Professional Skills and Abilities of Effective learning.
Teachers - When students and teachers spend more time actively engaged in academic tasks, students learn more. Focusing and Engaging Students Attention a. Mandated Time - Effective teachers are able to get students' - It is the formal time scheduled for school or attention at the beginning of a lesson and to hold academic activities. their attention throughout the lesson. - The length of the school year, day, and periods determine the maximum time available for Establishing Set instructional activities. - by providing a context for the lesson and the b. Allocated Time instruction. - It is the amount of mandated time intended or a. Capture students' attention or provide them with scheduled for academic activities. a framework for the lesson. c. Academic Instruction Time b. Help students relate new material or - It is the amount of allocated time during which the information to what they have previously learned. teacher is actually conducting instructional c. Determine students' entry-level knowledge activities. prior to introducing new content. d. Academic Learning Time (ALT) * Set Induction providing advance organizers or - It is the amount of academic instruction time lesson entry. during which students are actively and successfully * Orientation Set - purpose is to engage students engaged in learning. attention in a new instructional activity. - For academic instruction time to be considered * Transition Set when the primary goal of the set "engaged," or academic learning time, given is to help students understand how the new material learners must be actively engaged in meaningful relates to what they learned previously. academic tasks at which they are mostly successful. * Evaluative Set to establish what the students already know about the topic. Maintaining Momentum - Momentum - the flow of activities and to the pace Using Variety of teaching and learning maintained in the - Educators have long known that variety increases classroom. students' motivation and learning, and researchers Making Smooth Transitions have supported this belief. - Instructional transition - points in instructional - It is the second strongest predicator of teachers interactions when contexts change. effectiveness. - Major transitions - take place between class *Instructional Activities and Materials meetings or lessons, between lessons in the same - Get the students attention by presenting novel room, and between different instructional activities situations or problems. within the same. *Interacting with Students - Minor transitions - occur within a lesson when the - Varying the ways teachers interact with students is speaker moves from one aspect of the topic to important. another, when the speaker pauses, or when the - Teachers should also vary the ways in which they speaker changes. reinforce or praise students for desirable Conducting Interactive Instruction performance or inform them about their progress. Using Questions - Effective teachers establish and maintain highly Using Instructional Time Efficiently interactive classrooms - classrooms characterized Optimizing Time by student-student and teacher-student dialogue on - Time on task is consistently related to increase Notes for Acts of Teaching: Chapter 11 content rather than simply teacher talk. question, it is often due to poor phrasing of the - to actively process information and compose an initial question. answer. How to Ask Questions Providing Clear Instruction - be sure to phrase questions clearly and concise. *Instructional clarity - teacher's ability to provide - Questions should require students to process or instruction that helps students come to a clear and think about what they are learning and to compose accurate understanding of important ideas or an answer. concepts. - 'When teaching toward lower-order objectives, The specific behaviors involve: lower-order questions make sense. (1) preparing and entering the lesson. - When your objectives include higher-order (2) introducing and emphasizing content processes or when you want to promote students' (3) elaborating on important ideas or concepts critical thinking, you must integrate higher-order, (4) monitoring students' understanding and divergent, and process questions into your lessons. remediating when students fail to' understand. *Sequence of Questioning - Respond, react, redirect, and so on Monitoring Students' Progress - Pause - carefully and continually assess students' - Student responds to question performance and progress and check for - Call on student understanding in a variety of ways. - Pause - You can monitor student understanding in - Ask a question numerous formal and informal ways. Tests, quizzes, homework, and projects are examples of formal Obtaining Good Answers monitoring. - after teachers have developed and phrased their questions, they must get students to respond to Providing Feedback and Reinforcement them. *Feedback - sometimes called knowledge of result. Following up Students Responses 1. Inform students about the quality and accuracy of - After a student has responded to your question, their performance you must respond or react to the reply. 2. Help them learn how to monitor and improve Probing their own learning. - means asking additional questions of the - Effective feedback includes: information about responding student to help expand or raise the level (l) the criteria used to evaluate performance. of the response. (2) how the students performance relates to the - It is often intended to focus attention on important standard aspects of the question that enable the student to (3) specifically how the performance can or should improve the response. be improved. Redirecting - It is another way of following up an incorrect *Principles Effective Feedback response. 1. Provide feedback as frequently as possible-every - The teacher asks another student to answer the day for every student, if possible. same question. 2. Provide feedback as soon after performance as Rephrasing possible. - simply means restating the same question in 3. Make your feedback specific rather than general. different terms. 4. Focus feedback on the quality of the student's - When students fail to respond to a teacher's performance, not on his or her intentions or Notes for Acts of Teaching: Chapter 11 motivations. 5. Design and use feedback that teaches students how to gauge their own progress and performance.
*Reinforcement - is intended to strengthen and increase the frequency of a desirable behavior or response, usually by providing some type of reward. Some Final Thoughts