An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback). This blog post has been beautifully illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati.
Accompanying podcast episode:
One of the biggest factors that will determine your effectiveness in the classroom as a teacher will be your confidence in front of your students. Your students can only have faith in you if you have faith in yourself.
In today’s blog post, I will go through the top three actions you can take to immediately boost your classroom confidence as a teacher. These tips will prove to be equally useful for both trainee teachers and more experienced educators. Let’s get started!
#1: Know the topic you are teaching REALLY well
By far the best way to boost your confidence in the classroom, or even in any public presentation you will give (e.g. at a talk, seminar or assembly) is to have excellent subject knowledge.
This does NOT mean that you must have a master’s degree or a PhD to be an excellent teacher (on the contrary, some research even indicates that gaining an advanced degree has no effect on a teacher’s overall effectiveness). What it does mean, however, is you must read ahead, you must understand all of the content you are delivering to your students, and you must thoroughly understand how you will use the resources you have selected. Consider enacting the following action steps:
- Read over the lesson material before you deliver the lesson. Do NOT assume that, just because you have a degree in this subject area or because you have taught the lesson a few times previously, that you will automatically understand all of the content. It can often be quite surprising just how much you may have forgotten when you read over the lesson materials again.
- Never provide resources that involve questioning (e.g. worksheets and live quizzes), if the model answers are not available. Also, make sure you have read over the model answers to such questions and that you understand those answers really well.
Subject knowledge is the ultimate confidence booster because it allows you to walk into a lesson knowing the ins and outs of what you will teach. Knowing the topic really well also prepares you for any questions the students may have on the content, and also provides you with the skills you need to provide your students with exam-style practice (never neglect that, too).
#2: Plan EVERY lesson thoroughly
Even if you have been teaching full time for twenty years (as I have), you must still go through the process of planning each and every lesson. This does not mean that you need to write a full A4 lesson plan for every class, like you did when you were a trainee. What it does mean, however, is that you should know the ‘running order’ of activities for every lesson you deliver. A good lesson should include the following:
- A quick starter activity (see this link for ideas)
- Between 1 and 3 activities that make up the body of the lesson
- A quick plenary that summarizes what was covered (see this link for ideas)
I recommend using EdTech where possible for any part of your lesson. Live quiz apps are really good, as are shared collaborative whiteboards like Miro and G Suite tools.
Research tells us that lessons that are planned are almost always more effective than those that are not. For me personally, I simply use a teacher’s planner (see this link for the planner I created that you can purchase) and I include a few bullet points of notes for each lesson. I also do a weekly review, so that I know where I am at and where I need to go next. You can read about my top lesson planning tips at this very popular blog post.
#3: Utilize Professional Intelligence
What is ‘Professional Intelligence’ you might ask? Well, put simply, it is professional knowledge that you have gathered about your students. The kind of information you should acquire includes, at a minimum:
- Student names – these can take a while to remember, even for the most seasoned educators among us. Consider utilizing live quiz apps in your first few lessons – these will help you to quickly identify the students’ preferred names.
- Which students work well together and which students should be kept apart – this information can be gathered by simply talking with colleagues and line managers about the students before you meet them, or you can gather this information firsthand by trying out a few group games and activities.
- Any students with Additional Learning Needs/Special Educational Needs in the class – make sure you have read their Individual Education Plans (if available), spoken with the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (or the equivalent person in your school) and check out this blog post for tips on helping such students.
You may also want to gather non-confidential information about your students, such as hobbies and interests, as this may help you to create lessons that are tailored to student preferences. Also, don’t forget to check on the running order of school events – some students may need to leave class early, for example, to attend some kind of school event (e.g., orchestra practice) – have you planned for that?
Conclusion
Every teacher must exhibit confidence in the classroom in order to deliver an effective lesson. Much of this will come from experience, but even the most seasoned educators must enact three main action items before any lesson begins:
- Read ahead and understand the topic you will be teaching
- Plan every lesson, even if that just involves writing a few bullet points that go through the running order of activities
- Gathered (and thought about how to utilize) professional intelligence
