Preparing good explanation

With successful explanations pupils:
• have a good visualisation and understanding of the new idea and know how it fits with their existing knowledge and understanding;
• have understood and internalised the key features of the idea so they are able to restate it in their own words;
• are able to use appropriate models and analogies in restating their ideas and explaining them to others;
• know how to proceed with their learning and what to do next.

Purposes of explanation
purposes and objectives of the lessons;
processes, procedures and skills (explaining how);
cause and effect (explaining why);
relationships (how one factor affects another over time);
concepts (often abstract);
attitudes and values (involving some personal judgement).

Characteristics of good explanations
• clear structure
• key features identified
• dynamic opening
• clarity – using voice and body
• signposting
• examples and non-examples
• model and analogy
• props
• questions
• connections to pupils’ experience
• repetition
• humour

Common pitfalls
Pupils do not appear to be interested
Explanations are overlong, pupils lose interest
Explanations do not appear to lead to greater understanding and may create greater confusion
Explanations of concepts that only involve talk
Explanations do not allow for checking of pupils’ developing understanding
Providing explanations that are unnecessary
Not treating pupils’ questions seriously

TIPS ON EXPLAINING
1. Improving Clarity: Avoid pronouns and use nouns instead.
2. If you don't know the answer, what should you do?
3. Provide a road map. What is coming, and why? Set up a “frame” for what you are going to say.
4. Look Out for Potential Sources of Confusion

EXPLAIN AT THE RIGHT LEVEL & HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT LEVEL
1. General Principle -- try to think like a student, not like a professor.
2. Probe First. Before you start to explain a topic or problem, try find out exactly where the student is stuck.
3. Explain in Small Bites Explain a short piece of a problem at a time
4. Don’t Start too Far Back. When a student asks a specific question, try to answer it without going over a lot of background material.

5. Don’t assume too much. Remember that your students don’t have as much background as you do, so you will probably have to explain things that seem obvious to you.
6. Ways to get the students to tell you what they need to know – How to figure out where they are at:
A. Collect Questions
B. The Old Card Trick
C. Ask Them a Question

Short List of What NOT to Do
1. Draw/show a confusing diagram
2. Do some blackboard carpentry.
3. Stand in front of what you wrote.
4. Face the board as you talk.
5. Write in corners of board or wherever there is space.
6. Use jargon, abbreviations !

7. Erase what you just wrote before everyone has finished copying it down.
8. Skip important steps. Start explaining in the middle.
9. Take a lot of time explaining the obvious.
10. Write too small or in unintelligible handwriting.
12. Mumble.

13. Talk too fast.
14. Stare at the floor.
15. Say something very complex and write nothing on the board.
16. Insult the students – make fun of them (or their ignorance) when they ask questions, and berate them when they don’t speak up.
17. Explain how stupid, worthless, lazy, pampered etc. students are nowadays. Not like when I was a student.

Tricks
1. Analogies
2. Models
3. Using the Blackboard
4. Handouts.

Getting students to explain ideas to the teacher and to each other is a great way to determine the depth of understanding.

the ‘holy trinity’ of teacher practice