discovery or child child-led learning uh in those those classrooms.

I do have to give my you know cut myself some slack in that that is really in the water and the air we breathe here. Uh it It's what everybody just assumes is good teaching. I mean, I've had I've had people that looked at me in shock, going, Are you seriously telling me that? that just taking a bit more of a a direct approach to teaching is is best practice. Uh that just just sounds so wrong because I've just had so much reinforcement over the years to not believe that. So Uh yeah, but

You I'm sure you two are the same. You're you're problem solving in the classroom and you're seeing what works and you You give a little question here, or you change the question to just telling, or you give a prompt and a hint and you You kind of over time refine your kind of scaffolding and you realize it's just better to be preventative. It's better to take action ahead of time and to to be that that first layer of of really a really great structured teacher before you start to

start to set them off on their own. And so I think that's kind of how it how it began for me, at least in in in in problem solving in the classroom. It's interesting that you say really hard on yourself because that almost is indicative of being a great teacher, that kind of evaluative mindset and constantly thinking, How could I have done this better? How could I have improved that? And that's that whole kind of Dylan William quote mindset about

getting better not because you know weren't good enough in the first place, but because imagine how good we could be if we constantly improved it. So that kind of message about constantly analysing what's working really comes through in your writing about being kind of really thoughtful and intentional about what you're doing. And what was really what I'm really fascinated by is

is what that backdrop that you talk about, being in the air and in the water, how does that manifest itself? And and how do you does that feel to kind of swim against that tide? Yeah, it's it's sort of like where the school's priorities are. Uh y in in and and the expectations we have for ourselves as a professional. Are just really broken. Uh, you know, you can go through multiple years as a teacher without ever receiving a single PD or training session that refers to

Teaching, like what I would actually do, some sort of technique or thing that I would that I can make to be to be adjusting. I mean, I remember a school where I was just counting. I was counting the amount of PDs we had gone through and it was like Okay, this one the consultant comes in and says, Everybody, I want you to do some mindful breathing. And then I want you to write down what you feel.

And you see like teaching is hard. It is so hard and we are so proud of you. We are we you just inspire the world. That was the PD. And then you go to the next PD and it's like guys like We just changed our security system. We have electric, you know, we have cards now and we learn how to swipe this card.

And it just, it was like three years uh in a row before uh somebody raised their hand and said, Can we talk about teaching again? You know, it's just not normal for some schools here uh to t to see to to emphasize w the day to day interactions that teachers have with students in the classroom. Um, it's a lot, it's very logistical. It's very much like, let's look at the data and why is this, God, why are certain racial groups underperforming this and we do that a lot.

And we never get to the point of what are we gonna do about it? What are we gonna change? You know, and it's the in a way that's that's probably the biggest disappointment most teachers share with.

pot well, potentially shared frustration that the that the core business of teaching, as in we're in the learning business, there's not a conversation about learning happening. Would that be right? Absolutely. You know, and I think

I think some some leaders think they're doing it, right? They'll they'll they'll they'll often refer to things that have kind of a loaded like brain-based language, right? They'll say, we're doing things with how you know how teenagers learn, how the brain develops, but these aren't These aren't really based on anything. There's no readings that are invoked. There's no there's no even like something as simple as like.

It's just sort of like we all sort of know already how to teach and how the brain works. We know that. And then that and and then now here's what you should do. Here's a trick. Here's this is how you do a gallery walk, or this is how you do this or that. And nothing like you see I've now done a few trainings in the UK, nothing like you see a common shared language. Like you you're probably in the top probably ten percent of all UK teachers couldn't tell you.

what retrieval practice is, but the other ninety percent can. And we're sitting ma maybe that's an overestimate, but here in the United States, you can't even find shared uh buckets to talk about things that everybody knows. It's really like starting from square one. It real it really is. And and I'm aware you're what you're you know, you're you're obviously watching and involved with

Kind of the educational revolution that's that's kind of uh uh taken place in England over the last sort of fifteen years and and sort of seeing it from both sides. And as you say, It's kind of baked into the system now, you know, ECTs that were going through their their framework with the within the MPQs. I mean, it it's almost impossible not to bump up against the working memory model versus the long term memory model, which you set out beautifully in Yeah.

