Webinar Recap:
Helping Students Learn More
In a recent webinar, John Hollingsworth, co-author of Explicit Direct Instruction and co-founder of DataWorks Educational Research, shared insights about what makes classroom instruction truly effective. Drawing from observations of over 25,000 classrooms, John Hollingsworth revealed both the challenges facing modern education and practical solutions that can transform student learning.
The Problem: The Implementation Gap
In many schools, teachers spent the majority of time talking at students rather than engaging them in the learning process.
This isn’t an achievement gap problem; it’s an implementation gap. The strategies exist; they’re just not being used consistently across classrooms.
What Makes Instruction Effective?
John Hollingsworth defines effective instruction as having two critical components:
- Well-designed lessons – The content, structure, and materials you prepare
- Well-taught lessons – How you deliver that content to students
Both elements are essential. You can’t compensate for poor design with great delivery, and even the best lesson plan fails without effective teaching strategies.
Characteristics of Effective Instruction
Research-backed effective instruction should:
- Produce at least 80% student success through whole-class instruction
- Provide corrective feedback to reach 100% understanding
- Work across all grade levels and subject areas
- Enable students to learn new concepts even when they have some skill gaps
- Increase student motivation through three key factors: non-volunteers (everyone participates), lesson relevance, and the “I can do it” outcome
The Implementation Challenge: Why Professional Development Often Fails
Here’s sobering research from Joyce and Showers: after attending a workshop or webinar, only 5% of teachers actually implement what they learned. Even with demonstrations, that number barely improves.
The solution? In-situational coaching; having a coach or administrator in the classroom during teaching, providing real-time cues and prompts. This increases implementation to 90%.
Why is this so difficult? Because teaching habits are deeply ingrained. Your brain literally drives you to school on autopilot, and you fall back on familiar patterns. Teachers need repeated practice with immediate feedback to “rewire their brains” and make new strategies automatic.
The recommendation is clear: provide coaching to every teacher every week.
Not just pre- and post-observation meetings, but actual in-the-moment support. Stand at the front of the classroom and quietly prompt: “Have them pair share now” or “Call on a non-volunteer.”
As John Hollingsworth notes, “Good instructional leaders maintain a relentless focus on improving how students are taught.” That’s the entire job, continually improving the process of instruction.
Taking Action: What Can You Implement Tomorrow?
The webinar’s power lies in its practicality. Consider starting with just one or two strategies:
- Begin every lesson by teaching students how to pronounce key vocabulary
- Use choral reading for learning objectives and definitions
- Add one pair share to each lesson
- Replace hand-raising with random selection for at least some questions
- Create simple whiteboards (or use paper) for one checking-for-understanding question
The goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress toward the target: all students successfully taught grade-level work every day.
Conclusion
The challenge isn’t knowledge. Most educators already know these strategies work. The challenge is implementation; closing that gap between what we know and what we actually do in classrooms every day.
As John Hollingsworth demonstrated throughout the webinar by using the very strategies he taught, these techniques work because they align with how the human brain actually learns: through repeated, varied interactions with content, active participation rather than passive listening, and immediate feedback that helps all students succeed.
The question for every educator and school leader is simple: What will you implement starting tomorrow?
