Best teaching practices
Teach less but teach better and deeper

Be fair

• Give explicit directions so students can tell whether they did or did not meet your standard. Vague directions and hints are both unfair and counterproductive.

• If material is essential for students to know, present it at least once from each primary learning mode. It's not fair to expect all students to learn well the way you do.

• Don't evaluate student writing on factors you don't teach. For example, don't evaluate work for creativity unless you teach all students to be creative.

• Evaluate for a grade only writing in your chosen instructional genre.

Use only authentic writing prompts

Use the essential course terms, concepts, and skills as topics for formal writing prompts and informal writing activities. Such essential course information is provides authentic writing prompts.

Writing about course content gives struggling writers something to say and improves learning of course content. It also lessens the risk that students will learn to hate writing. Teaching an aversion to our subject is not one of the best teaching practices, is it?

Repetition aids learning

Students must go through the entire writing process many times before they learn what to do and what not to do. Presenting isn't teaching.

Use multiple approaches, repeated exposure, and consistent practice to assure students learn your essential course content.

Teach to the middle

Plan your writing instruction for the "average kid" (regardless of IQ) who has no particular interest in writing and is willing to put out only a modest effort on most writing assignments.

Require a medium amount of work on a regular basis. Distributed practice is far more effective (and far less stressful) than trying to cram writing skill into students.

Scale back for those who struggle

Instead of lowering your standards for students with learning difficulties, give them longer to achieve writing competence.

You may also need to break work into smaller segments to allow struggling writers to complete it.

Struggling writers don't all struggle for the same reason. Work with strategies that fit the symptoms unless you have a firm diagnosis.

Even the best teaching practices for writing often must be supplemented by instruction in time management, self-assessment techniques, and positive self-talk. Struggling writers almost always need help in one or more of these self-monitoring tasks. Ordinary students can usually benefit from beefing up their skills in these areas, too.

Be lazy

Best teaching practices include having an out-of-school life that makes you informed, energetic, and sufficiently interesting that you don't bore students to death.

To keep your workload within reasonable limits, focus on the basics you must teach to accomplish your desired annual outcomes.

• Teach one lesson multiple times in multiple ways.

• Make every writing assignment do double or triple duty.

• Give explicit directions so you don't have to keep re-explaining.

• Enlist other students and outside readers to provide students with an audience.

• Develop good writing prompts that you can reuse year after year.

• When you grade papers focus on a limited number of serious issues.

• Teach students to use checklists, rubrics, and other aids to monitor their writing hehavior.

• Hold students responsible for correcting their own work.

Above all, do no harm

Far too much of what passes for teaching turns students off from the subject being taught. The best teaching practices convey the impression that . . .

• Writing is a useful skill.

• Each student can learn to write competently.

• Good writing can give pleasure.

If you imply that the only writing worth doing is imaginative writing, or that writing is a talent only a few rare people possess, you may do more harm than good.

I'll discuss best teaching practices under various headings on this site, depending on where I think it fits best.

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