But that point you make on sitting there as a year four teacher or a year eight teacher, and like the problem in your head is I know that my kids like When they write a paragraph then um they're they're just not like constructing a good argument in that in that paragraph. The reasons don't support like the initial point. How do I do like what do I actually do there? Like I I I know that that's the problem. So what do I do? I want to explain it better. I want to I want to

I want to sort of like uh help them to do that better. And you're saying that a lot of PD just doesn't get to that kind of detail. Instead it's kind of platitudes or or sort of like much broader strokes. I can see now from you sort of explaining giving you know that frustrations emanating off you. th why the book is written in the way it is'cause it's highly concrete, highly concrete for teachers. Very, very actionable kind of, you know, over a dozen of these sorts of strategies that are kind of

highly concrete. So would would you mind just talking about a a a a few of them? A few of these kinds of Elements of explaining well, elements of teaching well that you think would be a much better bet when it comes to kind of PD for teaching. Yeah. Uh I love it. You know, and in in the in the the table of contents, I I I listed all of And of course, there's far more uh direct strategies in here than there are even pages in the book, right? Because there's multiple uh uh almost per page. But uh

Like let let's focus in on on what's ends up being the longest chapter, which is explained interactively, right? And and this idea that uh Direct instruction or capital DI direct instruction or explicit instruction is not this monologue. That the teacher can stand in place and just kind of drone on. The kids sit passively, right? That I wanted to dispel that from the very beginning. I go to these PDs where I mean I present.

And you get a core set of the staff who goes, This guy's speaking my language up, and or we're already doing this, we're already doing this. And it What happens through a coaching interaction is they're they're not talking about the type of teaching I'm talking about. They're talking about

This kind of old school kind of vibe, this bad what, you know, uh what Tom Charrington in his uh in his one of his blogs calls the bad trad, right? Just kind of talking and hey, you gotta listen to me and this is about power or whatever else. I wanted to make sure that the every person knew You've got to involve all the kids all the time with a high ratio of responses.

Things like, right, um, increase the number of responses you elicit by having students respond in unison rather than just one at a time, right? Things about mini whiteboards or inserting a pause.

uh putting the question first, asking the student name second, right? Um these kind of things I feel like are probably pretty vanilla at this point in the UK, but they They they they they they create a kind of a core structure for for new teachers and they create uh maybe a an agenda for veteran teachers that they can constantly refine.

You're never gonna get perfect at assessing formatively. It's part of the it's the hardest thing to do. How do you do it? Uh what what are the moves? That was the point of it, I think. When I was reading this, like you say, every single page, it's this is straight between the eyes, a lot of these, and it's like technique after technique after technique after technique. Um so when you work with

with teachers and when you're working with PD uh with with this resource, where'd you start? Wh what's the first message? The what's the big first message you want to get across to people?

I love the power of video, right? And uh and a lot of times like and you saw with um with that kind of viral proteshrai chura video that kind of occurred that people can watch a video and they can see a million different things. So a lot of times uh what I like to do is start with some great video or a great example and

And and and have the teachers right uh identify those kind of elements. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna dig in. And if these These things have to be tailored to what where the school is at, obviously. Some schools are just so far down the line. Other ones are focusing very much on just harnessing attention, right? Just let's just talk a little bit about behavior for learning. And so we

I try to tailor these PDs in a way that, first of all, let's look at it, let's show it, let's see it with lots of video. I want the teacher, I want to model to the teachers what I do as students without being kind of weird about it. And then like so like things like, you know, I I will say, uh, you know, do this turn and talk and when they do the turn and talk and I go, you know.

I do the turn and talk a lot tighter in my classroom than I just did with with y'all. Here's how I do it. I have A partners and B partners and it only lasts this long. And watch this video. This is how I do it. This is how I set it up. And I kind of try to embed these techniques through having the audience experience it and also seeing it happen. And I think this gets away from this kind of sit and get type of PD.

