10 Step Plan: Gradual Release of Responsibility

10 Steps to Effective Planning for 

Gradual Release of Responsibility

I've put together 10 large steps to implementing Gradual Release of Responsibility in your classroom.  When I first started in this lesson planning format, I struggled with applying it to the arts classroom.  However, I very strongly feel that it could be applied to any school, business training, or other learning situation, formal or informal.  I have very generally lumped several tiny steps into some larger steps, but I think that this really hits on the main points of GRR planning.

For those of you who do not know what GRR is, it is a simple application of transferring the responsibility of learning from the instructor to the student. It generally comes in 4-5 parts as follows (where "I" is the teacher and "You" is the student):

1. I demonstrate alone
2. You help me do
3. You do in pairs or groups while I help
4. You do alone
5. Sharing

Depending on the task and the class, I feel that the third step can be omitted.  Below, you will also find a few extra steps that I have implemented in my classroom, and I have found to be extremely helpful.  I have set all the times below based on a 60 minute period, but they can be adjusted based on your class length.  The balance should be as follows, with the bulk of the time being devoted to independent practice:

• Do Now:  5-7 minutes
• Focus Lesson:  5-10 minutes
• Guided Practice:  5-10 minutes
• Independent practice:  20-30 minutes
• Sharing:  5-10 minutes

Step 1:  Find a template that works for you, and make sure it is changeable.

Here is a copy of the template I use. I adapted I from something I found online, and have modified and edited it over te last year. Following my most recent observation, I added in the differentiation section because that was an area in which I needed better organization. Please feel free to borrow and adapt mine, do a google search to find one you like, or just create your own.

Look for word, excel or pages (I created mine in pages, I find it way easier to edit and change).

Step 2: The Do-Now, 5-7 min. (10 maximum for a quiz or other assessment) 

This is the first thing the students do when they enter the classroom.  For our school, we have the first 1-2 minutes devoted to copying the learning task and homework.  The task that follows should already be set up, and should activate the prior knowledge necessary to begin the day's lesson or follow up on a previous day's lesson.

Some examples of do-nows might include:

• A Journal Write (make sure it is a how or explain prompt, don't ask easy "who" "what" or "when" questions.)  This should engage the student in thinking through a process or oragnizing prior knowledge for use in the day's lesson.
• A very brief quiz
• A problem they will encounter in class (just slightly harder than what they are capable of)
• A brief music excerpt with a challenging bowing or articulation
• A quick sketch for an art class
• A first look at a primary source in a social studies class
• Comparison of quotes or characters in an ELA or literacy class

This can easily become a form of pre-post assessment.  If the problem you give is not used again in the lesson, you could give it again at the end of the class to demonstrate student growth through your lesson.

Step 3: Learning Targets:  What do you want to accomplish?

Create your learning targets. What should the student be able to do at the end of the lesson? At our school, we use three learning targets: one skill based, one content based and one social.

For those of you who done know the abbreviation (I didn't when I started) SWBAT stands for "Students Will Be Able To" some teachers also use IWBAT, putting the learning target into the first tense for the student "I will be able to..."

The scholar should be able to verbalize the learning target. At our school, we have students copy down the learning target with their homework immediately upon entering the room. Where do they get the information? From the agenda...

Step 4:  The Agenda

In all of our classrooms, and for every class period, there is an agenda posted in the front of the room which aligns with the GRR lesson being delivered. I plan out my agenda in advance, and sometimes make the categories interesting with creative titles (think "The Story Behind Old Glory" for the Star Spangled Banner focus lesson).

The agenda provides the students with some essential transparent information: what is coming up and for how long we will be doing it. Each component of T&W agenda has a time limit, which the teacher is responsible or holding to.

Step 5:  Focus Lesson (I do alone), 5-7 minutes

At this point in the lesson, you are modeling whatever it is that you want the students to do.  This is a time for you to really grab your students' attention.  I find myself acting and really playing up the excitement or purpose of whatever I am covering.

