WATCHING A VIDEO

1. Watch the video and write 10 comprehension questions.
2. There are a few phrases highlighted (in bold type). Make questions with each of them.
3. Write out ten more useful phrases related to the topic of teaching.
4. Make a translation exercise (from Russian into English) for your fellow students with the given phrases. Use Classroom English from the website Englishhobby.ru.
5. Do five-minute teaching in the classroom with the exercise you have prepared.

Script for the video ‘10 Habits of Successful Teachers’ Hi everyone! Welcome back to my channel! My name is Amanda Rose, if you are new. Hi! I am a high school, social studies, teacher in Brooklyn, New York, and if you are returning, thanks for coming back to another video. Now today I wanted to share with you guys 10 habits that I think make successful teachers or maybe like 10 characteristics of successful teachers. Now I am totally making this list by like my own observation by the people in my school or maybe the friends that I know that I would deem as successful teachers. And so, by no means, did I like go and research you know all of these teachers from different schools in different countries like it’s not that kind of thing. It’s just what I have observed and what I’ve noticed with the people around me that I believe are successful teachers and what I have measured that by is how they build relationships with their students, their standardized testing scores and just their ability to be innovative and creative. I think that altogether the success of their classroom as a whole it’s pretty much how I have based these 10 things, and so I want to go through them quickly because there are a lot and I don’t want to make this video too long. Let’s get into it. 1. First one: successful teachers are consistent. Now when I say consistent I mean consistent in every aspect. They’re consistent in their grading. They’re consistent in their feedback. They’re consistent in their classroom management. They’re consistent in the way that they just run their ‘operation’ when it comes to teaching. Consistency is totally key. Everything about the word. ‘consistency, that’s how I think most teachers are successful. It is that they are just consistent. 2. Two: successful teachers are open to change. Now there is always a saying or this expectation or this assumption that when someone is teaching for a really long time they don’t want to explore new ideas and they are kind of ‘stuck in their ways’ and I think that this could apply to anything not just in teaching I think a lot of people can kind of just get stuck in their ways, even in the everyday routine of life. And so that can also be applied to your job. But I’ve seen that the most successful teachers are open to change. They’re open to try new things, new ideas. They’re willing to go back to the drawing board and figure out why something didn’t work. They’re willing to try new activities. They’re willing to listen to other people’s input and give other things a try. Now I’m not saying that if you are an expert and you are teaching something for such a long time and you know what’s best. I agree with that but I think there is a healthy balance with being open to new ideas and the teachers that I have seen that are the most successful are open to new ideas because they allow creativity in and when you allow creativity in, I think it opens up a world of possibilities for what can happen in the classroom. So most of the teachers that I have found that are successful are open to change. 3. Number three: they never stop learning. This is also one of my tips in another one of my videos, but the teachers that I know, that I look up to, they know so much, they’re constantly learning. They’re learning about race issues. They’re learning about economic inequality. They’re learning about indigenous people. They’re learning about the system. They’re learning about the government. They’re learning about their students. They’re learning about the communities that they teach. For me those are the most successful people where they’re not trying to teach out of this textbook idea or this theology. They are genuinely interested in learning about the people around them, interested in learning about their content and then again willing to change the way that they teach because that includes, or that incorporates, the best learning environment for their students. And so definitely that’s number three: they never stop learning. 4. Four: successful teachers make content engaging. I have seen a lot of teachers continue to have the same approach with their students, and things don’t work, and instead of continually trying to push this method or this way that you think is successful you have to really think about the students and think about what is engaging for them. Now is this difficult? Yes. Does it take more time? Yes. Does it take a lot more planning? Yes. But ultimately you have to think of ways to make your lessons engaging and the only way you really know that is by building relationships with your students and knowing what it is that they like and, you know, take this ‘with a grain of salt’. I’m not saying that if you have a really cool idea and you want to do it in the classroom but you don’t think your students will like it, don’t do it. You also have to its ‘trial and error’ right. You won’t really know unless you try it. But you have to think of ways to make lessons engaging. Switch it up, be different, don’t just possibly present information or provide lessons in the same way if you want them to be engaging to your students. 5. Five: successful teachers have clear learning objectives. If you’ve ever had a conversation with the teacher that you admire that you know is like killing it in the classroom, they have such a targeted objective they know. I want my students to grasp this and so because this is the goal I’ve created a B C and D to get us here. They are so targeted and oftentimes I think this is where a lot of new teachers may fall off is because I get it new teachers are just you’re trying to stay afloat and you’re trying to like juggle so many pieces you’re kind of like in that boat that has like a million holes and you’re trying to like stick your fingers and all the holes so you don’t drown. I totally get it, but a lot of times we can lose sight of the learning objective. And successful teachers have clear learning objectives they’re 100% targeted and everything that happens in their lesson is to move them forward towards the learning objective and that is a skill it takes time to master that, but those are definitely the ones that I think are the most successful. 