Where you're you're experiencing something, a cool show, but instead I want you to do it. I want you to interact with it. I want you to ask questions about it. So That's 10 that tends to be how I try to do it. Yeah, but I'm pretty I'm pretty explicit, like you said. I'm like, this is this is what I would honestly do. This, right? And I and I and I tell them.

Zach, you say you say that the title's a bit cheeky. Just just tell them. It's a little bit cheeky and and provocative. Um and and as you say, you you you dispel that myth like right from from the start. This can go, you know. Traditional teaching gets a bad name when it is just somebody droning on at the front in a um pretty dull way and the kids are uh perfectly able uh to to kind of switch off and many of them take that opportunity.

Can we just zone in on um and you said it's highly interactive, but I I'd love to zoom in on um towards the final chapters, you talk about this diff you talk about guidance fading. Um and and so I guess this is the bit where you're starting to not just tell them, uh where where you're you're slowly sort of starting to to fade this this this guidance. So can you can you can you talk a little bit about

Yeah, I mean there are certain benchmarks we can use or just sort of idealistic states of fluency that you could say that like it's time, right? And we you know, we say like it's 80 to 90 percent correct on all their performances. But the the main point is that is often that what the teacher is doing is they present information. Then uh they say go do a bunch of stuff with that information. W the information that's been given is too much to teach to fluency or to mastery, right? It

14 different things, right? And so now I say go off and do it. What you're what I'm expecting you to do then is is hold in mind all of these these various requirements for this task, for this project. And I'm essentially doing, I'm basically constructing knowledge almost very, very similarly to it in a discovery learning environment, even though the teacher just up front told me some stuff. And so what a lot of the yeah.

What what a lot of it is is to think about your teaching in terms of components or atoms, right? And you teach those atoms to Fluency or to mastery, so that you get 80 to 90 percent correct on many whiteboards, on your circulation, you're seeing that.

That that amazingly satisfying feeling that I it took me three years to capture, which was that ever everybody's correct. And I can say things like, we're all on fire. We're all this is a class that's rowing the boat together. And the kids, you get that just then. That crackle and that excitement. When you hit that point, uh, that's where it's it's now time to turn over.

uh the task. It's kind of make it harder, uh maybe put in a trick, you know? It's time to vary the the the the the the conditions, whether it's vertical or horizontal. It's time to give them an opportunity to maybe turn to their partner and Work some stuff out, right? Um, a lot of teaching though doesn't even start with that assumption of breaking it down. So what they're doing is they're like,

Um I did pass it over. I passed it over and I did a gradual release. It just wasn't the instructional design was wrong and it wasn't gradual enough. It wasn't segmented. It wasn't atomized. So That that that I guess that's my answer. It's tough. There's no like right answer because every bit of material has is has a different level of complexity. Every some students miss class, right? How how am I gonna create a small group to address their their absenteeism, right? And so on.

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You know when you say just tell them, is the them the children or the adults? That's funny. Um, I think it refers to it does refer to an internal narrative in my mind when I was teaching and um I just was using explanation as a last resort. Was doing that thing where you go like

you know, tap on the paper and go get yourself unstuck and oh I don't know ask your partner ask three before you ask me is a big thing, right? Go ask your friends, go try to stand up and figure out who else knows it and whatever else. I I what I what I needed to do was just tell them. I needed to gather them and bring them all up to me and get in front of that what was an overhead projector at the beginning, right? And now be then became a document or a visualizer.

Um, and just show them what the heck was going on and then go back and have them try it again. Just tell them it was this just this narrative of like, should I do it? I don't know. I feel bad about it. I feel like I'm robbing them of an opportunity, right? And for the adults, it's the same. Uh you get uh you I as a coach, I get in there with the teacher and they're looking at me through side eyes, going, things aren't going well. And I just want to be like,

Get them together, tell them. Get them together, right? And you know, use my nonverbals or afterwards. I think you can just tell them next time, right? Uh that's where it, that's where it comes from. Wow, I didn't know whether it was a slight frustration coming out of yourself, like please just tell the teaching population as a whole these things in my book. It reminds me I at my first classroom I had one of those signs. It was for me.

