Improving Classroom Performance E-Book

Stephen Chapman

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A Long awaited first book from one of the biggest teacher training companies in the UK. Dragonfly Training was founded in 1999 and has established an excellent reputation internationally for providing inspiring, realistic and practical training courses for teachers. In this, their first book, three of their top trainers provide some of the very best hands-on approaches to teaching. Dragonfly's six key principles are: Promote effective starters and plenaries; Provide constant reinforcement as a means of embedding knowledge and provide on-going revision; Introduce a variety of ideas; Do first, teach after - whenever possible; Encourage students to create teaching materials themselves; Demonstrate and articulate success by modelling the desired outcomes.

Leseprobe

Improving Classroom Performance

Practical Applications for Effective Teaching and Learning

Stephen Chapman, Steve Garnett and Alan Jervis

This book is dedicated to teachers all over the world – past, present and future. The job can be incredibly tough but also amazingly rewarding. Let’s never forget that what we do is a good thing.

Preface

The aim is to inspire, not to perspire.

Stephen Chapman

I think a powerful point is of more use than a PowerPoint-less.

Steve Garnett

Variety is the spice of life; teaching is no different.

Alan Jervis

At its best teaching can be the most rewarding, entertaining and stimulating job there is. There is no sitting around watching the minutes drag by. In fact it is more of a case of, ‘How on earth am I going to fit all this material into one term?’

Teaching can also be one of the most difficult and demanding jobs. As for the hours, our time in school may only run from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., but the time notched up at home doing preparation and marking mean that the working day often does not finish until 11 p.m. and whilst we cannot deny that the holidays are fantastic, they are also well earned. Most teachers are crawling to the finishing line by the end of the school year.

Although there are many positives to working in the teaching profession, there seem to have been some seismic changes in how the profession is run in recent years which have left many teachers feeling stressed, frustrated and bewildered. Teachers are given strict guidelines about what to teach their students and many find themselves lurching from one new initiative to another, drowning in a sea of buzzwords and confused about the goalposts.

Given this often overwhelming and confusing backdrop our aim is to make your life easier by:

Providing practical strategies that can be used by most teachers, in most subjects, most of the time.Offering insight into various educational matters to help you with your teaching.

We recognise there is no one way to teach; however, there is such a thing as good practice – which is highlighted in this book. In Part 1 we have chosen to focus on what we believe are the key prinples of effective teaching:

The key principles of effective teaching:

Using effective starters and plenaries as well as ‘da Vinci moments’ (more of that later!).Delivering constant reinforcement as a means of embedding knowledge and providing on-going revision.Introducing variety – the spice of life.‘Do first, teach after’ whenever possibleEncouraging students to create teaching materials themselves.Demonstrating and articulating success by modelling the desired outcomes.

From our combined teaching experience and extensive observations in the classroom, together with providing training courses for over 10,000 teachers to date, we are convinced that teaching based on these principles yields the best results.

A variety of teaching approaches is clearly essential as are different patterns of delivery – we are not suggesting for a minute that teaching Maths is the same as teaching Art. It seems ironic that those who have most frequently bandied around the word ‘diversity’ are the very people who have introduced formulaic lesson structures and ideas, where every lesson looks the same.

For the last two decades or so the teaching profession seems to have become obsessed with finding out how the brain works and how, as human beings, we learn things. This is understandable but until the code for the way we learn is irrefutably cracked, we are best off using our own experiences as a guide.

The ideas we put forward in this book are based on our own teaching experiences, the reports of others and common sense. Make up your own mind about which of the suggestions will work for you, your students and their learning and, most important of all, provide the best results!

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

Part 1 Key Principles

Key Principle 1 Introducing effective starters and plenaries as well as ‘da Vinci moments’

Key Principle 2 Delivering constant reinforcement as a means of embedding knowledge and providing on-going revision

Key Principle 3 Introducing variety – the spice of life

Key Principle 4 ‘Do first, teach after’ whenever possible

Key Principle 5 Encouraging students to create teaching materials themselves

Key Principle 6 Demonstrating and articulating success by modelling the desired outcomes

Part 2 At the Chalkface

How to present yourself in the classroom

Rules, routines and rituals for establishing effective learning patterns in your classroom

