New teachers tend to over-explain early on because they think it will prevent later confusion. They try to set learners up by giving them plenty of background knowledge, context and reassurance. The mistake is that learners need to process one piece of information at a time. Over-explaining leaves learners struggling to understand a whole host of ideas, but it makes the teacher feel good about what they’re teaching.
An effective tactic is to break the lesson into parts where explanation and action can happen separately. Don’t try and cover an entire lesson at the beginning. Instead, plan what learners need to do first. In a feedback session, it’s not about all the principles of feedback, motivation, tone, task focus, learner emotion, etc. Instead, it’s about showing two samples of feedback, vague and task-focused, and asking learners what changed in the second sample. You give learners the ability to make a response in the lesson.
Think about what you’d explain in two minutes, and write it down. Consider the core concept you are teaching, a single example and one checking question. Cut out any explanation of what learners won’t use in the next activity. This isn’t about teaching shallow ideas; it’s about setting up the first practice task. Deeper ideas can be introduced once learners have tackled the basic task.
You also need to start checking for understanding sooner than you would like. If you ask, “Does this make sense?” learners will give you silent nods. But a silence isn’t the same thing as a learner saying “This is clear.” Instead, use checking questions to force a learner to perform a specific task: “Which of these samples of feedback is more specific?” “What would be the next step in this process?” “What’s the best time for this lesson in the sequence?” These questions help you understand if you need to adjust your next move.
Over-explaining also messes up pacing. A standard lesson is warm-up, guided practice, independent practice and closing review. But if you spend too long on the first phase of the lesson, you push the real practice to the last couple of minutes. In this situation, the teacher has fewer data-points for understanding. You also rush the closing, the reflection notes are less useful, and it’s harder to know if learners actually learned something.
A good lesson may not sound great at first because there’s less explanation, and a lot of pauses. You might notice an improvement by shortening instructions, having a better-timed example or using a checking question that catches misconceptions. When learners start doing the thing, you don’t need to wonder if you did enough explaining.