Brain book buddy boss. And it was like these are the steps that the kids have to go through. The boss is the teacher. So if they don't know something, they first have to like look in their brain. So it feels a bit redundant because like they don't know it. That's that's where they are. Then go to like

a book and like there was never any cloud. Does that mean they're allowed to like wander around the classroom and like pick up a book from the book corner? Or does it mean looking at their own book? Um then there was Buddy, uh So like there's a kind of assumption that the the best person to explain this to a child is a child. And like the la as you said, the last resort is okay, now the teacher will will will actually tell you kind will explain it to you.

Um and you're talking essentially about flipping that, right?

Right. And absolutely. And I think I think it was it was only later that I started to think about of who are the teachers that supported me when I struggled. Because most teachers are successful in the Right. Um, and I I went through I went through the whole my you know and people will say no I wasn't. Yeah, you are because you have this master's degree now. You you were successful and you have a it we're I'm talking about a different level of success, right? But I think of those like

Those moments where I needed someone to support me a little more, uh, I spent a year in France, which in in high school, which doomed my math trajectory, right? I basically took Math and French for nine months, and I learned nothing, right? I didn't understand what was going on. I go back to the United States.

and I finish out stumbling through math and I get to college and I take that test and the to in order to get into math 101, the first math course, and I fail the test and I have to take the one right before it, which is not for credit. And I get this I get this badass teacher who basically that's his whole job is to get everyone into college level math.

And what did he do? I don't rem number one, I don't remember this guy's name. That is the craziest part of it. Like the the relationship was never established. But this teacher. could break down the math so that everyone could understand it. And he said, if you do 100% of the things that I say to do in this, you will get an A in this course. And we all stuck it through and we did it.

And that was a teacher that that flipped this script and said, I will show you in the most simplest, easiest, just seamlessly um uh accessible version of this. And then I'm going to make it a little harder. I'm gonna turn it over to you. I'm gonna give you lots of practice opportunities.

And, you know, thank goodness for him, right? He's like the safety net for this kind of thing. And there's a lot of teachers. They need to be that safety net that that that that that that communicates this stuff flawlessly to kids that gives them the chance to To make this feel like it's within their reach.

I'm just thinking that there's as a profession we love a bit of nuance. We look we we love to say this works here but potentially not there or this works in this situation this situation but potentially not there. So Are there any considerations, do you think, about maybe an age, maybe a stage, maybe a subject, maybe a point in a unit of work, maybe a particular aspect of something where There is there is a place for something else. A a different approach.

Yeah, I mean maybe we've we look at the book ends of the whole education spectrum. We look at those those far those those far ends and my mom is a preschool teacher, forty two years teaching preschool, retired this year to you know, uh walked out with her box cardboard box, you know, kind of thing. Uh and she uh she understood something that may or may not be scientifically validated, which is that kids in the youngest ages can attend for a very short amount of time, that they uh that they learn

quite readily some of these kind of biologically primary skills through play, through discovery, through someone who Does I believe watching her, does model play and does uh bring people back, kids back and talk about sharing and reinforce sharing.

and and sees this all as l all everything is is productive time. But what you know, you go to her class, a master preschool teacher, and you if you counted the minutes of explicit instruction, which by the way, uh were either on the carpet on dot Or in like a U shape of chairs so that she could very quickly tap knees, like uh uh teachy assistants right behind, you know, tapping on shoulders.

And just very quick moments of language building, of of using some of the language around the classroom in turns, and then bam, back to back to rotations, back to centers, back to play.

So yeah, the this idea that you know a 60-minute lesson should be 59 minutes of interactive, explicit teaching, uh, that's not how it works for the younger children. And I guess in the oldest children, when they have achieved something that would is approaching um is approaching uh you know expertise in that in that domain and that in in the top levels of

of it. I would want I would want the students to be turned, you know, want to turn this over to them. They're going to university. They gotta be ready to to study by themselves. They've got to be ready to not have a professor who holds their hand. So how do we turn that over so they're prepared for that next stage is something I think is also important.

