Principles of Effective Teaching
The principles of effective teaching encompass the ability to motivate students; likewise, they incorporate the essential elements of instruction put forth by Madeline Hunter four decades ago.
Teach to an Objective
Know what you are teaching, know the expected outcomes and make certain that your expectations are explicitly clear to your students. You can’t very well learn if you have no idea what you are supposed to be studying . . . neither can they. Break learning into teachable chunks of information. Substitute the word “standard” for objective if it makes it easier for you, but know that you will have to break certain standards into pieces. The California Standards for English Language Arts – at every grade level – often list two to three objectives per standard. This can be confusing.
Correct Level of Difficulty
Diagnose where students are in relationship to what they need to learn and then teach the grade level standards in incremental steps at that level. Do not lower your standards, but rather alter the difficulty of the material. Identify sequential logical steps towards your learning objective. Determine where students are in relation to where they need to be and use that as a starting point.
Monitor and Adjust
Elicit feedback from your students and adjust your lessons and teaching according. It is essential to constantly test and check students, both overtly and covertly, in order to gauge progress towards objective mastery. Most of your students should be with you most of the time. You need to constantly observe your students and alter your teaching strategy or methods accordingly.
Motivation
Keep students engaged and focused on the lesson or task. Motivation involves feeling tone, level of concern, student interest and connection, success, and knowledge of results.
Active Participation
Engage students in what is being learned. Use overt and covert techniques to keep students involved.
Retention
Work toward the goal of student retention. Lessons need to be meaningful; teachers need to model lessons and expectations and students need appropriate time to practice what they need to know and do.
Transfer
Enable students to take what they learned and apply it in a generalized form. Students need to be able to recognize when one lesson’s subject matter or skills are needed or applicable to a new lesson or assignment.
Reinforcement
Increase learning behavior by fostering interaction between the learner and the environment. Use positive responses to motivate correct responses and applications.
