How can a teacher help to make students successful?

A teacher can help to make her students successful by identifying their teaching objectives, figuring out the needs of their students, and fostering engagement with their students.

Here are some details on these strategies and others teachers can take to make their students successful:

• Identify their teaching objectives

To properly equate your students, you must first identify the objectives for each class. Here are some questions to help you identify the objectives:

• What are your goals for the end of the term, semester, or period?

• What specific knowledge should your students know by the end?

• Are there specific tasks your students should be able to perform by the end?

• Are there any guidelines given by your school you can reference?

The amount of knowledge retained by your students and the tasks they should be able to perform correlates to the grade level you are teaching.

• Figure out the needs of your students

The needs of your students depend on if you are introducing new material or reviewing material you have already taught them in previous classes.

Make sure you inform your students about what you expect from them so that they can focus on meeting your objectives.

Some students might need more attention than others when learning new material or reviewing material that you have previously taught them.

• Foster engagement with your students

This is critical, and sometimes can be difficult for new teachers. You need to try your best to get your students interested in the information you are teaching them.

To foster engagement you should provide your class with an outline of what you are going to be teaching them. Depending on what you are teaching there are different tactics to employ here.

For example, if you are teaching them a complicated formula, you might try to build it out from scratch in front of the class to help the students' intuition for where the formula comes from. Or if you are teaching your class about a specific historical event, you might try to relate it to current events in some way to gain their interest.