Oh okay. This is a really rich vein to tap. Emma, I'm glad you Because it's making me think of like some of the criticisms'cause um like as you both know, like I I've I've made sort of like similar similar arguments um uh and advocated, I think Zach for some of the things that you're advocating and and and

As we were talking about earlier, you'd actually probably more likely be criticized for not doing this in England now than for doing it in terms of sort of whole class explicit instruction. Um Uh and that that kind of consideration that you've just given, um, I I I I guess is

Uh well, it doesn't always happen. Um, you you do sort of get misapplications of there's somebody who loves this kind of idea and think that what it means is putting four year olds kind of in rows and desks for sixty minute lessons and they think, you know, that I'm I'm following the science of learning. And um I don't think anybody that kind of was was writing about this or advocating this meant that. And yet that's that's how it's been kind of uh interpreted or uh maybe quite superficially.

But it's also made me think about some of those criticisms. One of the most common ones I guess is like This is spoon feeding. Um, and that kind of spoon feeding creates dependency. Um, it it kind of means that kids don't become independent learners.

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practice to do some sense making. What about this example, right? I love I love talking about Engelman's direct instruction because it's like a lot of it is here's an example and here's another example Is this a is this an example of that? No. Is and the kids are making inferences. They're inquiring into the examples and they're discussing the examples, right? Um, I would hope when you say spoon viny, they mean I just

At some point in time you gotta make the spoon bigger, right? You gotta get stuck. Now you gotta go to the ladle, right? And now okay, here's the shovel. All right, here's the you can keep the shovel, right? Um, I think that's probably that's probably true. But When it comes to instructional design of instruction, we have to realize that for that novice, the beginning is such a fragile Time.

And you you get the you get the one third of your class who honestly they already know the material or they just like they can pick it up with a single example. Great, okay, let me go do it. But you get this bottom third of children. Who have missing there's holes in their in their education. They have these prerequisites that were never taught to mastery. And you're in there and you're going, Well, if the best way to perceive

Would be to start with the sky is blue. What is the sky, everybody? It is blue. Great. And you know what also is blue? The ocean. The sky is blue and the ocean is blue. You this kind of spoon feeding, I don't think it deserves the this pejorative sort of derogatory, like you know, uh r referencing it like that. It is

It is the most j empathetic, gentle, and kind thing you can do to be super, super clear and gently bring everyone together. So that's where, that's maybe where the nuance is there. I if I could give that a stab. I'm just writing a little note to myself because I really like your sky blue, ocean blue thing.

I'm fascinated by the fact that you talk about your wonderful mother and hats off to your mother. I salute your mother. She is an absolute diamond amongst women because that is some career of service there. But I do think, like John says, that there is such a potential for an accidental lethal mutation with with instruction if it doesn't also go through the lens of and this is kind of my wheelhouse through child development and early brain development and you hinted at the fact that

children's attend for shorter amounts of time. Yes, they do because Voluntary sustained attention attention isn't biologically secure until children are about age six. So of course the amount that you attend for voluntarily to the stuff you don't really want to be listening to, because you'd rather be playing Lego. Um, but the voluntary isn't secure yet. So

I I I I can understand sometimes why there is a kickback against this because the people who are working with four and five year olds are saying I don't want to sit them in rows or or because it's been completely misinterpreted. So they do still need The right size spoon, um, but done in a way and for an amount of time that is commensurate with their level of.

biological and neurological development. It's not it's not a one size fits all. It's like these techniques will work with everybody, but in different amounts in different ways. It's not that they don't work for this age or they do work for that age. It's that they work universally, but in slightly different proportions.

