Teaching 101

5 research based best practices

Outline

1 - Objective Driven Lessons

• You should identify the learning objectives. (List them each morning.)
• You should choose an engaging activity that compliments the learning objective and will spark the interest of students.
• You should embed opportunities to assess students’ prior knowledge into the engage activity. Examples: The Do Now and Guided Practice

The Do Now

• A Do Now (also referred to as a Warm-up) is a short activity that is posted in the classroom for students to complete as soon as they enter.
• This practice provides a focused activity that typically serves as a review of previous content or triggers students to begin thinking about the new learning for the day.

Guided Practice

• Engage students in a similar task to what they will complete later in the lesson independently. The teacher leads the activity but solicits help from students at predetermined points along the way.
• Through the completion of the guided practice task, the teacher gradually releases more and more responsibility of the thinking to students, and offers less assistance from the teacher.
• Teachers should be using this time to recognize any need to re-teach portions from the introduction to new learning and to determine when/if students are ready to work independently.

2 - Check for Understanding

• You should for check for understanding and accurately diagnose student misunderstanding at key moments during a lesson.
• You should adjust lesson to ensure student understanding in response to assessments.
• You should use clear systems and routines for assessing student understanding during the lesson. Examples: Checkpoints and Exit Tickets

Checkpoints

• Checkpoints are planned, informal pauses in the lesson when the teacher assesses all students’ understanding through an oral, physical, or written response.
• Checkpoints allow the teacher to clarify any misunderstandings students may have about the objective and provide an opportunity for the teacher to gauge when adjustments need to be made in the lesson to ensure student mastery.

Exit Tickets

• Exit Ticket provides instant feedback for you to determine whether your class mastered your daily objective.
• Answers the question, "How do I know the students learned this?"

3 - Assessment (Formative vs. Summative)

Formative Assessment

Summative Assessment

4 - Differentiation

• You should engage students with lesson content in multiple ways that are appropriate to lesson objectives and responsive to their needs.
• You should provide extra support, enrichment, or variation of work in order to meet the needs of each student, when necessary.
• You should utilize flexible instructional groups and varied instructional arrangements that are appropriate to the students and to the instructional purposes of the lesson. Examples: Flexible Grouping and Tiered Assignments

Flexible Grouping

• Flexible Grouping is a short-term grouping and regrouping practice that responds to student needs in alignment with the instructional objectives.
• Flexible groups are fluid. In a given week, students may work independently, be in one group for a specific purpose, and then participate in other groups to accomplish different objectives (Kingore, 2004).
• Students can be grouped by readiness, ability, interest, or learning style, as well as for socialization or production tasks.

Tiered Assignments

• The content and objectives are the same, but the levels of tasks are varied according to the students’ readiness.
• Eg. Normal, Adventure and Epic Modes
• Pushing students is not a large problem. Catching students up is one.

5 - Classroom Climate

• You should demonstrate caring and respect for all students and create a positive, energetic, and orderly climate and culture in the classroom.
• You should communicate and reinforce expectations for positive student behavior and interactions between students, including a respect for individual, cultural, and linguistic differences. Examples: Structured Peer Conversations and Student Conferences

Structured Peer Conversations/Paired Programming

• In a structured peer conversation, the teacher leads the group through a set of prescribed steps or protocol.
• The process is guided by criteria for paired programming and includes a focused question, time limits, and a description of how feedback will be shared with others in the class.
• They increase learning and build trust by accomplishing respectful and substantive tasks as the students work together.

Student Conferences

• Include your CD in these conversations! We can help ... sometimes. :)
• Student Conferences are an opportunity for teachers to build relationships with students by addressing attitude or academic concerns, reinforcing positive traits, and examining individual goals.
• Can be in a formal setting or simply a quick five-minute informal meeting.
• Always provide some sort of feedback to the student after the meeting.

Thanks!