Focused Teaching: Better Learning

By Keith Roscoe

Focused Teaching: Better Learning will show you how to plan lessons that have activities, assessments, teaching strategies aligned with curriculum standards. For new and experienced teachers alike, the book combines tested information from the research literature with information from the author's own research and teaching experiences, and incorporates feedback and ideas from professors and beginning and experienced teachers who used earlier editions of the book.
Why this particular book? How is it different from other books on teaching methods? Here are some of the features of Focused Teaching: Better Learning.
•It's a straightforward and up-to-date guide to planning and teaching lessons across the curriculum, at all levels of education (K-12 and post-secondary).
•It devotes detailed attention to topics critical for success in the classroom, but often underemphasized in similar books, with substantive chapters on classroom management, assessment, and lesson planning.
•It limits theory to a need-to-know basis, and provides the practical suggestions, clear explanations, and detailed examples that teachers need.
•It takes a holistic integrated view of the teacher's interconnected classroom functions of planning, assessment, instruction, and classroom management.
•It's a user-friendly resource with appropriate readability, a Glossary, a clear organization, easy navigation, and an accompanying website with downloads and an author blog.
Focused Teaching: Better Learning is a reasonably priced, user-friendly book, tailored to educators’ busy lives. It will offer you fresh insights on how to focus teaching and learning by applying a few well-founded principles and "rules of thumb" to a wide range of practical strategies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keith Roscoe
• Release date: Dec 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463100684

Keith Roscoe

Keith Roscoe recently retired after twenty years as a teacher educator and researcher at the Faculty of Education, University of Lethbridge, one of Canada's most respected teacher education programs. From teaching in private boarding schools and state schools in England and Canada, to teaching adult education in Canada's far north and teacher education in Montana and Alberta, Keith has had a wide range of experiences as an educator, teaching sciences at K-12 and college level, as well as mathematics, music, outdoor education, phys ed, drama, art, English and social studies. His wide-ranging research and professional development projects have involved curriculum, planning, assessment, teaching methods and classroom management at various levels of education. For over twenty years Keith also helped shape the internationally respected Alberta K-12 science curriculum as a member of provincial government committees. He now enjoys the lifestyle on Canada's West Coast as a full-time publisher and non-fiction writer.

Book preview

FOCUSED TEACHING: BETTER LEARNING

First Steps Towards Effective Lesson Design, Assessment,

Instruction, and Classroom Management

Keith Roscoe

Published by Metropole Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 by Keith Roscoe

Smashwords Edition Licence Note

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Thanks to my wonderful wife and children for their love and support.

Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of over 40 years of working with students and teachers in a variety of educational settings in England, Wales, USA, and Canada. Many thanks to all those students over the years in private schools, state schools, colleges, and universities who showed me how to teach (not to mention, how not to teach). They went along with my sometimes outlandish methods, and put up with my quirky sense of humor. I am very thankful to all the teachers and administrators I have worked with over the years who helped and supported me along the way.

In addition, I have immense gratitude for the opportunity to collaborate with countless school teachers over the years. We worked together supervising student teachers, delivering professional development workshops and conferences, conducting classroom research, and having wonderful conversations about teaching, learning and life. Particular thanks to teacher partners and co-authors Kim Orr, Ali Derksen and Kathy Curtis for your recent work with me. The shared knowledge and wisdom of effective teachers is what anchors this book.

I also give thanks to the staff of the Alberta Assessment Consortium (Robert Hogg, Sherry Bennett) and the dedicated teachers of the Alberta Science Council and Environmental Education Council for the chance to build the knowledge base that made this book possible. As well, I acknowledge the opportunity to work with and learn from the wonderful administration (Jane O'Dea, Kris Magnusson, Craig Loewen), staff (Nola Aitken, Danny Balderson, Richard Butt, Richelle Marynowski, Rick Mrazek, and Marlo Steed among others) and students at the Faculty of Education, University of Lethbridge.

