Putting Rosenshine’s Principles into Practice: Why I Created a Writing-First IELTS Course

This series of blog posts grew out of my desire to introduce Rosenshine's Principles of Education into EAL lessons. As Head of EAL/EAP, I spend much of my teaching day on in-class support and one-to-one instruction. The content of a lesson can change at short notice: one moment I might be helping a student with GCSE History, the next with Key Stage 3 Physics. That style of teaching makes it difficult to introduce the ten principles.

This creates a particular challenge when trying to apply Rosenshine’s ten principles consistently. Principle 1 recommends beginning a lesson with a short review of previous learning. While this is straightforward when teaching a planned sequence of lessons, it becomes more difficult when I do not know which subject I will be supporting until I arrive in the classroom. I might walk into a History lesson without knowing what the student covered previously, making it difficult to revisit earlier learning before helping them tackle the task in front of them.

I wanted to find a context in which I could use these principles more systematically. My IELTS Preparation Course offered that opportunity.

At the same time, I had become increasingly dissatisfied with the textbook I was using. Writing was not receiving the early and sustained attention I felt my students needed. It is often the skill they find most challenging, and it responds particularly well to structured practice, feedback and opportunities to work independently between lessons.

These two aims came together in a scheme of work that puts writing first, rather than treating it as something to tackle after the other skills. This approach also provides a way to incorporate several of Rosenshine’s principles: students practise writing in manageable steps (Principle 2), revisit previously learned techniques through cumulative review (Principles 1 and 10), and complete homework to develop their independence (Principle 9).

There are fifteen lessons on writing. The course is designed to last for an entire school year, one 60 minute lesson a week.

You can download the scheme of work here.

Over the coming weeks, I will share the lesson plans and classroom resources, explaining how Rosenshine’s principles inform each lesson and how the writing-first approach develops across the course. Next week, I will introduce the first lesson.

For other EAL and IELTS teachers: how do you make sure writing receives enough attention in your lessons?

Rosenshine, Barak. 2012. “Principles of Instruction.” American Educator. https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Principles-of-Insruction-Rosenshine.pdf.