Are Your Students Responsible For Their Learning?

Fisher and Frey explain how “the Gradual Release of Responsibility instructional framework purposefully shifts the cognitive load from teacher-as-model, to joint responsibility of teacher and learner, to independent practice and application by the learner.” At Blair, students are developing automaticity with reading comprehension strategies through the GRR framework. Teachers understand that before students can transfer a strategy to independent reading they need explicit instruction as well as multiple experiences to practice, along with feedback and support.

Teachers and students utilize the GRR framework in a non linear format.  For example, a strategy such as determining theme may be explored in language workshop (you do it together), followed by direct instruction/mini lesson (I do it, we do it) and then applied during independently reading of a choice text, and writing about it in a thoughtful log (you do it alone). Students can move back and forth between each of the components across units as they work toward developing automaticity with a strategy.

At a recent professional development session, Blair teachers shared student artifacts from their teaching and learning within the GRR framework. After analyzing the artifacts of student learning, colleagues provided feedback in four categories: gradual release of responsibility, feedback, assessment and proficiency level.  

Teaching and Learning Artifacts

Feedback on Artifacts From Colleagues