I would totally agree with that. And I also just like I feel bad for the folks in preschool classrooms that they they attend PDs that I'm running and I'm giving these examples uh that are really fitting for uh middle and uh and upper elementary or middle school, right? And so I try to

I and it's the same with subjects, right? We're in this world where like, how do you teach this? How do you explain this? This book is a generic uh strategies book, right? How do you explain history this way? How do you explain science this way? Um, with my mom, I I I just felt like what she ended up saying was

I'd go to these meetings and we'd talk about something if it even was related to teaching. And then all of us preschool teachers had to do our own discovery learning. We had to figure out what worked for us. And is that where we want people to be? Or and do we want um Uh I just referring to like some of the content in Step Lab around the early years, I see all of these strands around how to develop.

uh and manage resources and how to produce productive play and and I go and I and I go, yeah, this is the kind of thing that w this is the next frontier for and I wish my mom had received that and didn't didn't have to figure that out on her own, you know. And And I hope her knowledge too uh

just doesn't disappear. Right now she's like sitting on her couch probably watching um reality television, right? But I have to go over there all the time and tap her brain because that inform it's gonna be lost someday, right? So you I totally agree with you, Emma. Do you need to she needs to write the sequel of I Just Told Them and I Also Played. By by Zach's mum.

I guess that one bad way of reading this would be um like children, small children have to play until they get to age For listeners and not watchers, I've stuck my finger in the air. Um

seven, eight, nine, whatever. And then we can do explic explicit instruction. Oh, and then actually, oh, they're getting ready for college. So so we or university, like, so we need to stop doing explicit instruction again. Whereas what you're saying is Explicit instruction is uh useful at all age ranges in all subjects, but the way that but the way that it's translated into those.

Subjects will be will be different. The kind of balance of diet will be different. And um That that's gonna like require quite a lot of teachers sort of making bringing their own knowledge of of the age, stage, subject that they that they teach to think what is it that is going to require Um explicit explicit instruction. What's going to require the clearest explanation and and how do I do that? The earlier is a good example because in in many senses when I was reading your book

The examples that you go to in your head, I was thinking of like some of the early years teachers that I've seen teaching. And I thought, like, this is like the best example of of this. Those early years teachers. Who do like when it comes to economy of language, for example, and you're using the fewest amount of words I regularly see. Teachers are upper key stage two, I was like the number one culprit. Doing a thousand word explanation when a seven word explanation would have sufficed.

Very rarely do you see that in the early years. As Emma says, you can't get away with it. They'll go play with it. They'll go play with the Lego. And so you get this kind of like. beautiful economy of language and application and and it's this universal principle of like that is explicit instruction at the right time in the right place, but within the right sort of like balance.

Which is making me h think about the whole thing differently there in terms of like the the whole age range and where it's used.

I mean it's so it's so mean to say which of the grade levels is is dropping the ball the most. But like I but as a primary teacher, uh by by training. We control the game, right? We we don't send the kids to so many specialists. Here there's one and or two per day at at max.

And then we take them to lunch, we walk them in the halls, we bring them into our classrooms. We don't even necessarily need to do uh do nows and behavior-wide systems around that sometimes if we in our own class can regulate the flow of attention, put in really great routines, you go to the you go to secondary schools and you just think like

I I wish they'd I wish they'd teach more like primary. I wish I wish that there was a bit more of an emphasis on um understanding and empathizing with naive learners, novices. And I wish you I wish we could create cultures in which everyone was responding rather than ah you're you know, you're bored and he doesn't care and sort of excusing their their performance based on some like their age their their age is they're bored of this. They're too cool for this.

Um we see a lot of really when I visit classrooms, we see a lot of uh really ineffective practices. The older the kids get, and I think it's just it's responding to how they're fighting against the system, how they're developing, and and the teachers some teachers give up. That that that protesh video of every kid raises their hand. I've shown that to to folks in the

It's just, it's just incredible. It's so aspirational that every child would actually be engaged and fully participating in a lesson when you talk about older children. So much there, Zach, in one answer. I could I could unpack what you've just said for about four consecutive days without stopping to draw breath. But I do think that I one of the things that you mentioned was about

Primary teachers having that flexibility to do these strategies in multiple different ways. We are not in primary governed by a bell. And we don't get a constant conveyor belt of children all day who we don't know what they've done before they come to us. Most of the time in primary you've had them for the majority of the day yourself. So you don't need to do every single lesson.

starts with retrieval practice and then goes on to this and then goes on to that because you've only got a forty five minute window. You haven't you got the whole day. So whether you do your history retrieval practice at this time or that time or another time, it doesn't really matter as long as it gets done because you don't have to cram in all of those elements into the single amount of time that you've got.

