A Good Explanation Uses Two Examples and a Non-example

I remember standing at the front of a Year 9 classroom on a rainy Tuesday in November, clutching a beautifully designed PowerPoint that promised to revolutionise my department. I had spent two hours crafting these “perfect” instructional scaffolds, only to watch the glazed eyes of thirty teenagers tell me exactly what I needed to know: it was all useless. We are constantly bombarded with academic jargon about how explanation quality affects learning, as if the secret lies in some complex, multi-layered pedagogical framework found only in a university lecture hall. But let’s be honest—if your explanation requires a PhD to deliver and doesn’t account for the kid in the back who hasn’t eaten breakfast, it’s not a teaching strategy; it’s just noise.

I’m not here to give you another theoretical lecture or a list of expensive CPD modules that won’t survive contact with a restless classroom. Instead, I want to talk about what actually happens when you strip away the fluff. I’ll be sharing the blunt, practical reality of how you can refine your delivery so it actually sticks, even when you’re exhausted and the marking is piling up. We’re going to look at how to make your words count in the room you are actually in, not the one the textbooks pretend exists.

Why Cognitive Load Theory in Teaching Fails During Chaos

We’ve all seen the polished diagrams in the training manuals. They present cognitive load theory in teaching as this elegant, mathematical equation: if you just strip away the “extraneous” noise, the information flows perfectly into the student’s working memory. It looks lovely on a PowerPoint slide in a quiet staffroom. But those diagrams assume a vacuum. They don’t account for the kid in the back row who has decided today is the day to test the limits of a chair, or the sudden, sharp crack of a window being left open on a rainy Tuesday.

In the real world, “noise” isn’t just a poorly designed worksheet; it’s the sheer, unpredictable friction of thirty humans sharing a room. When you’re trying to facilitate scaffolding complex concepts, you can’t just rely on a perfectly sequenced slide deck. If the room is loud or the energy is low, your carefully constructed instructional design collapses. You realize very quickly that true clarity isn’t about the perfection of your plan, but about how much of that plan can actually survive the sudden, chaotic interruption of a classroom that refuses to behave like a textbook.

Scaffolding Complex Concepts When You Have Five Minutes

Look, we’ve all been there. You’ve spent forty minutes prepping a brilliant, tiered lesson, only to realise ten minutes in that half the class hasn’t even grasped the basic vocabulary, let alone the concept. You can’t go back and re-teach the whole unit, and you certainly don’t have the luxury of a thirty-minute seminar. You have five minutes before the bell, or before the person in the back row starts a conversation that will derail the entire period.

In those moments, forget the elaborate diagrams or the complex worksheets. Real scaffolding complex concepts in a crisis is about stripping everything back to the absolute essentials. It’s about finding one single, sturdy anchor—a single analogy or a quick visual comparison—that allows them to build a basic mental model of the idea. If you try to layer on too much nuance when the energy in the room is flagging, you aren’t helping; you’re just adding noise. You need to provide just enough support to bridge the gap between what they know and what they’re struggling with, without drowning them in a sea of extra instructions they won’t actually process.

Five ways to explain things without losing your mind (or the class)

• Stop the monologue. If you’ve been talking for more than five minutes without checking if they’ve actually processed the first sentence, you aren’t teaching; you’re just performing. Break it up. Give them ten seconds to whisper a summary to a neighbour before you move onto the next bit.
• Kill the jargon when the room is loud. We love our pedagogical terms, but if you’re using complex vocabulary while trying to manage a disruption in the back row, you’ve lost them. Use plain English first to build the concept, then layer the “fancy” words on once the cognitive load isn’t already maxed out.
• Visuals aren’t just for the “tech-savvy” teachers. If you can’t draw a crude, messy diagram on a whiteboard that explains the relationship between two ideas, your explanation is probably too wordy. A bad drawing is often more effective than a perfect PowerPoint slide that no one is actually looking at.
• Use the “Check for Understanding” as a survival tool, not an assessment. Don’t ask “Does everyone understand?” because they’ll all nod to avoid looking stupid. Ask a specific, low-stakes question that forces them to apply the very thing you just said. If they can’t answer, stop. Don’t keep marching through the lesson plan.
• Plan your “pivot points.” Before the lesson starts, identify the one part of the concept where they are most likely to trip up. Have a secondary, simpler way to explain it ready in your back pocket. It’s much better to have a fallback than to watch twenty blank stares turn into twenty minutes of behaviour issues.

What actually sticks when the lesson goes sideways

Stop chasing the “perfect” explanation script; if your core concept can’t be explained in three clear sentences while you’re simultaneously managing a disruption in the back row, it’s too complicated for the lesson you’re actually teaching.

Prioritise clarity over complexity—it is better to have them deeply understand one foundational mechanism than to have them vaguely nod along to a sophisticated lecture they’ll forget by lunch.

Use your checks for understanding as a survival tool, not a formal assessment; if you aren’t spotting the confusion in the first ten minutes, you’re just performing a monologue to a room of blank stares.

The gap between theory and the classroom

“You can have a PhD in cognitive science, but if your explanation can’t be heard over a radiator that’s clanking and a Year 9 boy who’s decided today is the day to test the structural integrity of his chair, it’s not an explanation—it’s just noise. Real clarity isn’t about the complexity of your slides; it’s about whether your core idea can survive the thirty seconds of chaos between you finishing a sentence and the kids actually picking up a pen.”

Ellery Mwangi-Selkirk

The Reality of the Room

At the end of the day, we have to stop pretending that a perfect, scripted explanation is the silver bullet. We’ve looked at why the heavy theory of cognitive load often falls apart when a Year 9 class decides to collectively lose interest, and why your scaffolding needs to be something you can deploy in a heartbeat, not a thirty-minute prep task. The truth is, high-quality explanation isn’t about being a walking textbook; it’s about filtering the noise so that the core concept actually lands. It’s about knowing when to strip back the jargon and when to lean into the chaos to make a point stick. If your explanation can’t survive a wet Wednesday afternoon, it’s just more theory cluttering up a desk that’s already too full.

I know how exhausting it is to feel like you’re constantly failing an invisible standard of “perfect teaching.” But please, remember that the most important part of an explanation isn’t the slide deck or the pedagogical framework you read about in a seminar—it’s the connection you make with the person sitting in the third row. You don’t need to be a master orator; you just need to be present and clear. Teaching is a messy, imperfect business, but when you find that one way of phrasing a concept that makes a student’s eyes actually light up, you’ll know you’ve done the real work. Keep showing up for them.

About Ellery Mwangi-Selkirk

Most educational advice is written for a classroom that does not exist — twenty motivated pupils, unlimited preparation time, no behaviour to manage. I write for the room you are actually in. What retrieval practice looks like when marking is already three weeks behind, why the seating plan matters more than the starter activity, and which of the last decade's initiatives left anything behind. Nineteen years taught me that the good ideas survive contact with a wet Wednesday and the rest do not.