Teaching Tips

Tips on becoming an effective teacher

  • Keep a journal of the strategies you use and their relative effectiveness.
  • Form a learning group at school to explore and exchange new ideas of teaching and learning.
  • Continue your education formally (e.g., by attending workshops) and informally (e.g., by speaking to experienced colleagues).
  • Realize that as a teacher, there’s a lot that you can learn from the students that you teach.
  • Remember that teaching, like other complex skill, takes time and practice to master.

Tips on designing a Creative Lesson Plan (CLP)

  • Ensure that the CLP achieves the learning objectives. One should be like this: “students enjoy learning this topic.”
  • Relate the CLP to the everyday life of students.
  • Use an interesting scenario or theme in the CLP.
  • Make interdisciplinary connections in the CLP.
  • Design CLP tasks that are ill-structured and flow-inducing.
  • Use a variety of creative rating scales to measure the creativity of students.
  • Ensure students have the requisite knowledge for the CLP task, including training on how to use creative techniques in class.
  • Read the following book Liberating the Creative Spirit in Asian Students by Ng Aik Kwang.

Tips on promoting moral and prosocial development in students

  • Model appropriate moral and prosocial behavior in class.
  • Talk about the reasons why some behaviors are inappropriate, especially in terms of the harm that such behaviors can cause.
  • Incorporate moral issues and dilemmas into classroom discussions.
  • Foster perspective taking in class, by encouraging students to see things from another point of view.
  • Provide examples of prosocial behavior in school and daily life that students can engage in.
  • Communicate your approval when students behave in a morally desirable fashion.

Tips on helping students to set their own learning goals

  • Encourage students to adopt mastery goals (“to master this topic”) rather than performance goals (“to get an A for this topic”).
  • Help students to set specific goals, with clear standards of achievement attached to them.
  • Help students to set goals that are moderately challenging, not too easy or difficult.
  • Help students to set goals that are attainable with a reasonable amount of time and effort.
  • Help students to break down major goals into smaller, more readily attainable subgoals.

Tips on promoting critical & creative thinking skills in students

  • Ask students to explain their reasoning and challenge illogical explanations.
  • Require students to examine the implicit assumptions that they are making on a matter.
  • Create cognitive disequilibrium in students, for example, by doing an experiment that has an outcome which is a surprise.
  • Use creative puzzles to stimulate students to look at issues in a different way.
  • Train students in the use of creative techniques of problem-solving like brainstorming and S.C.A.M.P.E.R.
  • Assess students for evidence of critical and creative thinking in their essays and assignments.