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What the Updated Math RBIS Mean for Instruction

As students head back to school for the 26-27 year, a lot of math instruction may look and feel a bit different from the past. The driver behind these changes comes from updates to the Math Research-Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS), TEA’s framework for outlining strong, evidence-based math instruction. Much of what has always grounded the RBIS hasn’t changed: they remain a set of research-based practices designed to address common misconceptions in instruction, and they’re still rooted in the science of how students learn. What has changed is the structure. TEA added an entirely new strand, RBIS 0: Key Principles from the Science of Learning, which now explicitly grounds the four instructional RBIS in research on how the brain learns. The biggest shift was combining the two RBIS on Depth and Coherence of Key Concepts into one. By synthesizing these two ideas, TEA could now highlight and respond to research that’s generating a shift within the math education community on the need for effective explicit instruction, especially for novice learners. As Big Rock Educational Services engaged in learning about the update to the Math RBIS, we were reminded of our Growth Mindset core value and how to leverage and improve our suite of resources as a LIFT Approved Provider.

One of the most significant, and most misunderstood, additions to the refined RBIS is RBIS 3: Effective Explicit Instruction for Novice Learners. In the RBIS, TEA explains explicit instruction is not lecture-style teaching, but instead is an “interactive, iterative, and dynamic” process built on repeated cycles of modeling, guided practice, and independent practice. The research TEA cites behind this shift is compelling: explicit instruction benefits all learners, and it has a particularly strong impact for students from low-income backgrounds, narrowing the achievement gap between these students and their peers. At Big Rock Educational Services, we’ve built a comprehensive set of Know-Show Charts for math Readiness TEKS from 3rd grade through Algebra I, giving teachers and leaders a clear, side-by-side picture of exactly what each standard asks students to know and do conceptually and procedurally. This allows our Leadership Coaches to bring hands-on guidance across the full range of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) districts are using and know how to plan for and internalize lessons so that modeling, guided practice, and independent practice show up with intention and in alignment with TEKS. As we engaged in learning around the math RBIS in preparation for providing turnkey training to our LIFT partners, we regularly cited and refined our suite of resources.

At first glance, it may look like RBIS 4: Effective Practice for Mathematical Independence is brand new, just like RBIS 3. In reality, TEA clarified their language around practice based on research. Originally RBIS 4 was around Productive Struggle and students engaging in “productive” problem solving and multiple “opportunities for practice, discussion, representations, and writing.” The refined RBIS 4 clarifies that student practice should occur after concepts and procedures have been explicitly taught and should include feedback from the teacher as students develop mathematical independence. In RBIS 0, TEA codifies research on strong math instruction to identify 3 stages of mathematical understanding as acquisition, fluency, and generalization/adaptation that come together to form The Instructional Hierarchy. This hierarchy allows educators to see how teacher moves in response to student indicators combined with effective practice can lead to students developing mathematical independence. One of the key elements of this RBIS is understanding retrieval practice: a learning task at a “desirable difficulty” that requires increased, effortful cognitive processing. Research explains that while this may slow immediate performance, it significantly enhances long-term retention and knowledge transfer. At Big Rock Educational Services, as we engaged in learning around RBIS 4, we collaborated as a team to refine our internalization protocols and practices to better understand and identify opportunities for retrieval practice. As we prepare for Year 2 of LIFT, we are planning that same level of refinement for our Big Rocks around DDI, student work analysis, and monitoring student progress. RBIS 4 tells us that practice should be spaced and interleaved with similar concepts, procedures, and information, and we want to ensure that all of our partners in this work feel knowledgeable about what “effective student practice” means and how to leverage PLCs and coaching to ensure it’s present in all mathematics classrooms.


Author info:
Chelsea Harned
Director, Impact Systems and Organizational Learning
Guest Contributor