The Four Foundations of Great Teaching, Top Ten Habits of Great Teaching

Developing great classroom habits is critical to our success as teachers, that is, our students' learning. According to this research, it takes an average of 66 days to develop an automatic behavior—a habit. As teachers, we want the excellent practices described in the 'top ten' to become second nature, to be so natural and integrated into our classrooms that they are virtually habitual. We shouldn't just do them unthinkingly, of course, but certainly we want them to be so much a part of our classroom routine that something would seem out of place if we didn't do them. 

So, I encourage you to make it a goal to establish these practices as habits in your classroom. Put them deliberately into your daily plans and they will become an important, nearly automatic, part of your daily teaching. Your students will benefit tremendously!\

The first of the Four Foundations top ten is:

 #1 "I make it a habit to plan unit and daily lesson learning targets before planning activities."

Planning the targets first helps to focus our attention and time on what is truly important for our students to learn in that unit and that lesson. 

It also encourages us to keep the lessons tuned into the learning rather than the activity itself—learning activities are simply means by which students gain the target. With the target in mind we're in a better position to select the best activity.

Let's make it a habit to think through carefully the learning targets for each lesson prior to planning activities. 

For more on this, see pages 6-11, The Four Foundations of Great Teaching