Strategies to make your teaching life easier

Marking

Making your classroom the one every student wants to be in

Using ICT to its maximum

Part 3 Tools of the Trade

Forty-five teaching ideas to dramatically improve learning in your classroom

1 Getting to Know You

2 Back-to-Back Diagrams

3 Cliff-Hanger or Soap Opera Lesson

4 Concept Cartoons

5 Dingbats

6 An Errors List

7 Finger Puppets

8 Educational Taboo

9 Heads and Tails

10 Living Graph

11 Fuzzy Boards

12 Making the Most of a Picture

13 Multi-Stranded Mystery

14 I Went Shopping and …

15 Pairs Game

16 Title Pages

17 Pyramids

18 Silent Movies

19 Snowballing

20 Songs

21 Speed Dating

22 Triangles

23 Word ‘Splat’

24 Seven Monkeys

25 Venn Diagrams

26 Using Show-me Boards® in Pairs

27 Word Memory Game

28 Stand Up/Sit Down

29 What’s the Question?

30 Educational Trump Cards

31 Relational Diagrams

32 Spot the Odd One Out – With a Difference!

33 Option-Based Learning

34 Carousel

35 Using the Spotlight Tool to Reveal a Picture

36 Using Colour to Hide and Reveal

37 Mixed Doubles

38 Summarising Using Shapes

39 Multi-Sensory Worksheets

40 Jigsaws

41 Probing Questions

42 Spiderman

43 Maps for Thinking

44 Collective Memory

45 Alphabet Soup

Part 4 The A to Z of Teaching

An alphabetically wonderful collection of insights and ideas

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Personal thanks from the authors

Stephen Chapman

Steve Garnett

Alan Jervis

Follow-up training

Copyright

Part 1

Key Principles

Key Principle 1

Introducing effective starters and plenaries as well as ‘da Vinci moments’

The terms ‘starter’ and ‘plenary’ are now very much embedded in most teachers’ vocabularies and we consider this to be a good thing. The case for starters and plenaries is made especially convincing when you try this simple memory exercise with colleagues or your students. You need a minimum of twelve participants to do this effectively. You could also do this exercise with a class of thirty and try out all the variations we suggest. You will be amazed at how the graph of results will conform to the patterns described.

How to carry out the exercise

Read out the following twenty words to your students or colleagues:

curtain chair window iron paper pen carpet crisps envelope ruler Leonardo da Vinci book kettle coffee cake

Then say ‘five to go’ (we will explain later why this is important) before reading the final five:

bag shoe plug watch ring

When you have finished, ask your group to write down as many of the words as they can remember. Make sure they don’t sneak a look at their partner’s words! After about a minute ask them to stop. Typically most people will have remembered about twelve of the words. Now ask your group to put their hands up if they have any of the following words on their list and to check who else in the group has also put their hand up.

The words you are asking them to look for are the first and second word from the list (in this case curtain and chair) – you should have a very high hand count on these.Let them know that it is very important that they don’t have a sneaky look at anyone else’s list as this will distort the results.Then ask if they have the word before Leonardo da Vinci (which was ruler) which should have a much lower hand count. Now ask if they have the word after Leonardo da Vinci (book in this case) and again the hand count for this should be low too.Ask who has the penultimate word on the list (watch) and then the last word from the list (ring). The number of hands raised for these should be quite high again (as long as you said out loud ‘five to go’ before reading the last five words).

Your results should produce graphs that, by and large, look like this.

If you don’t include Leonardo da Vinci but do say ‘five to go’:

If you didn’t say ‘five to go’ your graph would look like this:

If you do say Leonardo da Vinci and also say ‘five to go:

What the results show

The results of this memory exercise are clear. The students’ attention is highest at the beginning and at the end of lessons – if they are alerted to the fact that the end is coming. The benefit of starter and plenary activities at these times is evident.

More radically, why don’t we have more ‘starts’ and ‘ends’ within lessons? For example, if an hour’s lesson is split into three twenty-minute episodes, we could have three start phases, three da Vinci moments and three mini plenaries. This would be a powerful lesson where concentration and energy would be very high indeed. The da Vinci moment has the important effect of potentially stopping the mid-lesson dip.

If you have lots of clear starts and ends within lessons you would produce a graph looking something like the one below.

