The Strategy: Break it Down
“Break it Down” is a response strategy to a student’s error or the student simply guessing an answer. The strategy is to immediately stop and address the mistake or lack of knowledge by simplifying it into smaller, easier steps to make the answer attainable for the student. The teacher should provide the smallest hint necessary for the student to be successful. Teachers should consider problem areas students might have when they are planning lessons in order to anticipate wrong answers and generate cues that would be helpful to the student. There are many ways to break a concept or problem down for a student according to Teach like a Champion. The teacher can provide an example answer, provide further context, remind the student of a rule that applies, and/or prompt the student for the first or missing step. The instructor could also repeat the student’s incorrect answer back to them or eliminate false choices. All of these strategies try to simplify the task into smaller pieces in order for the student to reach their answer as independently as possible while still correcting the mistake or lack of mastery.
Research Support
This strategy should work because “Break it Down” applies cognitive developmental theory through scaffolding. Scaffolding is Vygotsky’s strategy of providing hints and clues in order to assist students’ learning in their zone of proximal development. Rather than outright providing the student with the correct answer, support is increasingly provided for the student to reach the answer himself or herself. This also means the student is in their zone of proximal development (ZPD), where they can neither master the material independently nor are they completely relying on the teacher’s help but with only a little, necessary assistance from the teacher can they complete the task.
In the classroom:
I teach special education, so here is an example of what the “Break it Down” strategy could look like in my classroom. I teach a lot of adaptive (daily living) skills to my students since many students with disabilities need explicit instruction in this area. One thing that often needs to be taught is how to wash hands. To this end, if the student could not perform the first step of hand washing, the teacher could verbally prompt: “what do we need to turn on first to wash our hands?” If a student was still struggling to remember the steps to wash his/her hands, I could break the activity down further to provide the missing step by having a picture that would cue the student as to what step he/she should be performing:
This picture would cue the student to lift the handle of the faucet and turn the water on, which is furthering the scaffolding that the verbal prompt initially provided. If the verbal cue was sufficient, the teacher would stop at that as the “Break it Down” strategy calls for the least assistance necessary for the student to complete the task. However, if the verbal hint was not enough, the picture cue would increase the amount of support (therefore increasing the scaffolding) for the student to be successful in washing his/her hands independently.