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Back to Orientation

Teaching Anything More Effectively

What does it mean to teach more effectively?  Take a few minutes and jot down your ideas of how you can teach more effectively in your classroom.  List six of your own ideas below and post your responses to the bulletin board. 

"The Learning Revolution" (1999) identifies six basic tenets on how to teach effectively.  They are:

1. Establish the right "state of mind"

Every good teacher needs to create an optimum learning environment and set the right learning atmosphere.
 
2.  Create the right presentation

"Think backward" is a phrase often used by Stephen Covey in the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." Every teacher and student needs to first see the big picture. You should then teach to all of the different learning styles, differences, and types of intelligences instead of first teaching individual steps and then having the students try to figure out what they are supposed to be doing. Strategies that are used must always vary between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (movement or hands-on), and tactile (feeling).
 
3. Encourage new forms of thinking

Include hands-on activities, creative thinking, problem solving, and critical thinking skills to store information into long-term memory and then teach techniques to retrieve that information.
 
4. Design activities to involve all students

We all learn best by doing and by becoming involved.  Activities, games, discussions, and role-playing are all vital.
 
5. Apply it

To learn it, do it. Encourage students to act out what they have learned or to teach someone else what they have learned. Link new information with existing information. The more you link information to what you know the more you will learn. This is also true for GED students.
 
6. Review, evaluate, and celebrate

Praise, celebrate successes, recap, and review, review, review!

The Learning Revolution by Dr. L. Vos and Gordon Dryden, 1999

This program was developed by Dr. Lucy M. Guglielmino, Florida Atlantic University, through an Adult Education State Leadership Grant from the Florida Department of Education, Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Education.   Content Developed by Susan Pittman and Bonnie Vondracek. Web development by Dr. Debra L. Hargrove. Videography by Steve Foley, Foley Video Productions.

Disclaimer:  While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this web-based training component, it is not an official publication of the Florida Department of Education.