Worked Examples
Show a complete solution and study it together before students try their own
Use this when
What is it?
A worked example is a complete, finished solution that students study before they attempt the same kind of problem, walked through line by line with the reasoning spoken aloud. Novices who solve from scratch spend their limited working memory searching for moves, which leaves little capacity for learning them. Studying the finished path first spends that memory on the right thing.
The steps
- Prepare the example properly. Before the lesson, write the full solution, and note the decision behind each line — the "why this, why now" that experts do silently. The decisions are the content. The solution is just their trace.
- Show it complete, then walk it. Solution visible, pens down. Narrate the thinking (Think Aloud):First I ask what it's really asking… I notice both terms share a factor, so before anything else I'll…
- Check the reasoning, not the watching. Cold-call process questions at each step:Why divide before subtracting? What would go wrong if we didn't?Nodding is not understanding.
- Give a completion problem next. The same problem type, partly finished. Students complete the last step, then more of the steps. This bridge is the part most lessons skip, and it is where the technique earns its keep.
- Then a full problem in the same structure. Keep the worked example visible beside it. This is the "we" and "you" of I–We–You with the scaffolding still standing.
- Fade across the sequence, not within one lesson. Next lesson, fewer completed steps. The lesson after, no example, reasoning prompts only. The fade is scheduled, not hoped for.
What it looks like
Ms Adeyemi's 15-year-olds are meeting moles. A finished calculation is on the board. "Pens down. Watch where my eyes go first — not the numbers, the units. Grams to moles means I need the molar mass, so before touching the calculator I write the triangle…" At each line she stops: "Why did I divide there — Tunde?" "Because… it's grams per mole, so you divide by it." "Say the whole sentence." He does, nearly. She finishes the walk-through, then reveals the twin problem with the first two lines done. "Finish it." Three minutes later, half the room has it, and the completion step has shown her exactly which half.
How you’ll know it’s working
- The reasoning is spoken, not just the arithmetic. An observer can hear the decisions.
- Students study with pens down, then face a completion problem before any full problem.
- Process questions are answered by named students at each step, not waved through.
- Across the week, the scaffold visibly shrinks: same problem type, less of the path provided.
Pitfalls & fixes
- Talking over the example about something else. Attention splits and neither channel wins. One focus at a time, and silence while they study.
- Making "copy this down" the activity. Copying a solution is not studying it. The activity is answering why-questions about it, or self-explaining each line to a partner.
- Jumping from the example to the hardest problem. The completion step is the bridge. Skip it and the strugglers fall exactly where they always fell.
- Examples that are too clean. Real work has wrong turns. Once the basics land, show an example that starts down a bad path and recovers: "Watch how I notice it's not working."
Weigh it up
Why it’s worth it
- Novices learn more per minute from studying a worked path than from the same minutes struggling unaided. This is one of the most replicated findings in learning research, and it shows up fastest in exactly the multi-step content that usually causes the meltdowns.
- Working memory gets spent on understanding the moves instead of hunting for them, so the students who normally drown in step three reach independent practice still afloat.
- The completion step is precise assessment for free: within minutes you can see exactly who can finish the path and where each student falls off it.
- Independent practice runs calmer. With the path studied first there are fewer stuck hands, so you circulate to stretch students rather than rescue them.
The costs
- Your quickest students are held at the map-reading stage while the class studies. Give them the fade early — extension here means less scaffold, not more questions.
- The slow reveal gives up the energy of a "have a go" discovery opening, which some classes and some topics feed on.
- The preparation is real work: articulating your own expert decisions line by line is hard precisely because expertise made them invisible to you.
Adaptations
- Primary: the example can be built with the class ("watch me think… what must I do first?"), but the finished product still gets studied as a whole before independent attempts.
- Secondary / post-16: keep a visible example library (wall or booklet) so the fade has a safety net students consult by choice.
- Writing-heavy subjects: the worked example is a model paragraph, walked through decision by decision: why this connective, why quote here. The technique transfers whole.
- Practical subjects: the demonstration is the worked example. The completion problem is "you do the last step of the next one".
Where this comes from
The worked-example effect is a cornerstone of cognitive load theory (John Sweller and colleagues); the completion-problem bridge comes from van Merriënboer, and Rosenshine's Principles synthesise the same findings.
Sources
Related techniques
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