Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources (Myeducationlab) - Softcover

Kellough, Richard; Kellough, Noreen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0137049773 ISBN 13: 9780137049776

Publisher: Pearson, 2010

Synopsis

Thoroughly revised and updated, Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources is a comprehensive guide to instructional methods and contains many practical exercises for active learning.

 

This text provides a sound introduction to the challenges of today's secondary schools, teachers' professional responsibilities, thinking and questioning, classroom environment, curriculum, planning instruction, assessment using inquiry, teacher talk, and games, learning alone and in groups, and professional development. A key strength of this text continues to be the expression of core themes. It provides future and current teachers with relevant guidelines, best options and practices, the most useful research findings, and current resources so that they can reflect and improve their effectiveness.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Kellough is author and coauthor of more than 50 textbooks, including A Primer For New Principals: Guidelines For Success (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), A Resource Guide For Teaching K-12, 6/E (Allyn & Bacon, 2011), Teaching Young Adolescents: Methods And Resources, 5/E (Pearson, 2008), Teaching And Learning K-8: A Guide To Methods And Resources, 9/E (Pearson, 2008), Your First Year Of Teaching: Guidelines For Success, 5/E (Pearson, 2009), Science K-8: An Integrated Approach, 11/E (Allyn & Bacon, 2008), and A Guide For Developing Interdisciplinary Thematic Units, 4/E (Pearson, 2008), as well As numerous journal articles. His many recognitions include being named a National Science Foundation Research Fellow at The University Of California, Davis, as well as listings in the International Authors And Writers Who's Who, Leaders In Eco Education, Men Of Achievement (Vol. 1), Dictionary Of International Biography, and Leaders In Education. His 46-year teaching career includes 13 years as a teacher of grades 7-12 (3 years as a teaching principal) and 34 years as university professor.

 

Coauthor of Teaching Young Adolescents: A Guide To Methods And Resources, 5/e (Allyn & Bacon, 2008), Noreen Kellough's 22-year teaching career includes 6 years of middle school foreign languages teaching, 6 years of high school teaching of French, and 12 years at the university level. At the college and university level she has taught Spanish at Los Rios Community College, was assistant clinical professor at University of the Pacific, and at California State University, Sacramento, taught

Italian, courses in teacher preparation. Until her retirement, she served as director of the children's reading program where she supervised the training of university students as tutors of reading for public school children. Recognitions include recipient of Outstanding Community Service Award (2004) from CSU,S, and 1995 delegate representing the U.S. in Berlin, Germany, at the Deutsche Schreberjugend International Youth Conference.

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 toda...

About this edition

• Publisher: Pearson
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0137049773
• ISBN 13: 9780137049776
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 432