I usually do this as a think aloud, walking through the steps of whatever it is that I am doing.  Most importantly, you have to make predictions of what the students will struggle with, pretend to make those mistakes and demonstrate how you plan to overcome that hurdle.  For example, if you are teaching order of operations, you may forget (on purpose) to do your parenthesis first, or if teaching a less literal, more complex idea like creating a thesis statement, you may (purposely) put it in the form of a question and then correct yourself.

Also this moment of failure, you must demonstrate to the student how you (and eventually they) will persevere.  For the math example above, you may put "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" (PEMDAS) onto your chart to refer to your order.  This will then become a tool you can direct the students to use during guided and independent practice.  For the idea of a thesis statement, you may have a chart of what a thesis is and what it is not (a co-teacher of mine recently did this in a 6th grade class with a great deal of success).

Most important during this phase is that there is no interaction with the students, they are observing you work through a process.  When you ask yourself a question out loud "Should I do the parenthesis first?", your students will want to help you, as soon as you see hands up, you know you have engaged them.  Remind them to save their strategies for the guided and independent practice.

If you have a co-teacher in the classroom, this is a great opportunity to play off each other, pointing out each other's mistakes, offering suggestions and strategies, and demonstrating how to work cooperatively to reach a solution.

Step 6:  Guided Practice, 5-8 minutes

In the guided practice, you will be making an attempt to complete a similar (but different) problem.  At this point, you will invite the students to help you solve the problem at hand.  It is essential at this point that you allow the scholars to struggle, but point them towards the tools that they will need to complete the task (most importantly your process chart, which can remain in the classroom for future reference). 

It is important at this point that you allow the students to struggle, and provide sufficient wait time (no matter how awkward you may feel) to allow them to figure out the solution independently.

Step 7:  Independent Practice, 20-30 minutes

During the Independent Practice portion of class, students should be doing just that - practicing independently.  If you have given the appropriate instructions and process charts, your scholars will have fewer struggles in completing the related material in your independent practice.

While the students are working independently, the teacher is either working with individuals who need additional guidance in understanding the processes, facilitating differentiated practice,  or is competing conferencing (which really deserves its own blog entry).

Step 8:  Conferencing & Differentiation

At this point, the scholars should be working independently.  However, some students may not have the facilites necessary to work independently.  At this point, you need to make predictions of which students will need additional support and how you plan to provide that support.  In our school, this usually means addressing special needs according to IEPs and a great deal of ELL scaffolding.

As for conferencing, in a nutshell, you are taking a moment to meet with your students one on one to determine how they are progressing toward acquisition of the skills you have presented.

Step 9:  Sharing - The Product, 5-10 minutes

The final part of the GRR model is the sharing portion.  At this point, you are inviting the students to share what they produced during the independent practice.  This may also be a time in which you re-assess the students using an assessment identical or very similar to the do-now.  This could also be a journal entry in which they explain the process or review the steps they used in class.

Whatever your sharing element is, you should be able to definitively determine whether or not your students have met the learning targets you set at the beginning of the lesson.  If they did, you are ready to move on.  If they have not, you will have to work unmastered elements into a future lesson to ensure mastery.

Step 10:   Reflection

I leave room at the bottom of my lessons to make notes of what I need to change for next time.  Most of the time, I repeat my lesson more than once in a day, and I invariably come up with new strategies once I deliver the lesson to a class.  You will find that there are unique situations that you could not foresee which will arise throughout your lesson.  Take the time to note what works and what doesn't so that next time you can deliver an even better lesson, and hopefully learn something yourself.

Other Considerations:

Multi-Day Lessons:

For multi-day lessons, on the second day, you should use the time in the focus lesson to identify errors and challenges that arose during independent practice in the previous day, either from student questions or from one-on-one conferencing.  I often take the same lesson, re-save it as a different file, and then make alterations based on the changes in content, material, tasks, and differentiation.

Testing Days:

The test instructions and or testing strategies become the focus lesson, and the rest of the lesson becomes independent practice.  Depending on how long the exam is, time at the end may be used for reflection on testing material and sharing or journal writing.

Example Lesson Plans:

ExemplarGRRTemplate.pdf by Craig Klonowski

ExemplarGRRTemplate.doc by Craig Klonowski

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