Four Foundations Top Ten Habits #9

Next on the 'top ten' of great teaching is #9:

"I make it a habit to make sure that students talk more than I do."

It's important for teachers to make sure that students are doing most of the thinking and the talking in class. Teachers who talk too much, or who tell rather than ask, short-change their students. Great teachers pay attention to the ratio of teacher to student talk. Instead of merely telling, great teachers use a variety of strategies to deepen student thinking and to require student talk. Cold call, follow-up questions, open-ended questions, and asking for student summaries are some ways to do this. Great teachers employ wait time effectively.

John Milton Gregory, in The Seven Laws of Teaching, writes about the law of the teaching process:

"Excite and direct the self-activities of the learner, and tell him nothings that he can learn himself."

"It is only the unskillful and self-seeking teacher who prefers to hear his own voice in endless talk, rather than watch the working of his pupil's thoughts."

"Questioning is not, therefore, merely one of the modes of teaching, it is the whole of teaching..."

Teachers should form the habit of making sure that students do the 'heavy lifting' in class. Students, and not teachers, should do most of the thinking and the talking. As Gregory writes, "...the true and only function of a teacher is to stimulate and help the learner to do what he might otherwise do by himself and without a teacher."