Multiple starts and stops in lessons:

This is known as chunking and chunking learning in this way within a lesson allows multiple effects. Another approach could be to divide up the topic focus in a lesson into the three parts A, B and C. Spend twenty minutes of the lesson focused on A, twenty minutes focused on B and twenty minutes on C. Repeat this over three lessons. Teachers tell us that pupils remember far more of all three parts A, B and C than if they simply focused on A, B and C for a whole sixty minute lesson each. We think that the effectiveness comes from mixing up the topics in each lesson rather than spending all hour on one subject. Also the revisiting three times impacts on memory and recall as well as increasing the pace of learning.

Some teachers have noted that when they use the da Vinci moment, the second half of the lesson has been more productive with re-energised and engaged students. It is important, however, to ensure that the lesson content is sufficiently challenging if it is to be delivered within a twenty minute session. There are occasions where it is more appropriate to deliver a section of the curriculum over a longer and more protracted period of time, and in this case splitting the one hour lesson into three parts is not suitable.

Where is the proof that this works?

The primacy and recency effect is a phenomenon that has been known for over one hundred years (see Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve c.1890). TV advertising exploits this phenomenon most effectively and it is an interesting exercise to analyse how an advert is constructed, but also to note that the premium for the first and last advert within a commercial break is considerably higher than for those in the middle.

Further evidence of this technique being used, and therefore supporting the case for structuring lessons in this way, can be gained from analysing the construction of a fifty minute news bulletin, such as Channel 4 News. The ordering of items tends to follow this pattern:

The headlinesAn introduction to the newsSummary of the main stories/news itemsThe main news items in order of importanceA summary of what has happened and a promise of what is going to happen nextThe lesser news items presented in a progressively shorter formatAn off-kilter human interest storyA summary of all that’s happenedGoodbyes and a reminder of when the programme is on next.

This structure has been developed as a result of millions of pounds of research into what makes for the most effective programme order to maintain viewer interest. This is why a lesson structure based on the primacy and recency effect and the da Vinci moment works so well – and makes for better teaching.

Key Principle 2

Delivering constant reinforcement as a means of embedding knowledge and providing on-going revision

It could be argued that the single most powerful educational strategy is constant reinforcement. The simple premise for this principle is that if you do something once, but not again, you will forget it (whatever ‘it’ was). This would seem to bear out the adage that you have to do something quite a few times before:

a it really sinks in, and

b you can store it in your long-term memory bank.

Some information or events are so memorable you simply understand and memorise them from the moment you encounter them. Not all learning experiences are like this. If we want students to have a long-term recall of a topic we need to cover it more than once. How often do we lambast Year 11 students at the Christmas mocks for forgetting something they covered in Year 10!

The solution to this problem is to employ a technique many teachers have been using for years – constant reinforcement or ‘ongoing revision’ as it is now called. It is an easy process. You teach the topic and then cover it again as the starter for the next lesson. You then cover it again in two to four weeks time and you revisit it again after two months, then after another three months and then again before the exam. Constant reinforcement does not have to be introduced at the expense of new material(s) or involve more work. It can simply be the revisiting of existing material(s) but more quickly. The third and subsequent time you visit the topic, it should take a fraction of the time it took the first time.

However, if subsequent visits to the content are achieved through ‘new’ materials, exposing students to the same content but through a variety of mediums, it will undoubtedly help the reinforcement pro cess. Starters and plenaries give us the opportunity to revisit work too. You could cover work that was done up to two years before in this way. To do this, teachers could start to utilise something we call the ‘double starter’.

This does exactly what it says on the tin. The first starter recaps something that was done a long time ago and the second starter recaps something that was done recently. The need for a double starter doesn’t really exist in the early part of the Key Stage but as the months go by the need to recap what has gone on before increases, so more lessons could have double starters.

The double starter can also be used to make links across the curriculum and to address key skills and learning strategies used in previous lessons that will be important in furure lessons – both very popular with inspectors!

The other obvious way to recap is to create a da Vinci moment. This is the perfect time to re-introduce a topic the students have covered before with a short snappy activity so as to embed it into their long-term memory.

A lesson structure for the early part of a Key Stage

Starter (recapping previous few lessons)Main bodyDa Vinci moment (recapping lessons from a month or so ago)Main bodyPlenary (recapping this lesson)

Later on in the Key Stage this structure would change to:

Starter (recapping from six months ago)Second starter (recapping the last few lessons)Main bodyDa Vinci moments (recapping from sixteen months ago)Main bodyPlenary (recapping this lesson)

Whilst it may not be possible to incorporate this structure into every lesson, we feel it is worth doing as often as possible. It saves the need for weeks of revision at the end of the course. The starters, da Vinci moments and plenary should be short, sharp, engaging and yield no marking! Who wants to do them if they result in more marking?

