The Effective Teacher

Researchers identified nine characteristics shared by outstanding first-grade teachers in five states. In these classrooms, most students were reading and writing at or above first-grade level. The characteristics of these teachers include:

1. Ability to Motivate High Academic Engagement and Competence
   Most students were engaged in academic activities most of the time, even when the teacher left the room.
2. Excellent Class Management
   Teachers in the most effective classrooms managed student behavior, student learning, and instructional aides and specialists well, using a variety of methods.
3. Ability to Foster a Positive, Reinforcing, Cooperative Environment
   These classrooms were positive places. The rare discipline problems were handled constructively. Students received a lot of positive reinforcement for their accomplishments, both privately and publicly, and students were encouraged to cooperate with one another.
4. Teaching Skills in Context
   Word-level, comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, and writing skills were typically taught in the context of actual reading and writing tasks.
5. An Emphasis on Literature
   The students selected books from extensive classroom collections. The teachers read literature and conducted author studies.
6. Much Reading and Writing
   Teachers set aside 45 minutes for language arts, providing long, uninterrupted periods for reading and writing. Both the students and teacher read daily to themselves, to a buddy, to a group, to an adult volunteer, or to the class as a whole. Everyone wrote daily in journals.
7. A Match between Accelerating Demands and Student Competence
   The teachers set high but realistic expectations and consistently encouraged students to try more challenging (but not overwhelming) tasks.
8. Encouraging Self-Regulation
   Teachers taught students to self-regulate, encouraging students to choose appropriate skills when they faced a task rather than wait for the teacher to dictate a particular skill or strategy.
9. Connections across Curricula
   Teachers made explicit connections across the curriculum—providing students with opportunities to use the skills they were learning. Reading and writing were integrated with other subjects.

Source: National Research Center on English Learning Achievement, 1998
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