Characteristics of a Teacher and Lesson Planning

These flashcards cover the characteristics and skills of effective teachers, lesson planning components like aims and introductions, and the six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Characteristics of a teacher

The personality traits or 'Habits of the Heart' that make a good teacher, including being enthusiastic, caring and compassionate, creative, and having a sense of humour.

Teacher Skills

The practical abilities a teacher performs, which include planning and preparing, managing and organising the classroom, communicating clearly, and mediating learning.

Teacher Knowledge and Awareness

The cognitive qualities of a teacher involving subject knowledge, flexibility, maintaining high expectations, and engaging in reflections.

Cooperative Learning

A strategy where learners are grouped together to learn effectively through experience, reflecting the belief that learners learn better by doing rather than just being 'taught'.

Lesson Aims

Clear and concise statements of intent, often written in the future tense using a verb, that describe the learning a teacher hopes learners will attain or develop within a specific timeframe.

CAPS

The South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, which provides the stated knowledge, skills, and attitudes learners must attain.

Lesson Introduction ('The Hook')

The initial part of a lesson designed to attract learners' interest and prevent them from 'switching off' by creating an organising framework for follow-up information.

Benjamin Bloom

An educational researcher who earned his PhD from the University of Chicago in $1942$ and developed a classification of thinking behaviours that build from simple recall to complex evaluation.

Bloom's Taxonomy ($1956$)

A hierarchy of increasingly complex cognitive processes used by teachers to provide a structure and list of verbs for writing learning outcomes.

Knowledge (Level $1$)

The lowest level of Bloom's Taxonomy, defined as the ability to recall or remember facts without necessarily understanding them, using verbs like 'list,' 'define,' or 'identify'.

Comprehension (Level $2$)

The ability to understand and interpret learned information, involving actions such as classifying, explaining, or differentiating.

Application (Level $3$)

The ability to use learned material in new situations to solve problems, using action verbs such as 'apply,' 'calculate,' 'construct,' or 'operate'.

Analysis (Level $4$)

The ability to break down information into its components to understand its organisational structure and inter-relationships, using verbs like 'analyse,' 'compare,' or 'categorise'.

Synthesis (Level $5$)

The ability to put disparate parts together to form a new whole, involving activities like 'creating,' 'designing,' 'formulating,' or 'summarising'.

Evaluation (Level $6$)

The highest level of Bloom's Taxonomy, representing the ability to judge the value of material for a given purpose using verbs like 'appraise,' 'assess,' 'justify,' or 'predict'.