Moreover, I very much appreciate the contribution of First Choice Books. Patrick O'Connor, Wendy Baron, Jenny Engwer, and Sol Kennedy, who helped me to prepare and publish this ebook edition and earlier print versions of the book. Finally, big thanks to my beta readers for their time and valuable feedback: Merrianne Holm, Dave Lightwood, John Sarsfield, Keith Griffioen, Martha McAlister, and Tia Giesbrecht.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Beginning Teacher Blues

1.2 Why This Book?

1.3 How This Book Can Help

1.4 Some Key Ideas

1.5 Overview of the Book

Chapter 2 Learning

2.1 What is Learning?

2.2 Learning Processes

2.3 The Emotional Dimension

2.4 The Content of Learning

2.5 Individual Factors in Learning

2.6 External Factors in Learning

Chapter 3 Curriculum and Curriculum Outcomes

3.1 Curriculum Basics

3.2 What are Learning Objectives?

3.3 Writing Learning Objectives

3.4 Mistakes to Avoid: Writing Learning Objectives

3.5 Translating Learning Outcomes Into Learning Objectives

3.6 Bloom's Taxonomy and Translating Outcomes

Chapter 4 Lesson Planning

4.1 Why Plan?

4.2 Understanding By Design

4.3 The Planning Process

4.4 Levels of Planning

4.5 Lesson Plan Components

4.6 Lesson Structure

4.7 Lesson Plan Format

4.8 Lesson Planning and Differentiating Instruction

Chapter 5 Assessment

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Formative Assessment Strategies

5.3 Use a Variety of Assessment Tasks

5.4 Integrating Formative Assessment Into Lesson Plans

5.5 Classroom Technology for Formative Assessment

Chapter 6 Classroom Management

6.1 Classroom Management for Today's Classrooms

6.2 Components of Classroom Management

6.3 Preventive and Reactive Classroom Management

6.4 Effective Transition Procedures

6.5 Intervention: Reactive Classroom Management

6.6 Planning for Classroom Management

6.7 Classroom Management: A Career-Long Challenge

Chapter 7 Teaching Strategies Overview

7.1 The Teacher's Toolbox

7.2 Whole Class Strategies

7.3 Small Group Strategies

7.4 Individual Level Strategies

7.5 Final Thoughts

Chapter 8 Questioning

8.1 Importance and Purposes of Questioning

8.2 Question Levels

8.3 Questioning Strategies

8.4 Questioning and Class Discussion

Chapter 9 Direct Instruction

9.1 Explaining: Clear, Concrete, Sequential Instruction

9.2 Representing Concepts

9.3 Active Learning in Direct Instruction

9.4 Direct Instruction and Note-Taking

Chapter 10 Small Group Instruction

10.1 Planning for Small Group Instruction

10.2 Example Small Group Strategies

10.3 Small Groups for Differentiated Instruction

Chapter 11 Putting It All Together

11.1 Another Story

11.2 Looking Back

11.3 Hang in There!

11.4 What's Next?

The Book Website

List of Recommended Books

Glossary

References

About the Author

List of Figures

FIGURE 1.1 Interconnected teaching functions

FIGURE 2.1 General framework for learning

FIGURE 3.1 Translating curriculum documents into learning experiences

FIGURE 4.1 Backwards design process in lesson planning

FIGURE 4.2 Lesson plan template

FIGURE 5.1 Lesson plan format - matching assessments with curriculum outcomes

FIGURE 5.2 Lesson plan format - assessment during introduction

FIGURE 5.3 Lesson plan format - assessment during body of lesson

FIGURE 5.4 Lesson plan format - assessment during closure

FIGURE 5.5 Oral assessment task - multiple choice response

FIGURE 5.6 Oral assessment task - true-false response

FIGURE 5.7 Written assessment task - middle school science

FIGURE 5.8 Written assessment task - high school biology

FIGURE 5.9 Performance task slide - middle school science skit

FIGURE 5.10 Performance task slide - middle school science, model-making

FIGURE 7.1 The teacher's toolbox analogy

FIGURE 7.2 The teacher's toolbox - whole class strategies

FIGURE 7.3 Example sequence of teaching strategies for demonstration

FIGURE 7.4 Example sequence of strategies with read-aloud strategy

FIGURE 7.5 Example sequence of strategies with video clip

FIGURE 7.6 The teacher's toolbox - small group strategies

FIGURE 7.7 The teacher's toolbox - individual level strategies

FIGURE 7.8 The Rule of Three for teaching strategies - focus on learning

FIGURE 7.9 Applying the Rule of Three - example #1

FIGURE 7.10 Applying the Rule of Three - example #2

FIGURE 10.1 Directions for a middle school science jigsaw activity

FIGURE 10.2 Directions for small group discussion in middle school science

FIGURE 11.1 The components of any educational situation

Preface

Focused Teaching: Better Learning arose from the author’s twenty plus years of teaching introductory curriculum and instruction courses to student teachers at three different North American universities. I could not find an existing book that clearly and concisely provided beginning teachers with the information and guidance they needed to plan and deliver successful lessons in a variety of situations. The available textbooks were too expensive and contained too much theory and extraneous material. They did not have the practical suggestions, clear explanations, and detailed exemplars that novices require. So I decided to write a book myself that more closely matched those needs.