Key Principle 3

Introducing variety – the spice of life

There are a wealth of educational theories that a teacher can explore to justify giving their work variety. These range from the visual-auditory-kinaesthetic (VAK) model to the theory of multiple intelligences, from de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to accelerated learning, Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE), Cognitive Acceleration through Maths Education (CAME), Thinking Skills, Philosophy for Children (P4C) and Assessment for Learning (AfL).

We believe that variety is the key to retaining students’ interest. This is because coming at a topic or subject from a range of approaches means that students will be constantly challenged and will develop new skills. Pupils can enjoy a lesson they are really good at one week and the next week be challenged by a format they find more difficult. Students also avoid the tedium of similar methodologies week after week.

We question the notion of ‘preferred learning styles’ and believe this is flawed. Obviously every student is different – each is as unique as their fingerprints. To take this uniqueness further by suggesting that everyone has their own individual learning style is attractive and easy. The tricky bit is to try to track and label that style accurately.

There are many variables impacting on a student’s unique learning profile. It is not simply a matter of trying to work out if they are visual, auditory or kinaesthetic. These three sensory preferences are just one small element of what makes up someone’s overall learning profile. A teacher has to factor in other variables such as time of day, heat, psychological profile (are they naturally introverted or extroverted?) and their dominant intelligence. Trying to manage all these variables would simply tie the teacher up in knots.

The following diagram shows all the variables that need to be considered when trying to label a student’s preferred learning style. So how do we propose this phenomenon is dealt with? Our answer is simple: do what all teachers know to be a good thing – promote and encourage variety. This way every student’s preferred learning style (if indeed they have one) will be used at some point in the term. We have heard it described as ‘informed diversity’ if you want some jargon!

We believe there is a common pitfall that many of us fall into and that is to teach the way we prefer to learn. We are therefore keen to develop a model we call the theory of opposites. This is based on classroom practice that we know works well and supports our belief in variety. It also provides the teacher with a useful phrase to capture the essence of variety and creativity that we believe is essential to effective teaching.

If we accept that, in broad strokes, there is the ‘arty’ side of the curriculum (English, Humanities, Drama, Art, etc.) and the ‘techie’ side (Science, Maths, ICT, etc.), then what we are suggesting is that some of the approaches used on one side of the curriculum are used on the other.

This can save students from being alienated from whole swathes of topics as happens when a techie subject is taught in a techie style – students with an arty persuasion can become totally switched off. There is a place for a healthy regard for sometimes doing a techie subject in an arty way and an arty subject in a techie way.

We believe that a teacher should provide a wide variety of lessons that develop a range of skills, aptitudes and knowledge that will serve the students throughout their lives.

Key Principle 4

‘Do first, teach after’ whenever possible

For a long time, many lessons taught in schools seemed follow this format: the teacher would teach something, either via a demonstration, exposition or using a textbook; the students would then answer some questions or complete a task based on the information they had just been taught to check if they understood it. In other words, the teacher ‘teaches’ and then the students ‘do’. If you think about this for a second, the task or activity is simply there as a checking device to see if the students have understood what the teacher was saying.

This is often the slowest way to deliver a lesson. Our suggestion is to do the opposite: get the students involved in an activity at the beginning of the lesson. This activity might be reading, processing, looking, talking or doing. Once the students have processed or even partially processed the new information inherent in the activity it can be reinforced and reviewed.

This process is vital for ensuring that students have a context in which to set whatever it is you want them to learn about. Unless there are specific circumstances that make it impossible (health and safety reasons perhaps), we would always recommend getting the students to engage in an activity straight away for the following reasons:

The students are on-task immediately.The teacher is inclined to talk a little less (usually a good thing!).

The teacher should check progress (one way is to use a Show-me Board® – an A4 sized plastic board that individuals write their answers on) and then target what has been missed. The teacher can assess students’ individual progress before moving on to the next task. Why spend any more time teaching what the students already know?

The start of a lesson is precious (as discussed in Key Principle 1) so get the students on-task and drip-feed the teaching as and when appropriate.

Key Principle 5

Encouraging students to create teaching materials themselves

We are convinced that there is real merit in encouraging students not only to teach each other but also to create teaching materials for each other. This becomes even more important if you want a bank of materials to support your delivery of starters, da Vinci moments and plenaries.

