Book Description
This popular standard is everything a methods book for grades 7-12 should be: practical, concise, research-based, and user-friendly. The authors' beliefs about what teaching should be and what good teachers should do form the bedrock upon which a full complement of effective methods is built. Basic to the book is the idea that teaching skills can be learned: content is organized around four developmental components involved in becoming a competent teacher—the why, what, how, and how well of teaching. Whatever one teaches, children will always need to know how to learn, how to read, and how to think productively, work cooperatively, and communicate effectively. This book shows future teachers how to teach precisely that. A four-part organization covers orientation to teaching and learning in today's secondary schools; planning for instruction; strategies, aids, media, and resources for effective instruction; and assessment and continuing professional development.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome to the second edition of Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources. The purpose of this book is to provide a practical and concise guide for college and university students who are preparing to become competent secondary school teachers. Others who may find it useful are experienced teachers who want to continue developing their teaching skills and curriculum specialists and school administrators who want a current, practical, and concise text of methods, guidelines, and resources for teaching grades 7-12. NEW TO THIS EDITION Chapter 1 is a better organized and more focused overview of secondary school teaching today. A new chapter, Chapter 2, is devoted to secondary school students, their diversity, and specific ways of working with them in the classroom. These topics were part of Chapter 1 in the previous editi6n. Although separated in this book for reasons of organizational clarity, "establishing and managing the learning environment" is an integral and ongoing component of planning and implementing curriculum and instruction. Chapter 4, about establishing a supportive classroom learning environment, is now titled Planning the Classroom Learning Environment, and has moved from Part I to Part II, where it is the first of three chapters about Planning for Instruction. The other two chapters of Part II are "Planning the Curriculum and Its Content" and "Planning the Instructional Unit with Lessons." Part III now includes four rather than five chapters. Other changes made for this edition are mentioned in the paragraphs that follow. OUR BELIEFS: HOW AND WHERE THEY ARE REFLECTED IN THIS BOOK In preparing this book, we saw our task not as making the teaching job easier for you—exemplary teaching is never easy—but as improving your teaching effectiveness and providing relevant guidelines and current resources. You may choose from these resources and build upon what works best for you. Nobody can tell you what will work with your students; you will know them best. We do share what we believe to be the best of practice, the most useful of recent research findings, and the richest of experiences. Preparing this new edition presented us with an opportunity to reexamine and share our own beliefs about secondary school teaching. The boldface italic statements present our beliefs and explain how they are embraced in this book. The best learning occurs when the learner actively participates in the process, which includes having ownership in both the process and the product of the learning. Consequently, this book is designed to engage you in hands-on and minds-on learning about effective teaching. For example, rather than simply reading a chapter devoted to the important topic of cooperative learning, in each chapter you will become involved in cooperative and collaborative learning. In essence, via the exercises found in every chapter and on the Companion Website, you will practice cooperative learning, talk about it, practice it some more, and finally, through the process of doing it, learn a great deal about it. This book involves you in it. The best strategies for learning about secondary school teaching are those that model the strategies used in exemplary teaching of adolescents. As you will learn, integrated learning is the cornerstone of effective teaching for the twenty-first century, and that is a premise upon which this text is designed. To be most effective a teacher must use an eclectic style in teaching. Rather than focus your attention on particular models of teaching, we emphasize the importance of an eclectic model—that is, one in which you select and integrate the best from various instructional approaches. For example, sometimes you will want to use a direct, expository approach, perhaps by lecturing; more often you will want to use an indirect, social-interactive, or student-centered approach, perhaps through project-based learning. This book provides guidelines to help you not only decide which approach to use at a particular time but also develop your skill in using specific approaches. Learning should be active, pleasant, fun, meaningful; and productive. Our desire is to present this book in an enthusiastic, positive, and cognitive-humanistic way, in part by providing rich experiences in social-interactive learning. How this is done is perhaps best exemplified by the active learning exercises found throughout the book and on the Companion Website at www.prenhall.com/kellough. Exercises were developed to ensure that you become an active participant in learning the methods and procedures that are most appropriate in facilitating the learning of active, responsive secondary school students. Teaching skills can be learned. In medicine, certain knowledge and skills must be learned and developed before the student physician is licensed to practice with patients. In law, certain knowledge and skills must be learned and developed before the law student is licensed to practice with clients. So it is in teacher preparation: knowledge and skills must be learned and developed before the teacher candidate is licensed to practice the art and science of teaching young people. We would never allow just any person to treat our child's illness or to defend us in a legal case; the professional education of teachers is no less important! Receiving a professional education on how to teach young people is absolutely necessary, and certain aspects of that education must precede any interaction with students if teachers are to become truly competent professionals. ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK: AN OVERVIEW Competent secondary school teaching is a kaleidoscopic, multifaceted, eclectic process. When preparing and writing a book for use in teacher preparation, by necessity one must separate that kaleidoscopic process into separate parts, which is not always possible to do in a way that makes the most sense to everyone using the book. We believe that there are developmental components involved in becoming a competent teacher. This book is organized around four developmental components: why—the rationale to support the components that follow; what—the content, processes, and skills you will be teaching; how—how you will do it; and how well—how well you are doing it. These are represented by the four parts of the book. Each part is introduced with the goals of the chapters that follow and with reflective thoughts relevant to topics addressed in its chapters. The visual map on this page illustrates how these four developmental elements are divided. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction to that chapter followed by its major learning targets or objectives. Throughout, we provide information useful for the teacher as a decision-maker. You will find exercises for practicing the handling of concepts in ways that facilitate metacognitive thinking. All exercises, whether included in the text or on the Companion Website, require you to deal in some descriptive, analytical, or self-reflective manner with text concepts and actual practice. Most of the exercises are adaptable for cooperative/collaborative group processing. PART I: ORIENTATION TO TEACHING AND LEARNING IN TODAY'S SECONDARY SCHOOLS The three chapters of Part I reflect the why component, the reality and challenge of secondary school teaching today. Chapter 1 presents an overview of that reality and challenge. Chapter 2 focuses on the unique and varied characteristics and developmentally appropriate ways of working with secondary school students. Regardless of their individual differences, all students must have equal opportunity to participate and learn in the classroom. Beginning in the first chapter, this belief is reflected throughout this book, sometimes in a very direct fashion and other times indirectly. This attention to diversity is intended to model not only our belief but also how to be inclusive to people of diverse backgrounds in many ways. Chapter 3 reflects the expectations, responsibilities, and behaviors that are characteristic of competent secondary school teachers. PART II: PLANNING FOR INSTRUCTION Effective teaching is performance based and criterion referenced. Our book is constructed in this manner. Because we believe that teaching—indeed living—must allow for serendipity, encourage the intuitive, and foster the most creative aspects of one's thinking, we cannot always be specific about what students will learn as a result of our instruction, and hence the occasional ambiguity must be expected. The three chapters of Part II reflect the planning, or what, component. To teach adolescents effectively, you must recognize, appreciate, and understand your students and be able to establish and maintain a safe and supportive classroom learning environment. Guidelines for accomplishing that are presented in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 provides a focus on curriculum: the rationale for planning and selecting the content of the curriculum; provides information about the national, state, and local documents that provide benchmarks for learning and that guide content selection; and describes preparing goals and learning targets and using them in planning for and assessment of learning. Chapter 6 will occupy much of your time and attention as you use this book to become a competent secondary school teacher. The chapter presents detailed information and step-by-step guidelines for integrating learning, selecting developmentally appropriate learning activities, arid preparing instructional units and lessons. PART III: STRATEGIES, AIDS, MEDIA, AND RESOURCES FOR EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION Although it is very difficult to predict what secondary school students of today will need to know to be productive citizens in the middle of this century, we believe they will always need to know how to learn, how to read, how to think productively, and how to communicate effectively and work together cooperatively. We believe that young people need skills in how to gain knowledge and how to process information, and that they need learning experiences that foster effective communication and productive, cooperative behaviors. We hope all adolescents feel good about themselves, about others, and about their teachers, schools, and communities. We emphasize the importance of helping students to develop those skills, feelings, and attitudes. Teachers of all grades and subjects share in the responsibility for teaching skills in reading, writing, thinking, working cooperatively, and communicating effectively. This responsibility is reflected throughout this book. The appropriate teaching methods for reaching these goals incorporate thoughtful planning, acceptance of the uniqueness of each individua4 honesty, trust, sharing, risking collaboration, communication, and cooperation. Furthermore, we believe students best learn these skills and values from teachers who model the same. Our book is faithful to that hope and to that end. Part III, the how component, is presented in four chapters. Throughout the book, but particularly in the chapters of Part III, we emphasize the importance of students' use of visual and technological tools to access information and to make sense of it. Chapter 7 begins Part III by focusing your attention on one significantly important teaching and learning strategy—questioning—with an emphasis on the encouragement of questions formulated and investigated by students. Chapter 8 presents guidelines for grouping students, using project-centered teaching, assignments and homework, ensuring classroom equity, and writing across the curriculum. Chapter 8 ends with a section you may find useful for years to come—a popular and updated annotated listing of more than 100 motivational strategies and ideas for lessons, interdisciplinary teaching, transcultural studies, and student projects, followed by an extended listing of Internet sites for teaching ideas for your subject field. Chapter 9 