The book is not just for beginners, though. Experienced teachers will also benefit from the book. It is suitable for professional learning aimed at improving your teaching, adapting your instruction to new ages, grades, subjects, or schools, or just trying out new strategies to keep your practice fresh and varied. I have combined tested information from the research literature with ideas from my own research and teaching experiences, and incorporated feedback and ideas from professors and beginning and experienced teachers who have used the book.

This edition of Focused Teaching: Better Learning broadens the scope of earlier versions of the book to support the professional learning of teachers in colleges, universities, and the workplace. My experiences working with faculty and graduate students at universities and with instructors in community colleges showed me that a practical, up-to-date book on teaching basics would be helpful to a range of adult educators. Although the book is mainly aimed at North American readers, there has been an effort to make the book generic enough to benefit an international audience of educators.

What can the reader hope to learn from reading this book? It is intended to help teachers design successful learning experiences for their students, every day. Focused Teaching: Better Learning will show you how to plan lessons with assessments, learning activities, instructional strategies and classroom management aimed directly at chosen curriculum outcomes. But it does not deliver a formula for how to teach, or a mere grab bag, or list of strategies. Instead, it presents an approach to designing learning experiences built around both educational research and the experience of seasoned effective teachers.

Focused Teaching: Better Learning is a reasonably priced, user-friendly book, tailored to educators’ busy lives. It limits theory to a need-to-know basis, and concentrates on detailed examples and practical suggestions. The book devotes detailed attention to topics that are critical for success in the classroom, but are often underemphasized in similar books, with substantive chapters on classroom management, assessment, and planning. It offers fresh insights on how to focus teaching and learning by applying a few well-founded principles and rules of thumb to a wide range of practical strategies. This book should not only help you do your job better, but also improve the quality of learning and classroom life for your students.

Keith Roscoe

2018

Chapter 1 Introduction

Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.

―Haim G. Ginott

1.1 Beginning Teacher Blues

Erica broke down in tears as we talked about the biology class I had just observed. It was her second week of student teaching at the rural high school. She'd stayed up late preparing an engaging hands-on lesson for her grade 10s. Her meticulous lesson plan was ready, as were the copies of her excellent student handout. All the materials for the experiment were organized and the necessary information about the activity and its assessment was neatly written on the whiteboard. It should have been a great lesson, judging by all the effort and thought that went into it.

But it didn't turn out that way. The students came in, sat on their desks or lounged at the sides the room and continued chatting after the bell rang. After several tries, Erica finally got the attention of most of the students and started her lesson introduction. As Erica tried to introduce the day's lesson, a few private conversations carried on, and various students blurted out comments. The random comments and shouting out of answers increased as the lesson proceeded, especially when Erica asked questions to check students' understanding. At intervals she pleaded with students to stop calling out answers. Somehow, after a while she got the class organized into groups and started on the activity, but the students got noisier and more off-task as the lesson proceeded.

Eventually the bell rang and the students quickly streamed out, leaving the classroom a mess. Erica was understandably very frustrated and disappointed with the way her lesson turned out. She had a good grasp of curriculum and lesson planning. But, like most beginners, she hadn't paid enough attention to classroom management, and still had naive non-professional views on the subject. Without realizing it, Erica had failed to take charge of the classroom, develop positive relationships with students, establish basic behavioral expectations, or reinforce everyday procedures. She was under the impression that the regular teacher's authority, expectations and routines would carry over into her classes.