Getting the students involved in this way builds on the notion of ‘do it, do it again and then teach someone else to do it’ – an old army method.

Here is the process we advocate using the Venn diagram as an example. First of all the teacher produces a Venn diagram. Next the teacher gets all the students to make the same Venn diagram individually. They then check with each other that they are doing it properly. Then the teacher gets the students to design different Venn diagrams, covering different content but using the same process. Voila! You now have enough Venn diagrams for the year!

The positives

Students more readily do homework that is going to be of use to them – and actively used by the teacher – rather than answering a list of questions from a worksheet that will just be ‘flicked and ticked’.This is doubly and triply the case when they know it will be marked by their peers and when it is evident that it will help them in their exams.It introduces the concept of students teaching one another – independent learning no less! A win-win situation for all.

The things that could go wrong

Some pupils may find making materials tricky – few students could make a decent version of Educational Taboo (see Part 3), for example. The teaching materials they create may be variable! A good tactic to maintain standards is to show examples from the year before and challenge your year group to improve on them.If overdone the novelty of making teaching materials can wear off. Don’t overdo it!

Teachers do not have time to create all the teaching materials they would like. Getting the students engaged in designing materials is a simple process with profound implications. If your students are creating games to be used as starters, plenaries or for a da Vinci moment, this will not only save you time but help with their levels of recall. Further examples of resources and templates are included with the acivities in Part 3.

Key Principle 6

Demonstrating and articulating success by modelling the desired outcomes

In order to promote high quality work it is essential that students are absolutely clear what successful work looks and feels like. Make sure they understand what is expected of them before they begin a task, rather than tell them what was wrong with it after it has been completed.

So if you want your students to do a perfect press-up, show them a perfect press-up. Then, and this part is crucial, make them articulate either verbally or in writing what specifically was happening in that press-up that made it a perfect one.

For example, in describing a successful press-up they may say or write:

Straight backArms at 90 degrees to the bodyStraight legs

They should not say or write:

Try hardLots of effortHold your breath

Why? Because these last three things could be present in a poor press-up as well. If we allow them to focus on these last three criteria it wouldn’t necessarily yield the perfect press-up that we want. It is vital that teachers keep an archive of work to demonstrate what they do want and also what they don’t want.

These same principles apply in any context. When showing an example of a successful English essay, for example, ask the students to articulate in precise terms what are the components of that good essay. Keep making the distinction between specific criteria and non-specific criteria. It might be appropriate to ask for:

AlliterationMetaphorA dramatic end

You wouldn’t want to ask for:

Lots of effort

‘Lots of effort’ by itself does not, of course, distinguish a good essay from a poor essay.

It might seem obvious to suggest showing students what is required to do well. But all three authors were never once shown what it took to get a first class degree at university. We were expected to find out for ourselves! A clear demonstration of an A* piece of work is the best way to clarify for the students what they need to do.

Be specific

Be specific when praising students who achieve the desired outcome. Endless exclamations of ‘Well done!’, ‘Brilliant work!’, ‘You’ve tried ever so hard!’ or ‘Oh bless you!’ are not good enough. We have to be specific: ‘X was done well because you did Y and Z as well.’ Then we can go further: ‘You could improve still further by doing A, B and C.’ Here, again, you can be specific and demonstrate!

Summary

A starter activity is vital.A plenary activity is vital.A da Vinci moment is helpful to avoid the mid-lesson dip.Chunking a lesson can provide multiple primary–recency effects but don’t allow students to engage with one activity for too long.Constant reinforcement improves learning.Variety is key to improving skills, motivation and understanding.Get students working first and don’t always lead with teacher talk.Encourage pupils to create their own examples of the activities you show them.If you want a successful piece of work, show examples beforehand and ask students why it is successful.

Part 2

At the Chalkface

It’s all about you!

This section is all about what you can do to improve yourself as a teacher. It includes:

1 How you present yourself in the classroom:

VoiceBody languageEyes

2 Rules, routines and rituals for establishing effective learning patterns in your lessons

3 Strategies to make your teaching life easier:

Using praise

4 Marking:

Marking strategiesRewards

5 Making your classroom the one every student in the school wants to be in:

DisplaysMusicArrangementSeating groupingColourSmell

6 Using ICT to its maximum:

Interactive whiteboardsVLEsFilm

How to present yourself in the classroom

Voice and body language

There are a whole range of voice and body language patterns that are unique to the teaching profession. ‘Don’t talk to me as though I’m one of your pupils!’ is an often heard plea from the partners or friends of most members of the teaching profession at some point or another.