With that class, like you do in a timetabled secondary environment. And you also get to control the rhythm of the day and the overall cognitive resources. Over the course of a day. And I did a course yesterday where I was talking about the rhythm of the day. Like, if you're going to have an absolutely rock hard

literacy lesson followed by um rock hard butt follow and the whole day is massively cognitively demanding. Well by the end of the day you might as well go and shout down a well because the kids have just they've just had enough. What you need to do is like it's a it's a bit like when you go on a P D course yourself.

You're on fire till lunchtime. You're like, I'm the most professional person in the world. Give me all the information. You come back from lunch and you feel like an actual potato because you've you've had it, you've done it. And it's the the same with the kids, but in primary you've got the ability. curate that day in a slightly different way to manage overall cognitive resources in the day.

And then potentially in secondary, some of the things that you allude to maybe and I'm pure conjecture here. speculation. Because that isn't or can't be managed because of the nature of the timetabling in secondary, because the children just bounce from one thing to another with nobody knowing what they've just done. Whether they've just done the most cognitively challenging, mind-blowing thing they've ever done, and actually they probably need to just sit and sit with it for a while.

or whether they've done something where they're just physically knackered, or whether they're bursting with creative juices and want to carry on. There's not that overview there. Oh God, I've just gone off on one. I do apologize for that. Well, absolutely. And and you know, and you and you and you talk to teachers in secondary and you talk especially middle school. Uh for us that's um for you, years seven through nine would be our middle school, I believe.

Um you talk about those years and And the teacher the teacher sees the same group and it feels like that group is sabotaging them that day. And the next day it doesn't and and they just don't know what why it is and they can never find out, right? But if you follow children for hour through hour and you find like, oh yeah, in second period, they've got this teacher who uh

Uh didn't do a great job with their books and like half the class was digging through the books. It took like through for ten minutes. and then got all reprimanded. Why do you lose your books? And this and that. They go into the next lesson and

They've just been they've just been yelled at. They've just like didn't have their book and they're sitting there watching their their their their results plummet or the the impr you know, the the impression the teacher has of them, they feel they feel slighted.

And they go into the next class and the teacher's ready to go. Let's go. Do now. Why aren't we doing our do now, guys? Why aren't we doing our do now? And um You know, what makes me a little bit furious with with consulting with these schools is that they are often very inflexible. when it comes to changing any of this. There's a tradition of six periods of learning.

And it's so simple to hire six subject experts and they and the kids go to the classrooms. The teachers could never rotate to the children. The children could never stay in one place or it it has to be this way. And of course In ki in schools of of a lot of disadvantage, it's the hallways that are causing the corridors, which are causing all the ruckus that enters into the classroom. Um it's just

It's a mess. I like the elementary world because it's clean in a lot of ways. A lot of a lot of ways we can make

We can be a we can really make a lot of progress for ourselves in our own little our own little bubble. You you mentioned that and and it came up before as well. You mentioned disadvantage and i i the You spoke a little bit about how as a teacher there'd always be like a range of prior attainment and there are some kids who grasp things quicker than other other children. And so

Um and it can be easy to kind of pat yourself on the back, say, well look, those three kids got it. It can't be me. It must be must be you. If they got it, you all should have got it. And it It seems to me there's a kind of like moral imperative here with this book, with this kind of like righteous anger that I'm getting from you of um Teach like an equity thing of the number one target of their teaching should be the kids who, like by default, won't get this or are most likely to not get.

Which is a b I guess a bit of a reversal of what you sometimes hear of like where you should teach to the top. Um so Is that a kind of driving motivation for you with with advocating this? That that essentially it's like This is a a gap, this is the best way to close a gap, or this is kind of uh uh the primary concern should be the children that are most the least likely to make progress in a class.

Yeah, and I and I and I've grappled with that term teach to the top a lot. I think a lot of people that use it have mean the same thing as I do, which is not don't teach to the bottom. But the What the issue you get is especially when it comes to reading, like reading is seems to be the least controversial topic to t to talk about. When it comes to reading, um, you kind of have two options.

