10 Best Teaching Practices

10 Best Teaching Practices: How Brain Research, Learning Styles, and STandards Define Teaching Competencies is written by Donna Walker Tileston. She has written this book for the teacher who has been seeking out teaching methods that have a proven track record and have been supported by research. Donna Walker Tileston has skillfully incorporated brain research and learning styles information into a book for quick reference. The ten best practices covered in this book are not new. We have all seen them, heard about them, read about them, and even practiced them in our own classroom.

Donna Walker Tileston has provided her readers with the latest in brain research, learning styles, and standards based instruction. She builds a solid case on why educators (i.e. teachers, principals, and district administrators) need to put into action these 10 teaching practices.

This book has been divided up into eleven chapters. The first ten chapters cover the ten best practices Donna Walker Tileston champions and the last chapter discusses how to put it all together.

The importance of creating an emotionally supportive and enriching environment was covered in chapter 1. Chapter 2 supports the notion that a wide repertoire of teaching techniques must be utilized throughout the lesson. Connecting new concepts or new learning across disciplines with concepts and learning that has taken place previously was discussed in chapter 3. Chapter 4 takes some time to review the research that supports teaching for long-term memory. As educators, it has been our responsibility to integrate higher-level thinking skills into the daily learning of our students. This practice was covered in some detail in chapter 5. Chapter 6 reviews the research on positive impact collaboration has both inside the classroom with the students as well as outside of the classroom with the teachers. Collaboration can and will improve how students learn, what students learn, how teachers work together, how teachers teach, and what teachers teach. Bridging the gender gap, the race gap, and the socioeconomic status gap is covered in chapter 7. This chapter discusses the importance and ever growing need to ensure that "all learners" have an opportunity to be academically successful in our educational system. Chapter 8 addresses authentic assessment and the need to move away from using assessment to test our student's short-term memory but to use authentic assessment for assessing their long-term memory. Chapter 9 identifies the importance of relevance as it applies to learning in the classroom. Technology and its place in today's society has been explored in chapter 10. The last chapter is two pages (my kind of chapter) and sums up what was said.

MY TWO CENTS:

If you are familiar with the latest research of "best practices" then this book is nothing more than a review or a synopsis of the teaching practices that make a difference. I would recommend this book for new teachers as well as principals. Why? This book is an easy read and in a short period of time, the reader will be exposed to the top ten teaching practices that are research supported as well as have enough information to begin a deeper study in one or more of the practices. I'll admit some of those books on brain research are thick with tier 3 words and dwell in the clouds. When reading books like that, I tend to trudge through them (three steps forward and two steps back) and get lost in their language. Donna Walker Tileston has successfully taken years of research and experience and placed it in an easy to read, yet highly informative book.

Hey Jason, thank you for recommending this book. It brought me up to speed and has provided me with some of the research needed to support and/or correct the actions taking place in the classroom.