New Teacher Tips - How to Teach More and Mark Less

If you've ever taken loads of paperwork home,to correct their own mistakes. You'll be glad you
you know how time consuming it can all be. Plus,did.
all that checking and marking prevents you from3) Encourage student teaching and presentations.
planning lessons, and you are constantly speedingStudents learn best when they are motivated to
up with the curriculum and the textbook to gradelearn about a subject that interests them.
as many assignments as possible.Students can prepare 10-15 minute talks or teach
Teachers need to also be facilitators and allowthe class about a subject that interests them.
students to make their own choices, grade their4) Have students create their own tests. Based
own work and learn from their own mistakes.on the material you taught, students can prepare
New teachers find this part difficult because theyin advance test questions. You guide students on
feel they are giving up their authority. But bytypes of questions and language use and then
giving up control, students take over the learningcollect their questions. Choose a number of
process.questions and then students can take a traditional
When students are encouraged to grade theirtest or talk about their answers in groups. By
own work for example, they soon learn that thedoing so, you can then give an individual and a
teacher's grade alone does not give thegroup grade averaging all the grades together.
confirmation they are seeking of their own5) Do Jigsaw Reading. As students acquire more
abilities.vocabulary and reading skills, involve students in
Read on for five new teacher tips on how tothe reading process using jigsaw reading. Have
spend more time teaching and effectivelystudents choose to answer questions based on a
engaging your students in their own learning.certain reading passage. In expert groups, they go
1) Distribute answer sheets after studentsover their answers. Then they teach the contents
completed an exercise. In order to save paper,of their passage back in home groups (different
have students complete the assignmentsrepresentatives of different texts) so that each
individually in their notebooks. Then they sharemember of the group knows the main idea of the
with a partner or in small groups and finallyother passages. In doing so, they are able to
checking their answers in small groups.answer the other questions relating to different
2) Create rubrics using Students can suggestpassages.
categories for assessment, self-check and assessUsing these tips should help you encourage more
their own work and their partner's work. Also, iflearning independence and reduce your marking
you will be doing a lot of essay marking, teachload.
and use a correction key and encourage students