Making the implicit explicit: David Didau

However, as a subject specialist, you know that these aren’t strictly due to nature; you’ve spent many years nurturing and mastering your skillset.

After years of doing it, it may be difficult to recall a time you found reading difficult. For example, when teaching learners skills such as decoding and comprehension, have you ever found it challenging to know where to begin? Do you find yourself asking, how do I know what I know? How can I explain this in a simple way?

In this article, we’re going to look at deconstructing what we as experts implicitly know about reading so that we can better support our learners to develop literacy skills. Let’s begin by looking at the profiles of students we have in our classrooms.

We all have learners in our class who pick up literacy skills quicker than others, but why aren’t all of our learners able to acquire these skills so effortlessly? A common reason is that many young people do not have access to books at home, meaning these learners have less prior knowledge about language and literature in contrast to those who do have books at home.

Some children may not have had physical books at home, but it’s quite likely that they’ve had access to text through other mediums, such as social media. However, the quality of online language is significantly different in terms of its density and range to that found in classic children’s literature, such as E.B White’s Charlotte’s Web. This means that some learners have not been exposed to the formal register that they’ll come across in school. This is also a common problem for children with English as Additional Language (EAL) as they may not have access to formal registers of English outside of the classroom.

Another factor affecting how quickly children learn to read is how easy they find tasks such as decoding and comprehension. Weak readers who struggle to decode often focus on unknown words in a text and lose sight of the overall message; therefore, they are only able to pick up on details, not the whole picture. This reduces their reading comprehension, as well as their enjoyment of the text. They may find themselves quickly becoming demotivated when reading, so practice and perseverance, as well as lots of encouragement, are key.

However, influencing the impact of all of these factors is the socioeconomic status of a learner and their family at home. While many teachers aim to give learners equal opportunities in lessons, not every learner enters the classroom with the same opportunities already present - returning to the discussion of formal register, learners from advantaged backgrounds are more likely to have encountered this way of speaking at home, while learners from disadvantaged backgrounds may enter the classroom with no prior knowledge. Unless teaching is targeted and personalised for every student, the language gap between learners of different backgrounds cannot be closed.

As well as this, it’s important to consider the specific learning needs of students with special educational needs. For example, if a learner in your class is dyslexic, teaching methods for literacy instruction must shift to ensure they have the opportunity to thrive. Every learner’s special educational needs are different, and teaching must be consistent and flexible to ensure they have learning opportunities equal to those of other learners.

Like riding a bike or playing an instrument, reading is a skill that needs to be practised so that it can be committed to the part of long-term memory called procedural memory. Once stored there, reading, like these other skills, becomes natural and effortless.

The problem with mastering a skill is that years later we often forget about the small steps we took to learn it, and we start to falsely believe that the skill can be taught as a whole. To illustrate this scenario, Didau gives the entertaining example of presenting a novice chef with a meal and then telling them to copy it without giving them any ingredients or instructions. It would quite likely be a recipe for disaster, yet it’s a useful analogy for the classroom.

We can’t expect children to interpret and critique texts without doing the groundwork first. Initial steps demonstrating reading strategies, such as how to understand a word using just context, and ensuring they’re aware of literary devices and the effects they have on readers. Furthermore, teachers not only need to teach the knowledge that makes up reading skills explicitly, but also give students time to practise this knowledge so that it becomes mastered.

In his book “The Secret of Literacy: Making the Implicit, Explicit,” Didau argues that literature relies on the implicit for much of its power to speak to us. Yet as we’ve already discussed, to reach a point where a reader can fully engage with a text on a deep, meaningful, and personal level, there needs to be some form of explicit instruction. This can take place in the form of ‘noticing’ in the classroom.

Noticing is a main tenant in Didau’s approach to teaching. It has its origins in language education and is a key component of inductive approaches such as task-based learning, which encourages exposing learners to material and then allowing them to uncover its underlying rules by themselves. This is what you may also know as discovery learning. With this approach, the teacher sets a task and then implicitly draws learners’ attention to specific forms, encouraging noticing (Doughty and Williams, 1998). In the context of reading, this could involve bringing a reader’s awareness to a particular idea or a word or phrase that reveals the effect of a writer’s choice on meaning.

Let’s look at some practical implications from Didau (2014) which you can use in your classroom to promote explicit learning and noticing, or, in Didau’s words, ‘making the implicit, explicit.’

Provide clear explanations that activate links between learners’ pre-existing knowledge and what you are teaching. It’s important to elicit at the start of a task what your learners already know. When explaining abstract concepts, always use concrete examples to help learners understand.

Use subject-specific language in explanations to provide a model of the language you want your learners to use.

Encourage noticing by drawing attention to certain features or ideas in a text. This will help learners build up a bank of comparisons so that they will be able to make connections across multiple texts.

Always ask your learners questions to check for understanding. Encourage them to elaborate on ideas and use higher order thinking skills by posing open-ended questions that elicit skills such as deduction and evaluation.

Give learners time to apply new knowledge and support them in practising it before gradually enabling them to work more independently.

Encourage reflection by asking learners to tell you or others what they have learned; this will help them retain newly acquired knowledge.

Make learning memorable by appealing to feelings, comparing new learning with what the learners already know, and most importantly, making it clear to learners that what they are doing is relevant.

Bedrock Learning offers a range of English programmes for learners of all levels and ages and includes a vocabulary curriculum, a grammar curriculum and GCSE English. Students explicitly learn about the literary features they need to successfully analyse a text in English, including narrative devices such as character and setting, and language devices such as juxtaposition and metaphor. Through authentic texts, which are relevant to current GCSE English, each learner will explore English literature and learn subject-specific vocabulary tailored to their individual needs.

As Bedrock’s programmes are data-driven, learners can repeat tasks and vocabulary until they are committed to long-term memory. The programmes also offer a variety of scaffolded writing tasks to support learners in mastering their newly acquired skills. Bedrock’s programmes are fun and interactive, meaning learners will not only enjoy learning English, but their learning experiences will be memorable too.