Drew Perkins talks with Brendan Lee, a primary school teacher, host of the Knowledge for Teachers Podcast, and advocate for evidence-informed pedagogy. Brendan shares his transition from an initial belief in unguided project-based learning to a more structured approach rooted in the Science of Reading and the instructional hierarchy.
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Brendan explains the instructional hierarchy—a framework that identifies where a student sits on the continuum from novice to expert. He emphasizes that when students are in the "acquisition stage" (or frustration stage), they require high levels of scaffolding and explicit instruction. Without this foundation, students often become disengaged because they lack the prerequisite skills to tackle complex tasks.
A central theme of the conversation is the critical role of fluency. Brendan argues that a lack of fluency in "tool skills"—like basic math facts or decoding—acts like "climbing a mountain with a bag of bricks on your back". By implementing just five minutes of daily, timed fluency practice, teachers can free up cognitive space for students to engage in higher-order thinking and discovery.
Finally, Drew and Brendan discuss the "curse of knowledge" and why many inquiry-based approaches fail when they lack intentional design. They explore how "engineering the aha moment" requires a deep understanding of what students already know and the strategic fading of support as accuracy increases.
