Secondary School Teaching A Guide to Methods and Resources

Welcome to the second edition ofSecondary 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 tasknotas 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 bookinvolvesyou 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,Kellough, Richard D. is the author of 'Secondary School Teaching A Guide to Methods and Resources', published 2003 under ISBN 9780130421494 and ISBN 0130421499.