BROPHY: TEACHING

A Supportive classroom climate

Students are expected to manage instructional materials responsibly, participate thoughtfully in
learning activities, and support the personal, social and academic well-being of all members of
the classroom community. (p. 8)

In creating classroom displays and in developing content during lessons, the teacher connects
with and builds on the students prior knowledge and experiences, including their home
cultures. (p. 8)

Students are taught to ask questions without embarrassment, to contribute to lessons without
fear of their ideas being ridiculed, and to collaborate in pairs or small groups on many of their
learning activities. (p. 9)

Opportunity to learn
The lengths of the school day and the school year create upper limits on students opportunities
to learn. (p. 10)

Effective teachers allocate most of theavailable time to activities designed to accomplish

instructional goals. (p. 10)

Effective teachers do not need to spend much time responding to behaviour problems because
they use management techniques that elicit students co-operation and sustain their engagement
in activities. (p. 11)

Effective teachers allocate most of ths time to lessons and learning activities rather than to non-
academic pastimes that serve little or no curricular purpose. Their students spend many more
hours each year on curriculum related activities than do students of teachers who are less focused
on instructional goals. (p. 11)

Effective teachers convey a sense of the purposefulness of schooling and the importance of
getting the most out of the available time. (p.12)

Curricular Alignment
Teachers typically plan by concentrating on the content they intend to cover and the steps
involved in the activities their students will carry out, without giving much thought to the goals
or intended outcomes of the instruction. (p.13)

Students taught using such textbooks may be asked to memorize parades of disconnected facts
or to practise disconnected subskills in isolation instead of learning coherent networks of
connected content structured around powerful ideas. (p.13)
The goals are the reason for the existence of the curriculum, so that beliefs about what is needed
to accomplish them should guide each step in curriculum planning and implementation. (p.14)

Content developed with these goals in mind is likely to be retained as meaningful learning that
is internally coherent, well connected with other meaningful learning and accessible for
application. (p.14)

Establishing learning Orientations

Research indicates the value of establishing a learning orientation by beginning lessons and
activities with advance organizers or previews advance organizers orient students to what they
will be learning before the instruction begins. (p.15)

Other ways to help students learn with a sense of purpose and direction include calling attention
to the activitys goals, overviewing main ideas or major steps to be elaborated, pre-. tests that
sensitize students to main points to learn, and requisitions that stimulate their thinking about the
topic. (p. 16)

Coherent content
Research indicates that networks of connected knowledge structured around powerful ideas can
be learned with understanding and retained in forms that make them accessible for
application.(p. 17)

When making presentations, providing explanations or giving demonstrations, effective teachers

project enthusiasm for the content and organize and sequence it so as to maximize its clarity and
coherence. (p. 18)

Thoughtful Discourse
They use questions to stimulate students to process and reflect on content, recognize
relationships among and implications of its key ideas, think critically about it, and use it in
problem solving, decision making or other higher-order applications. (p. 19)

The teacher plans sequences of questions designed to develop the content systematically and
help students to construct understandings of it by relating it to their prior knowledge and
collaborating in dialogue about it. (p. 19)

Practice and Application activities

There are three main ways in which teachers help their students to learn. First, they present
information, explain concepts and model skills. Second, they ask questions and lead their
students in discussion and other forms of discourse surrounding the content. Third, they engage
students in activities or assignments that provide them with opportunities to practice or apply
what they are learning. (p. 21)

Successful practice involves polishing skills that are already established at rudimentary levels in
order to make them smoother, more efficient and more automatic, and not trying to establish
such skills through trial and error. (p. 21)
Scaffolding students task Engagement
Research on learning tasks suggests that activities and assignments should be sufficiently varied
and interesting to motivate student engagement, sufficiently new or challenging to constitute
meaningful learning experiences rather than needless repetition, and yet sufficiently easy to
allow students to achieve high rates of success if they invest reasonable time and effort. (p. 23)

Besides being well chosen, activities need to be effectively presented, monitored and followed
up if they are to have their full impact. (p. 23)

Strategy teaching
General learning and study skills as well as domain-specific skills (such as constructing
meaning from text, solving mathematical problems or reasoning scientifically) are most likely to
be learned thoroughly and become accessible for application if they are taught as strategies to be
brought to bear purposefully and implemented with metacognitive awareness and self-
regulation. (p. 25)

Many students do not develop effective learning and problem-solving strategies on their own
but can acquire them through modelling and explicit instruction from their teachers. (p. 25)

Co-operative learning
Research indicates that there is often much to be gained by arranging for students to collaborate
in pairs or small groups as they work on activities and assignments. Co-operative learning
promotes affective and social benefits. (p. 27)

Cooperative learning approaches retain the whole-class lessons but replace part of the
individual seatwork time with opportunities for students to work together in pairs or small groups
on follow-up practice and application activities. (p. 27)

Goal-oriented assessment
A well-developed curriculum includes strong and functional assessment components. (p. 29)

Effective teachers use assessment for evaluating students progress in learning and for planning
curriculum improvements, not just for generating grades. (p. 29)

Achievement Expectations
Research indicates that effective schools feature strong academic leadership that produces
consensus on goal priorities and commitment to instructional excellence, as well as positive
teacher attitudes towards students and expectations regarding their abilities to master the
curriculum. (p. 31)

Teachers should form and project expectations that are as positive as they can be while still
remaining realistic. (p. 31)
PERSONAL REFLECTION:
Although I may not incorporate all of it in my teaching, I would be focusing on the strengths that
I already have, and I would adjust to my students needs and be adaptable.