What Is Explicit Teaching? The Complete Teacher’s Guide (with Classroom-Ready Tools and Examples)

Explicit teaching this, explicit teaching that.

If you’re an educator, you’ve probably noticed that explicit teaching is everywhere – from education headlines to official curricula. In Australia, for example, it sits at the very centre of Victoria's Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0) and is mandated across public schools in New South Wales. In the United States, a similar commitment to explicit instruction helped Mississippi climb from near the bottom of national literacy rankings to what the New York Times reports is now a top‑ten position for fourth‑grade reading.

For many teachers, it’s already woven into day-to-day practice – a dynamic, responsive way of introducing new learning with clarity, modelling and guided support. But behind the term lies a powerful, evidence-backed approach to instruction – one built on decades of research into how students learn. One that’s been around for much longer than the latest trends dominating education conversations today.

Chances are, it’s something you’re already using in your classroom to some extent – and something worth strengthening, especially when it comes to teaching reading.

In this guide, we unpack:

• what explicit instruction is

• why it matters for teaching reading

• what it looks in practice and

• how to make it work in your classroom – with strategies and examples you can use straight away (plus research-backed tools to help you bring it to life).

What is explicit teaching (and what it is not)

Let’s start with a definition.

Archer and Hughes, in their 2011 book Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching, described explicit teaching as “one of the best tools available to educators to maximise students' academic growth”. Professor John Hattie identifies it as “the teaching strategy with the greatest potential to accelerate learning”. Together, these perspectives give a strong reason for anyone in education to keep reading.

At its core, explicit teaching is a structured, systematic and effective methodology for teaching academic skills. In everyday practice, it means the teacher clearly explains new concepts, models skills step by step and guides students through practice before asking them to work independently.

You might know this as the 'I do, we do, you do' approach – teacher demonstrates first, then works alongside students, then steps back as learners apply the skill on their own. It’s also worth clarifying what explicit teaching is not – and the NSW Department of Education offers a helpful distinction here:

• It does not mean sending students off to work independently before a skill has been clearly explained and modelled.

• It is not a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores what students already know.

• It does not require scripts (which means it shouldn’t be confused with Direct instruction – although DI does incorporate explicit teaching)

• Lastly, it does not mean the teacher does all the talking while students sit passively. Nor does it remove opportunities for creative or imaginative work.

Why explicit instruction matters for reading

Now that we know what explicit instruction is, let’s apply it to reading instruction – the key skill that unlocks students’ access to the curriculum and their future learning success.

The challenge is, reading is a complex skill that requires children to make connections between the letters of written texts (graphemes) and the sounds of spoken language.

We know from research that students learn to read more effectively when phonics is taught explicitly and systematically, rather than left for students to absorb on their own – the case for both reading accuracy and spelling, confirmed by Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO).

It makes sense when you think about what's happening in a young reader's brain. Working memory can only hold so much at once. What might look like a simple process is actually a highly intricate one, made up of multiple subtasks that the brain has to handle at the same time.

Explicit teaching helps protect young brains from “overheating” by breaking reading down into small, sequenced steps. Teaching letter-sound correspondences first, then blending, then connected text gives students the best chance to absorb and retain each skill.

Plus, each step builds on the last, so students develop confidence and accuracy as they go.

In short, explicit teaching is so effective, because it's designed around how learning happens.

What does explicit instruction look like in a reading lesson?

Tuesday morning, literacy block in 1A. Let's say you're teaching the digraph /sh/. Here's how an explicitly taught lesson might flow:

1. Start with a quick review. Flash five or six grapheme cards your students have already learned. Have them call out the sounds together. This takes a couple of minutes and warms up what they already know.

2. Tell them what they're learning today. Keep it simple: "Today we're learning the sound /sh/, spelled with the letters s and h. This is how to read and spell words with /sh/."

3. Show them how it works. Write 'sh' on the board. Say the sound. Then model how to blend it in a word – for example, sh-i-p. Talk through your thinking out loud: "I can see 's' and 'h' together – that makes the sound /sh/. Now I'll blend the sounds: /sh/ – /i/ – /p/ – ship."

4. Practise it together. Segment and blend to read three or four new words as a class – shop, mash, shut. Listen carefully to how students respond. If a few are unsure, model again. If most are struggling, slow down and reteach before moving on.

5. Let them have a go. Students read a short decodable text or a few sentences containing /sh/ words. Move around the room, listen in and support where needed.

6. Check what stuck. A quick reading task does the job. Write three more sh words on the board – shin, cash, fish – and have students read them aloud. You'll see straight away who can recognise and decode the /sh/ sound and who needs more practice tomorrow.

Proven tools to support explicit teaching in your classroom

Good news is you don't have to build every reading lesson from scratch. There are classroom-ready tools designed to support explicit phonics instruction – and Fast Phonics, part of the ABC Reading Eggs suite, is one of them.

Fast Phonics is a systematic, synthetic phonics program built for beginning readers and older students with gaps in their phonics knowledge. It's structured around 20 sequenced levels (called Peaks), each targeting a specific set of letters and sounds that build on what came before – so the explicit teaching principle of chunking and sequencing is already baked in.

One of the many phonemic awareness activities in Fast Phonics.

What teachers might find particularly useful, is the resource pack that comes with each Peak: step-by-step weekly planners, teaching slide decks, flashcards, sound mats, printable decodable readers and handwriting worksheets. Designed to complement and support your in-class explicit phonics instruction, they free up hours of teachers’ time, otherwise spent on lesson planning.

Built-in assessment and reporting tools round it out, giving you a clear picture of each student's progress so you can spot gaps early and adjust your instruction accordingly.

PS: Fast Phonics is just one part of the suite. ABC Reading Eggs and ABC Reading Eggspress also bring explicit instruction into your classroom – covering everything from foundational reading skills through to comprehension and fluency for more advanced readers.