Rosenshine’s Principles: Evidence-Based Teaching
Why revisit Rosenshine now?
In 2012 the late American educational psychologist Barak Rosenshine distilled decades of cognitive-science and classroom research into Ten Principles of Instruction. A decade on, those principles continue to crop up in Ofsted reports, subject-specific research reviews and professional-development programmes across the UK.
Whether you are:
- writing the next half-term’s lessons on Lessondeck.ai,
- refreshing your department handbook, or
- preparing for an Ofsted ‘deep dive’,
re-engaging with Rosenshine offers a low-cost, high-impact way to sharpen practice and boost pupil outcomes.
The Ten Principles at a Glance
| # | Principle | One-line summary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daily review | Begin each lesson with 5–8 minutes of retrieval practice. |
| 2 | Present new material in small steps | Avoid overloading working memory; check for understanding between steps. |
| 3 | Ask lots of questions | Use cold-calling, probing and follow-ups to make thinking visible. |
| 4 | Provide models | Demonstrate worked examples, success criteria and thought processes. |
| 5 | Guide pupil practice | Scaffold, circulate and give feedback while success is still achievable. |
| 6 | Check for understanding | Don’t wait until the test—use hinge questions and mini-whiteboards. |
| 7 | Obtain high success rates | Aim for ~80 % correct during guided practice to build confidence and accuracy. |
| 8 | Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks | Sentence stems, graphic organisers, partially worked examples. |
| 9 | Require and monitor independent practice | Gradually withdraw support; look for fluency and automaticity. |
| 10 | Engage pupils in weekly and monthly review | Spaced retrieval, cumulative questions, interleaving and low-stakes quizzes. |
How Rosenshine aligns with the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (EIF)
-
Quality of Education
• The EIF (updated September 2023) emphasises the ‘three Is’ – Intent, Implementation, Impact.
• Rosenshine’s principles sit squarely in Implementation: they are evidence-based, classroom-level routines that show inspectors exactly how curriculum intent is enacted.
-
Curriculum Ambition & Sequencing
• Principles 2, 4 and 8 support clear, logical sequencing and the explicit teaching of complex ideas.
• Ofsted subject reports (e.g. science, mathematics) repeatedly praise departments where modelling and scaffolding are commonplace.
-
Behaviour & Attitudes
• Principles 1, 3 and 7 foster predictable lesson structures and a culture of high expectations—features noted in positive Ofsted judgements.
For more detail see Ofsted’s EIF handbook (2023): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-inspection-framework
Embedding the Principles with Lesson Deck
Lesson Deck’s lesson-planning templates already mirror many of Rosenshine’s recommendations. Try the following workflow:
- Template selection Choose ‘Explain-Practise-Review’ for a built-in Daily Review and Exit Ticket.
- Chunking content Use the ‘Micro-Step’ feature to split new material into 5-minute instructional blocks.
- Question generator Auto-populate cold-call questions aligned to Bloom’s cognitive levels.
- Scaffold bank Drag-and-drop sentence stems, worked examples or graphic organisers.
- Retrieval scheduler Activate ‘Spaced Review’ to auto-insert weekly and monthly retrieval prompts.
Classroom snapshots
- Year 8 History – Start with a ‘Last Lesson, Last Week, Last Term’ Do-Now on the causes of the English Civil War (Principles 1 & 10).
- KS4 Mathematics – Model factorising a quadratic on the visualiser, verbalising each step (Principle 4), then set paired whiteboard practice with instant feedback (Principles 5 & 6).
- Year 5 English – Provide a paragraph scaffold for persuasive writing, gradually removing sentence starters across the unit (Principle 8 → 9).
- A-level Biology – Interleave retrieval questions on cell structure every Friday to combat forgetting (Principle 10).
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
- ‘Rosenshine Lite’ – Skipping the rationale. Read the original paper to appreciate the cognitive-science foundations.
- Inflexible scripts – The principles are guides, not shackles. Adapt frequency and duration to phase and subject.
- Over-scaffolding – Remove supports on a clear timeline or risk learned helplessness.
- Shallow questioning – Vary question types; probe elaboration, justification and application.
Further reading
• Ofsted (2023). Education Inspection Framework Handbook.
• Sherrington, T. (2019). Rosenshine’s Principles in Action.
Final thoughts
Rosenshine’s principles are neither fad nor straitjacket. They are a distillation of what great teachers have long done, now validated by cognitive science and recognised by Ofsted. By weaving these routines into your planning—manual or via Lesson Deck —you provide pupils with the structured, scaffolded and knowledge-rich education the EIF demands and every learner deserves.
Happy planning 😊