6. Six: they reflect on their teaching. Often I remember when I first got into education I had like a journal that I would write down all of the things that had happened during that day whether it be conflict with a student if I saw that with my assessment my student at least half of them didn’t give me the responses that I had anticipated, you have to reflect then. You have to think about why, why did that happen and how can I make this better in my opinion. it’s not really a good idea to just keep moving forward less than after the lesson. At the lesson you have to reflect and you have to see like what strategies are working and what isn’t working so that you can meet the needs of your students most effectively and reflecting on your teaching often it takes time but this is how you build your craft right. You assess what wasn’t right and then you try to fix it and oftentimes you’re gonna have to assess a lot of things that weren’t right you’re gonna have to fix a lot of things. That’s natural, normal. It happens to all of us. You don’t really know what needs to be adjusted until you’re actually teaching, but, again, in my opinion, the ones that have been the most successful are the ones that reflect on their teaching often. 7. Seven: successful teachers aren’t afraid to ask for help. Now I have seen (I think this applies again a lot too when you are new to the profession) so much of teaching can make you feel isolated because you don’t want to feel like a failure and so you feel like you really do have to like to solve every issue on your own and you feel like you don’t want people to know that you’re not doing a good job because maybe you don’t want to be on your admins radar. Or maybe you don’t want people coming in and out of your room and starting to feel like a target. You know these are real things that can happen when you’re a teacher and I think that those are really it’s a really scary mindset to have you want to feel comfortable being able to ask for help maybe again if there’s a teacher that you admire someone who’s also teaching your content area and you love their approach and you love their style definitely reach out to them ask for advice. That was one of the best things that I did in my couple of years of teaching and it’s things that I still do now like ‘Hey, I’m having an issue with this particular class like this group of Students, all my other classes are fine, but when these students are together I’m having a really hard time with classroom management. What do you do when you’ve had these kids?’ I ask for help constantly when I want to create an essay assignment and I feel like I’m struggling with creating an outline for the kids I reached out to my English teachers, my English teacher friends and they helped me out. It is so wise to ask for help right we would say ask for help in every in any other area of our lives if we were struggling how much more in your career. So definitely reach out and ask for help. 8. Number eight: successful teachers are organized. Now I think the word ‘organized’ is very broad. I think successful teachers can be organized in many different ways. I think, for me, I’m very organized with my physical space in my classroom, but when it comes to my like laptop for example, I had to see someone else’s laptop and be like “Wow, you’re organized!’ Every single unit by a folder and then every single lesson by that and this is how you title them and this is how you label everything and then even your worksheets are labeled — your powerpoints and then it was like ‘Whoa that is a whole nother level of organization!’ But that teacher has set herself up for the future where it’s easy to find things, things don’t get lost if a student needs something. If you need to send them the PowerPoint every single thing is labeled and it’s organized and it makes sense and so two years ago when I saw that I tried or I started not try it I started to organize my laptop. I still have to do that. That’s actually something I should be doing right now during this quarantine but organizing all of your work so that it’s easy to find, so just being organized whether it be your physical space, whether it be your computer, whether it be the way that you organize well, this bin is for makeup work, this bin is for work that I need to give back, this bin is for work that I need to grade. Organization on some level is necessary. 9.. Number nine: successful teachers don’t stay defeated. Obviously right how can you be successful if you stay defeated? Those two words are opposite of each 1:05 other and so all this is saying is you’re going to experience moments where you feel defeated, where you feel like you have been a failure. I have experienced that I think any teacher that you talk to will have said that they experienced that or felt like they were never doing enough, you get a really bad observation and you just feel defeated but the goal is to not give up and again that’s with any part of life and so these are just skills that you’re applying to your career as ones who are successful is that they they see the defeat, they assess or they reflect on what happened and then they move forward to make those changes and then they are consistent. Okay, so all of these habits work together like a well-oiled machine and then the last thing definitely not least successful teachers put their students first point-blank successful teachers put their students first and all of these ideas are connected to this number one goal when you have your students in mind you can think of targeted lessons when you have your students in mind then you can say well wait a second if this is the target my students would probably anticipate this so how do I remove this misconception how do I try to avoid this so that we can get here like you’re always thinking about them and how they may approach something and how they can reach their biggest potential in your classroom you have to put your students firm then it’s also a lot easier to create engaging learning activities when you think about your students. Successful teachers think about their students and that is the driving force for everything else that they do. Again at least the ones that I have observed and the ones that I have grown to love and admire and strive to be like in my own teaching practice as well and so that’s pretty much it I hope that you guys enjoyed this video my observation of ten habits of successful teachers and I hope to see you guys in the next one.