21st Century Strands & Strategies
Chapter: Strands & Strategies: Deep Dive
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Explain
During the Explain stage, students begin to communicate what they have learned. The
purpose of the Explain stage is to provide students with an opportunity to communicate
what they have learned so far and figure out what it means. Language provides
motivation for sequencing events into a logical format. Communication occurs
between peers, with the teacher who functions as a facilitator, and through the
reflective process.
Teacher's Role
The teacher provides opportunities for
students to demonstrate their current
level of understanding through verbal
and non-verbal means. The teacher
explicitly conveys relevant
knowledge, concepts and skills. This
content is represented in multiple
ways. The teacher provides specific
strategies encouraging students to
connect and organize new as well as
existing knowledge. The teacher assist
students in representing their ideas,
using language and images that engage students in reading, writing, speaking,
listening and viewing. The teacher explicitly communicates the language of the
discipline. The teacher increasingly assesses students' understanding and structures
opportunities for students to practice new skills.
Expand | Extend | Elaborate
The next phase challenges students to extend their understandings or skills and/or to
practice them. Through new experiences at this time, students develop deeper
understanding, an extended conceptual framework, and improved skills.
Teacher's Role
The teacher engages students in
dialogue, continuously extending
and refining students'
understanding. The teacher
supports students as they identify
and define relationships between
concepts and as they generate
principles or rules. The teacher
selects contexts from familiar to
unfamiliar, which increasingly
builds students' ability to transfer
and generalize their learning. The