Like many other novices, Erica thought that if the lesson was interesting enough, and she was nice enough, she wouldn't need to bother with classroom management, and students soon would be eating out of her hand. I convinced her that managing her class in a professional manner did not make her a mean teacher. But it would allow her to teach the way she wished. So we worked together planning how she would take charge of the classroom, establish a few basic rules and essential procedures, and spend some time building relationships. When I returned the next week, one of the students in Erica's biology class stopped me in the hallway. What did you do to Miss Johnson? he asked. Apparently she had come to school Monday morning with a firm determination to take charge and she had done an exemplary job of establishing and reinforcing her rules and procedures—to the students' great surprise. Erica never looked back, and completed a very successful teaching practicum. Later, in Chapter 6, you will learn how to use the preventive classroom management techniques that saved the day for Erica.

Erica's struggles with classroom management are typical of the challenges facing beginning teachers. Teaching is truly a complex and difficult profession, with a steep learning curve. Novice teachers have a lot to learn in the classroom, and the learning process inevitably involves mistakes, false steps, stress and frustration. A considerable number of new teachers find there is too great a gap between their professional preparation and expectations of job satisfaction on one hand, and the actual demands of the job on the other. Factors like low salaries (in some countries), heavy workloads, crowded classes, high-stakes testing, discipline issues and lack of administrative support are also sources of stress and dissatisfaction for beginning teachers (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, & Carver-Thomas, 2016). As a result, in North America and elsewhere, there is a high attrition rate amongst new teachers. For example, in the U.S.A. it is estimated that 19-30% of new teachers leave the profession over their first five years of teaching, with the rate two to three times as high for teachers with little or no preparation (Alliance for Excellence, 2014; Sutcher et al., 2016).

Another issue facing new teachers is increasing student diversity. If all students were the same, and classes were homogeneous, teaching would be a lot easier, for beginning and veteran teachers alike. At one time, not that long ago, it was commonplace to take a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, and assume that everyone in your class learned in the same way. If a student had difficulty or failed, it wasn't because of your teaching, but because of his or her lack of ability or effort. In recent years, that approach has changed to everybody can learn, in their own way. Research in learning has shown that even in relatively homogeneous groups of students, there is wide variation in individual learning strengths, weaknesses, needs and preferences. But classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse. Mainstreaming of special needs children, reduced academic streaming, immigration from around the globe, opening of school boundaries and other reasons are making it impossible to ignore classroom diversity. For novice teachers, this is a significant further challenge in the already difficult process of learning how to teach.

Teacher training programs are often hard-pressed to offer student teachers all the professional knowledge and skills they need before they graduate. Some programs are able to offer more preparation than others in key areas of practice such as planning, assessment, classroom management and teaching strategies. But with increasing pressure on teacher education programs to adjust to increased student diversity, to changes in curriculum, educational technology, development of 21st century skills, and concerns about sociocultural issues, inevitably there will be gaps in new teachers' professional knowledge base.

In Erica's case, I was able to help her along the learning curve based on my years of successful teaching at various age levels in diverse educational settings. My research with classroom teachers in curriculum, classroom management and assessment helped, and so did my professional development work with teachers and college instructors. Not the least, my experience in helping hundreds of student teachers learn how to teach effectively has equipped me with the background to help you as well. I trust this book will provide you with ideas and strategies that will help you to face the challenges of teaching in the 21st century.

1.2 Why This Book?

But can good teaching be taught? Can someone learn to teach from a book? I wrote this book because I believe the answer is yes to both questions. Any profession, whether dentistry, medicine, engineering, or teaching, is supported by a body of accumulated professional knowledge. Of course, there is no substitute for experience, and the bulk of a teacher's professional learning probably occurs on the job, through conversations with other teachers, and by trial-and-error. But, in my experience, when beginners are equipped with sound professional ideas about teaching and learning, a range of effective strategies, and some specific examples, they are more likely to achieve early success. Student teachers and experienced K-12 teachers have repeatedly told me how earlier versions of this book have been extremely helpful throughout their student teaching experiences and early careers. In addition, feedback from teachers at all career stages on previous editions has been incorporated into the present book.

Here I am sharing tested professional information that I hope will help you not only survive, but thrive, in your early days of teaching. The book's main goal is to provide the basic information beginning educators need to plan focused lessons that promote successful learning in a positive, orderly environment. But it can also serve as a reference work with lots of ideas and strategies for experienced educators who wish to vary, adapt or improve their teaching. If applied appropriately, it should help your students have positive, successful learning experiences, reduce your own stress and frustration, and increase the chances of your remaining in the profession.

Why this particular book? How is it