presents guidelines for using teacher talk; demonstrations; direct teaching of thinking, discovery and inquiry; and educational games. Throughout the book; and with a focus in Chapter 10, there is emphasis on the importance of students using visual and technological tools to access information and to make sense of it. PART IV: ASSESSMENT AND CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT In two chapters, Part IV addresses the fourth component of teaching and learning—how well the students are learning and how well the teacher is teaching. Although separated in this book for reasons of organizational clarity, the assessment component of teaching and learning is an integral and ongoing component of the total curriculum. Chapter 11 focuses attention on the assessment of what students know or think they know prior to, during, and following the instructional experience. To complete your instructional planning (Chapter 6) you will necessarily be referring to the content of Chapter 11. Chapter 11 also provides practical guidelines for parent/guardian and teacher collaboration and for grading and reporting student achievement. Chapter 12, the final chapter, focuses on how well you are doing—the assessment of teaching effectiveness. In addition, it provides guidelines that you will find useful during your student teaching, for finding a teaching position, and for continued professional growth after you are employed as a teacher. These guidelines—as with this book in general—will be useful as references for years beyond a methods course. FEATURES OF THE TEXT To achieve professional competency, you need guided learning, guided practice, productive feedback, encouragement, opportunity for reflection, and positive reinforcement. To provide you with the resources and encouragement to make you an effective and confident teacher, this book is organized with the following features: A strong, current, and broad research base. This is evidenced by the footnotes throughout the text, which are arranged at the bottom of text pages for your immediate reference and clarification. Advance organizers. The four parts, along with their goals and reflective thoughts at the beginning of each part, and the objectives found at the beginning of each chapter serve as advance organizers; that is, they establish a mind-set. Exercises for active learning. Found throughout are exercises we believe are fundamental to your learning. Additional supporting exercises, listed at the end of each chapter, are available on the Companion Website. All exercises require you to deal in some descriptive, analytical, or self-reflective manner with text concepts and actual practice. Each is designed to encourage continual assessment of and reflection on your progress in building your competencies and skill development for teaching and involve you in collaborative and cooperative learning. It is unlikely that all exercises in this book could be (or should be) completed in a one-semester course. Since some exercises necessitate a school visit, review the exercises early so you can plan your visits and work schedule. In fact, because certain exercises build upon previous ones or suggest that help be obtained from teachers in the field, we advise that all exercises be reviewed at the outset of your course. Perforated pages. Pages of the book are perforated for easy removal of the exercises. Exercises and some forms that are likely to be removed begin on separate pages so that they can be torn out without disturbing text. Performance assessment. Assessment of your developing competencies is encouraged by four micro peer teaching exercises found in Chapters 7 (Exercise 7.7), 9 (Exercises 9.1 and 9.2), and 12 (Exercise 12.2). Situational case studies, teaching vignettes, and questions for class discussion. For extended class discussions, situational case studies are presented in Chapter 4. Teaching vignettes are distributed throughout. Questions for Class Discussion appear at the end of each chapter. Outstanding practices and exemplary programs. To let you gain further insight or to visit exemplary programs, schools recognized as having exemplary programs are identified throughout the text. Internet resources. In relevant locations throughout the book you will find current lists of Internet sites and Internet references that we can recommend. Suggested readings. At the conclusion of each chapter are additional sources, both current and classic, to deepen and broaden your understanding of particular topics. Glossary and index. The text concludes with a glossary of terms, a name index, and a subject index. ANCILLARIES The following ancillaries are available to instructors who adopt this text. To request the Instructor's Manual, contact your Prentice Hall representative or visit the Merrill Education website at www.merrilleducation.com. (If you do not know how to contact your local sales representative, please call faculty services at 1-800-526-0485 for assistance.) The Instructor's Manual addresses each chapter of the book in three ways: a detailed outline of the chapter, chapter notes containing additional information or suggestions about particular content, and examination questions and answers. The Companion Website contains additional' information for students and instructors to use in an online environment. For more information on what the Companion Website provides, please see the "Discover the Companion Website Accompanying This Book" section following the preface.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This popular standard is everything a methods book for grades 7-12 should be: practical, concise, research-based, and user-friendly. The authors' beliefs about what teaching should be and what good teachers should do form the bedrock upon which a full complement of effective methods is built. Basic to the book is the idea that teaching skills can be learned: content is organized around four developmental components involved in becoming a competent teacher—the why, what, how, and how well of teaching. Whatever one teaches, children will always need to know how to learn, how to read, and how to think productively, work cooperatively, and communicate effectively. This book shows future teachers how to teach precisely that. A four-part organization covers orientation to teaching and learning in today's secondary schools; planning for instruction; strategies, aids, media, and resources for effective instruction; and assessment and continuing professional development.

SYNOPSIS