In this section, we will explain how to adopt what we refer to as adult-to-child voice and body language – voice and body language patterns that are idiosyncratic to the teaching profession. Yes, as teachers we do look and sound different from the general public.

The eyes

Our eyes are a major source of information to others. They reflect the six basic emotions: fear, anger, disgust, surprise, happiness and sadness. In adult-to-adult voice and body language, we seek eye contact with others when we want to communicate with them. Equally, by avoiding eye contact we are sending out a variety of negative messages: ‘I am not interested in communicating with you’, ‘I dislike you’, ‘I am trying to deceive you’, or ‘I disapprove’. However, in adult-to-child voice and body language, we often use peripheral vision (e.g. placing students to the side of us) to enhance our adult status.

Here are some ways to use your eyes in the classroom:

Give the classic teacher stare, which is not to be confused with staring someone out.Give a ‘knowing look’. We can often get an insight into a person’s mood by studying their eyes – this is a chance to read the classroom thermometer.Give a reassuring look when students are struggling.Praise with a pleased-with-you look (you only need a split second for this).Catch a student’s eye in the early part of a lesson to let them know that you know they are there.

Females often hold a gaze for longer than males and are more likely to make initial eye contact. For many males eye-to-eye contact can be problematic and some male teachers never make any protracted form of eye contact with any student ever! Extended eye contact is usually only used to indicate either a highly personal confrontation or falling in love/sexual frisson – neither of which we want in the classroom.

A rule of thumb for normal adult behaviour is to maintain indirect eye contact for about two thirds of your exchange with someone else. Any more and people find us threatening; less and they think we are not paying attention to them. We basically want to convey the message, ‘I am interested in what you have to say.’ We can intensify this feeling by nodding occasionally which transmits further positive messages.

To let a student know we acknowledge they are there and that we value them, we can catch their eye for a second. Our eyes are extremely receptive to the glances of others, and we usually know when someone is watching us and, to a degree, what they are thinking about us. In short, keep your eyes constantly moving around the class. Ideally a teacher needs eyes at the front, sides and back of their head, but given that we only have one set then we must give the impression of seeing more than we actually do. Whilst other aspects of body language are important, none are more so than the eyes.

The voice

It is almost impossible to overstate how important the teacher’s voice is: it is our main teaching tool. When students imitate us and our mannerisms, our voice always comes first. Even in today’s world of interactive whiteboards, virtual learning environments (VLEs) and computer suites, the main tool for the teacher is their voice. It is no wonder that many teachers suffer from some sort of throat damage at some point in their careers.

Despite this many teachers have had no specific voice training. We believe that, once again, variety is the key. Different voices are needed to teach well.

We have identified six main teaching voices that a teacher should have at their disposal. (There are variations within each type and we have simplified the subtleties for the sake of clarity, but these are the main categories): instruction voice, subject voice, praise voice, telling-off voice, talk-over voice and chivvying voice.

Instruction voice

As teachers we have to tell students what to do. It is vital we work out how to give instructions. Rushed instructions can lead to wasted student time. Our motto would be: Say it once to everyone, rather than to everyone once. Make your instruction voice calm, precise, formal, slower and slightly louder than normal. It should be heavily punctuated with pauses. This is so you can think clearly so that every word is understood. Keep your body still so as not to distract from the instructions and to convey gravitas. Don’t use this voice for longer than sixty to ninety seconds otherwise you will sound dull.

Subject voice

Think of this as a storytelling voice. It is designed to elicit interest and enthusiasm by conveying both enthusiasm and content. It demands the greatest variety in intonation, ranging from loud to quiet, from lower to upper register and from fast to slow. It is public speaking! Being interested in your subject will help you apply this voice. (If you aren’t interested in your subject, you can’t expect your students to be.)

Praise voice

Introduce praise in a lesson as soon as possible. Why? Because it will make you come across as being positive and, as any self-help book will tell you, people who are positive are much more likely to get their way than those who are negative. Introduce student praise early in your lesson and you will reap the benefits. If you delay giving praise until the end of the lesson, the benefits carry into someone else’s classroom and not yours! Try to find something to praise early on in the lesson, whether it is the smile on their face or some work from their previous lesson with you.