As parents, many of us take for granted that our children are in good classrooms. After all, teachers go through years of education, stringent certification requirements, and ongoing rigorous evaluation. Curricula and standards are constantly under scrutiny and in various stages of development at the federal, state, and local levels, ensuring age-appropriate content and reasonably high expectations for student performance. Despite the many legal and community measures in place to promote safe, nurturing, high-performing schools, parents ultimately care most about one classroom – the one their child is in. Here are a few things you can look for as you assess the quality of your child’s classroom.
What Makes a Great Classroom?
Highly Qualified, High-Quality Teacher
“Highly qualified” and “high-quality” are not necessarily synonymous when it comes to determining if your child has a good teacher. “Highly Qualified” is a label that came out of the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation. It essentially means that the teacher has met minimum certification and training requirements. Teachers must acquire Highly Qualified status within a stipulated time frame, and schools are required to keep parents informed of their child’s teacher’s status.
“High-quality,” on the other hand, describes a teacher who demonstrates behaviors and characteristics that will likely result in optimized classroom learning. Here are a few traits to look for in a high-quality teacher:
- A Lifelong Learner: Teachers are required to participate in professional development sessions periodically to ensure familiarity with relevant topics such as new technology, best practices, and textbook adoptions. High-quality teachers go beyond the minimum, not necessarily in the quantity of coursework but in the excitement they demonstrate for learning. For instance, she may communicate her enthusiasm through talking about a good book she’s reading, an interesting program she watched recently, or a hobby she has recently tried. Children who have a teacher passionate about learning tend to pick up on their teacher’s positive attitude and begin to connect what is being taught in the classroom to their own interests with similar enthusiasm.
- Instructional Expertise: A high-quality teacher knows which instructional practices are most effective for particular situations and how to implement them with a high degree of success. She discusses teaching strategies with other educators, reads books about best practices, and participates in professional development – constantly filling her “bag of tricks” with new ideas.
- Appropriate Assessment: Rarely content with arbitrary grading systems, a high-quality teacher can explain precisely how she assesses her students’ performance. Before she even begins a lesson, she knows how she will determine if her students are learning. Her grading is based on specific criteria and is at least somewhat individualized, considering each student’s abilities and limitations. A high-quality teacher stays on top of assessment, understanding the importance of tracking accurate data as a means of understanding each child’s progress.
- Classroom Management: While a highly qualified teacher doesn’t need to be neat as a pin, she does understand the importance of maintaining an organized physical environment and accurate records. She clearly explains her behavioral expectations, consequences, and possible reward systems at the beginning of the year and holds her students to those expectations fairly and consistently. A high-quality teacher also ensures that her students understand appropriate procedures for all classroom activities and grading criteria for each lesson or project.
Effective Teaching Practices
For the most part, instructional strategies are only as good as the teacher who implements them. Nevertheless, some methods and practices are more effective than others. In his book Classroom Instruction That Works, Robert Marzano identifies teaching methods that have the greatest quantifiable impact on student learning and achievement.
Marzano found that student learning can be directly attributed to the use of these practices in the classroom. The more evidence you see of these teaching practices in your child’s classroom, the greater the likelihood that it is indeed a classroom in which learning is happening.
- Setting Objectives: When a teacher tells students what the goal of the lesson is, students are actively involved in reaching that goal. These objectives can be individualized to meet each student’s needs, but the overall sense should be that each classroom activity is purposeful.
- Using Advance Organizers: Teachers can provide students with a guide to look for before a lecture, reading assignment, guest speaker, or video. This keeps students attentive and models how to approach a learning experience with specific goals in mind.
- Identifying Similarities and Differences: When students learn to break a problem or concept into its most basic components, they acquire a skill that will help them address just about any problem in future academics. They may do this by classifying components into Venn diagrams, creating analogies or metaphors, charting similarities or differences, or discussing how those components better explain the greater concept being explored.
- Taking Notes: Research now provides very specific guidelines about the best ways to take notes. For example, quantity matters – the more notes taken, the more effective they are. Teachers can also provide students with prepared notes to serve as a model. As the year progresses, students can add to these notes and eventually use them as a reference for their own note-taking.
- Summarizing: When a student puts new information into their own words, they reinforce their understanding. Teachers can foster this skill by including a summary portion in notes, instructing students to summarize definitions or concepts in their own words.
- Using Pictures, Symbols, and Gestures: Not every student learns best through words. By adding pictures, symbols, and movement to lessons, the teacher increases the likelihood that more students will understand the material. This strategy also reinforces new information for students who succeed with traditional methods.
- Cooperative Learning: Research reveals a direct link between student learning and the careful use of cooperative learning. For the best results, teachers should use this strategy selectively, with students grouped into pairs or small groups for the greatest academic benefits.
- Generating and Testing Hypotheses: Students demonstrate their understanding when asked to predict an outcome. This keeps them engaged as they await information that may prove or disprove their hypothesis.
- Questioning Effectively: When a teacher pauses after asking a question, it encourages students to think about their answers. By varying who she calls on, the teacher reduces student apathy, keeping students on their toes.
- Reinforcing Effort: Research shows that students who learn to value their effort, rather than just focusing on grades, perform better. Teachers can provide examples of historical figures whose perseverance led to success and teach students to reflect on how their own effort relates to their classroom achievement.
- Providing Feedback: Clear standards for achievement help students gain more value from feedback. For instance, a teacher might say, “Billy, you were careful to line up your numbers like we discussed in class. Good for you!” This is far more valuable than a general comment like, “Awesome job, Billy!”
- Practice: Like an athlete, a student needs to practice to perform well. Although timed drills like multiplication fact tests may increase anxiety, when handled well by the teacher, practice can effectively hone student understanding.
- Homework: Research highlights several important points about homework. For example, parents should not be overly involved; the more a parent intervenes, the less a student gains from the assignment. Homework should be commented on to be meaningful, and teachers should be familiar with current data on age-appropriate amounts of homework.
By being aware of what qualities to look for in your child’s teacher and the instructional practices she employs in the classroom, you can rest assured that your young student is getting the education they deserve.
