👋 Hello {{first name | reader!}}
In this edition of ⚗️ DistillED, we’re focusing on explaining with clarity and laser-sharp precision.
In this edition
📊 Do Now: Quick Poll!
Which part of explanation do you find hardest to get right?
What are Precise Explanations?
Explanation is the deliberate act of making new ideas clear by shaping how information enters students’ working memory. It involves making careful decisions about what to say, in what order, with what support — and just as importantly, what to leave out.
Precise explanation is an art and can be delivered via a range of strategies, including worked examples, modelling, diagrams with paired visuals, analogies and stories, and carefully sequenced questions that guide thinking step by step. As author and educator Zach Groshell explains, effective explanation sits at the heart of great teaching:
“A core part of teaching involves conveying information, getting your point across, and explaining things in a way that works for all.”
Explanation aligns with the work of Kirschner, Clark and Sweller (2006) who argue that novice learners benefit most when complex ideas are clearly explained, modelled, and guided, rather than left to unguided discovery. In other words, explicit teaching through explanation is essential early on, before support can be gradually faded as expertise develops.
In his book The Art of Explanation (2023), Ros Atkins outlines ten core principles that underpin clear and effective communication. These insights offer a practical framework for crafting clear explanations. You’ll find a handy planning resource at the end of this post to help you think about this in your own classroom context.
The Anatomy of Explanation according to Ros Atkins
Essentially, effective explanation is about:
Sequencing Information: Presenting new ideas in small, logically ordered steps so students can build schema without overloading working memory.
Directing Attention: Guiding students to the most important features of the content through clear language, emphasis, and purposeful visuals.
Reducing Cognitive Load: Stripping away unnecessary detail and distractions so mental effort is spent on learning, not coping with complexity.
Building Schemas Helping students organise new knowledge into coherent schemas that can be stored in long-term memory and used flexibly later.
So, here’s a quick list of what precise explanations ARE and ARE NOT:
👎 Precise Explanations ARE NOT:
Information Dumping → Delivering everything you know in one go, assuming clarity comes from completeness rather than careful selection.
Performance or Charisma → Confusing enthusiasm, storytelling, or fluency with understanding (“It made sense when I said it.”).
Improvised Thinking Aloud → Working things out in real time without structure, leaving students to track half-formed ideas and cognitive detours.
A Substitute for Checking Understanding → Assuming silence or nods means comprehension rather than pausing to check what students can do.
👍 Precise Explanations ARE:
Deliberately Designed → Planned and rehearsed in advance with clear decisions about what to say, in what order, and what to leave out.
Cognitively Efficient → Structured to respect working-memory limits by reducing extraneous load and focusing effort on the core idea.
Tightly Sequenced → Broken into small, logical steps where each part prepares students for the next.
Bridges to Prior Knowledge → Explicitly helping students connect new information to what they already know so understanding can be stored.
Why do Precise Explanations Matter?
Explanation matters because learning is constrained by the architecture of the human mind. Research from John Sweller shows that working memory is severely limited in capacity and easily overloaded. Cognitive Load Theory distinguishes between:
Intrinsic Load: The inherent complexity of the content being learned
Extraneous Load: Unnecessary mental effort caused by poor instruction
When explanations are delivered too quickly, contain too much information, or involve competing inputs, students’ working memory becomes overloaded and learning breaks down. This overload occurs when intrinsic load is high and extraneous load is added through excessive language, unnecessary steps, split attention across multiple sources, or a failure to capture transient information before it disappears. As Andy Tharby notes:
“Teacher explanations… have two important roles to play. First, they should be designed to ensure that they do not overload working memory. Second, they should help students to transfer new facts, concepts and procedures from working memory to long-term memory.”
Well-designed explanations manage intrinsic load through careful sequencing and minimise extraneous load through clarity and focus. They reduce noise and increase signal. They help students transfer knowledge into long-term memory, where it can be stored, organised into webs of knowledge (schema).
So if learning is constrained by working memory, the challenge for teachers becomes clear: how do we explain in ways that work with the mind, not against it?
How Do I Implement Precise Explanations?
The best explanations are sequenced, planned, and often rehearsed before the lesson. This ensures that ideas are introduced in a logical order, unnecessary detail is stripped away, and cognitive load is carefully managed.
The ⚗️DistillED framework below outlines six key levers teachers can pull before, during, and after explanation. These aren’t rigid steps to follow in order, but instructional design decisions that work together. Check it out:
Lever | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
1. Teach Bit by Bit
| Precise explanation begins by identifying the core idea and dividing it into the fewest meaningful components, teaching each part before assembling the whole. | “Let’s deal with mass first. Ignore the formula for now — I just want you to understand what mass means.” |
2. Funnel Attention
| Explanation is weakened when attention is split; it is strengthened when language, visuals, gesture, and pacing point students to the same place at the same time. | “Eyes here — this arrow shows the force acting downwards. Watch what happens next.” |
3. Reduce Redundancy
| Redundancy occurs when explanations include unnecessary detail, decorative visuals, or spoken text that simply repeats what students are already reading. | “You don’t need to write this — listen. I’ll summarise it in one sentence.” |
4. Model and Use Worked Examples
| Worked examples allow novices to study fully formed solutions, reducing cognitive load and supporting schema formation. | “First, I divide the mass by the volume — not because it’s a rule, but because density tells us how packed the matter is.” |
5. Combine Words and Visuals (Carefully)
| Visuals should simplify thinking, not decorate slides or compete for attention. | “I’m going to draw this as we go — don’t copy yet. Just track how these parts connect.” |
6. Repeat, Capture, Then Fade
| Captured explanations act as thinking tools before being withdrawn. | “This checklist is here to help for now. Next lesson, I’ll take it away and you’ll explain the steps from memory.” |
Beyond the six core levers, there are several additional strategies that can significantly strengthen explanations when used deliberately.
Storytelling: As Dan Willingham reminds us, “The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories.” Framing explanations as narratives — with context, tension, and resolution — helps students organise information meaningfully and retain it for longer.
Metaphors and Analogies: Well-chosen analogies anchor new ideas to familiar knowledge, making abstract or complex concepts easier to grasp. When used carefully, they reduce cognitive effort by providing a mental shortcut — though they must be checked for accuracy and limits.
Economy of Language: Clear explanation often involves saying less, not more. Precise word choice, short sentences, and deliberate pauses help keep working memory focused on meaning rather than processing unnecessary language.
Until next week!
— Jamie
If you want more:
👉 Explore the Explanation and Clarity CPD resources in the DistillED+ Hub
👉 Read the DistillED edition on Worked Examples
👉 Explore the Foundations of Explicit Instruction one-page guides
👉 Get the DistillED Playbooks for practical, evidence-informed classroom practices
📥 Free Planning Resource
Free Effective Explanation Planner
Download this resource based on Ros Atkins’ book The Art of Explanation— a practical tool to help you plan, rehearse, and refine explanations before the lesson, so you can say less, sequence better, and reduce cognitive load for students.
⚗️DistillED+ Members Content
This week, ⚗️DistillED+ members get access to an Explaining with Precision CPD PowerPoint, Strategy Checklist, and One-Page Guide — breaking down how to plan, sequence, and rehearse explanations, reduce cognitive load, and capture key ideas so students can follow, remember, and apply new learning with confidence.
