Becoming an Effective Teacher
What does effective teaching
mean?
Effective Teaching
• Effective teaching – teaching that maximizes
learning for all students
▫ It’s the essence of being a professional
• Sounds simple – IT IS NOT
• Requires:
▫ Hard work
▫ Careful planning
▫ Sophisticated skills
• How would you describe your “best” class –
remember – best is not favorite –
Student Motivation and Effective
Teaching
• Motivation – the energizing force behind all
forms of learning
▫ Extrinsic motivation – receive an incentive
▫ Intrinsic motivation – self motivated
▫ Powerful influence – student achievement
• Both types can exist at the same time
Motivated Students
• Study & learn more
• Participate more in classroom learning activities
• Have more positive attitudes toward school &
work harder
• Persist on difficult tasks and cause fewer
management problems
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Motivation: Increasing Students’
Interest
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You can do a great deal as a teacher
Quickly learn names
Get to know your students
Create learning experiences that are challenging
Can reward effort and grade fairly
Attracting & Focusing Students’ Attention
Personalizing Content through Real World
Application
• Involving Students – the extent to which
students are actively participating in a learning
activity (questioning & group work)
Planning for Effective Teaching
• Planning – Important
▫ It makes us more effective as teachers
 Effective teaching doesn’t just happen
▫ Good planning help relieve the anxiety that
inevitably comes with our initial teaching efforts
 You will still be nervous, but planning does help ease
your nerves
Planning for Effective Teaching
• Good teaching begins with planning
 Decisions, decisions, decisions
▫ Select topics
 What is important
▫ Standards
▫ Specify Learning Objectives (Targets)
 What you want students to know or be able to do
 Bloom’s Taxonomy
Planning for Effective Teaching
• Prepare and Organize Learning Activities
▫ Creating/finding high quality examples or problems to illustrate
the topic
▫ Sequencing the examples to be the most meaningful to students
 High quality examples – representations of content that ideally
have all the information in them that students need to learn a topic
• Create Assessments
▫ Assessments – process we use to gather information and make
decision about students’ learning
• Effective assessments answers 2 questions:
▫ 1. How will I know if my students have mastered my learning
objective?
▫ 2. How can I use assessment to increase my students’ learning?
Planning for Effective Teaching
• Ensure Instructional Alignment
▫ The match between learning objectives, learning
activities and assessments
▫ Essential component
• Planning in a Standard-Based Environment
▫ Standards – statements that describe what
student should know or be able to do at the end
▫ Essentially statements of learning objectives –
written with varying degrees of specificity