And I think both are fair to consider. If you're a certain school, you can go that way. But the two main options are you give a placement test to all the children and you create homogeneous groups. And you intensively teach the kids at the bottom, perhaps with more time in the timetable, perhaps with the best teacher.

And the kids that already kinda came to school knowing how to read, uh, they're in a group where maybe they start reading chapter books and they they maybe they get a little bit of a diet, you know, a a a a slower diet or it's not so necessary to like to like be tracking and screening them every two seconds and so on and so forth. But most schools don't do that. They can't match materials correctly to to these groups. They can't organize such a complex system.

So they they they have to have everyone together. And you get kids that come in who uh Like my daughter, who's reading at a third grade level, and'cause we taught her how to read. And she reads all in like literally explicitly taught her the phonetic code through through materials, right? We taught her how to read. She's reading She's reading books that are this thick, but uh But uh not not not as dense maybe. But they're all in the same classroom.

Do I teach to the kids who already know how to read? Of course I don't do that. We have a we have an moral imperative to get everybody literate. And so it starts with a A an interactive but a a a slow march of systematic phonics and other things. and syntax and vocabulary. And we slowly build up everybody's repertoires so that

They can read. Uh so um that that it's the expectations are high. The the the intensities we don't put the kids into into into groups and start going slower. We put the pedal to the metal for them, right? Um, but whatever it is, they're these foundational skills, you can't just skip them and expect they will magically emerge. You'll get a lot of kids who just can't read. We could do a whole other hour just um reading. We had Chris Such on as a guest recently, which is

as you know, he's absolutely phenomenal on this. But I c I I wish we had some more time to dig into them, but before we actually finish.

Where can people find you? Where can they read more about your work? Where can they listen to you? Where are you in the world, Zach? Thank you. Yeah. Well, Progressively Incorrect is the podcast that I um that I host. And uh it And we bring on guests from all over. So you'll get gu guests from the UK and Australia and the United States. I try to make I just try to give a fine diet of everything in education, uh, but really around acad academic achievement and learning.

Um, and then uh you can find my website where I post webinars and resources and things. It's called Education Rickshaw. The rickshaw comes from I I taught in Sudan for three years and there were rickshaws everywhere. Uh so I made that website way back then. You can find me there and if you need uh if you need some uh any you know any assistance, uh you can email me through there. And finally, I'm on all the websites. I'm on um Blue Sky and and and and X and so on at Mr. Zach G is my handle.

I read about your um yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw. 'Cause I always wondered where the little yellow uh yellow icon came from. Now I know. And they were all yellow. There was the wh every single rickshaw in that uh little tuk tuk in Sudan was everyone was just that same color. So beautiful.

Right, thank you so much for joining us, Zach. I I'm I imagine John's got seventy three at least unanswered questions that he still wishes he could ask you. I I yeah, I I I do. Uh but uh but I I guess just to close it the Uh the way that you closed the the the the book. What struck me from reading this book was the the kind of final point that you make, which is this kind of fundamental belief that teaching is is hard.

But it's teachable. Like that like there aren't just some people who are born to do it and we'd find those people and if you're not born to do it, bad luck. Um we we can and we should help all teachers to get better. But in order to do that, we need really concrete actionable strategies that that address the problems that teachers actually Uh face in the classroom. Which is what I think your book does so brilliantly. Uh so thank you very much for writing it.

Um I hope that uh many, many teachers uh can dip into it, read it through and and I know that they'll they'll get they'll get plenty that they can um try out in their classroom and improve their teaching as a result of it. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us, uh Zach. It's been an absolute delight. So thank you everybody for listening to Mind the Gap, Making Education Work Across the Globe. And we'll see you again soon. Thank you, John. Thank you, Zach. Good night.

Thank you for listening to Mind in the Gap. I'm Emma Turner and I've been presenting with my co host John Hutchinson. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review, share on social media and subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on our YouTube channel by searching Mind the Gap with John and Emma or head over to Spotify for an audio version. This podcast was produced in association with Harringay Education Partnership, and our producer is Lou.