What Makes a Great Teacher?

The following is a video from an ABC News news report “What Makes Great Teachers” aired February 26, 2010. If the video does not show up below you can view it on YouTube by clicking this link.

Teacher-Competence Areas & Instructional Decision Making

This is one of my favorite diagrams. I think it embodies the true essence of how the ‘Art of Teaching’ occurs. If you have a significant weakness in one of the five top areas, as an effective teacher you will strive to improve. All five areas cannot be effective if you don’t make good instructional choices, such as delivering a lesson so several learning styles can connect with the material. Once the lesson is delivered, you enter the ‘Feedback & Reflection’ loop – which quite frankly a good teacher never leaves. Take some time to consider this flowchart and it’s critical that you really understand why the areas of competence are important.

Attitudes FlowChart

Emotion Reaction

Click here to review a comparison chart of Emotion → Action → Motion → Emotion. It helps identify emotions and how we as teachers can react more effectively.

Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement

The following is an article “Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement” from April 26, 2012 later updated on February 24, 2015. That discusses student engagement from the students point of view. It encompasses the responses I received from all 220 of the teachers 8th grade students. You can view it online by clicking this link.

The Homework Experience

The following is a study “The Homework Experience: Perceptions of Low-Income Youth by Janine Bempechat, Jin Li, Shelby M. Neier, Caroline A. Gillis, and Susan D. Holloway. In this study they took a social cognitive view of achievement beliefs as a theoretical framework, they conducted a qualitative study to examine perceptions of homework among a diverse group of low socioeconomic status (SES) ninth grad-ers who attended low-quality schools. If the study does not show up below you can view it online by clicking this link.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs

The following is an overview sheet pf “Bloom’s Taxonomy Action Verbs.” It is a great resource to help you incorporate Bloom’s ideas into your lesson planning and classroom questioning techniques. If the chart does not show up below you can view it online by clicking this link.  Here is an excellent handout on Bloom’s Taxonomy.