SUMMARY OF MAJOR CONCEPTS COVERED BY HARRY K. WONG

“Marjan…You are making a difference in the lives of students and in the world.”

Harry Wong.

Author The First Days Of School

1. The three characteristics of an effective teacher are: has good classroom management skills teaches for mastery has positive expectations for student success.

2. Your expectations of your students will greatly influence their achievement in your class and in their lives.

3. Treat students as though they already are what they can be, and you help them to be capable of becoming what they will be.

4. Call (or write) each home before school begins and again within two weeks. Teachers + Parents = Good Students

5. What you do on the first day of school will determine your success for the rest of the year.

6. Have the room ready for instruction, and make it invitational.

7. Stand at the door and greet the students.

8. Give each student a seating assignment and a seating chart.

9. There must be an assignment posted, and in a consistent location, when the students enter the room.

10. Start each class with an assignment - immediately. Do not take roll when class begins.

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11. Position yourself in the room near the students: problems are proportional to distance.

12. Credibility: Display your diploma and credentials with pride.

13. Dress in a professional manner to model success and expect achievement.

14. The three most important things that must be taught the first week of school are discipline, procedures and routines.

15. Discipline: Set rules, consequences, and rewards immediately.

16. State your procedures and rehearse them until they become routines.

17. The family as a support group, is the guardian and disseminator of culture. The school and the church help the family to disseminate culture.

18. Learning is most effective when it takes place in a supportive community of learners.

19. The greater the time students work together and the greater the responsibility students take for their work, the greater the learning.

20. Cooperate with each other, compete only against yourself.

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21. Cooperative learning will prepare students for the competitive, global world economy.

22. Academic Learning time (ALT): The greater the time students spend working successfully on task, the greater the student's achievement.

23. The greater the structure of a lesson and the more precise the directions on task procedures, the lower the error rate and the higher the achievement rate.

24. To increase assignment completion, state your assignments as a set of criteria or objectives.

25. Use criterion-referenced tests to evaluate the performance of the students.

26. The more frequent the tests, the higher the achievement.

27. Grade on percentage attained, not on the curve. The curve has done more harm to education than any other technique.

28. Mastery learning plus tutorial instruction results in higher achievement than students taught in a conventional manner.

29. If a student masters a criterion, give the student enrichment work. If the student does not master a criterion, give the student remediation and corrective help.

30. The shorter the assignment, the higher the achievement rate.

31. Intersperse questions throughout a lesson. Ask a question after 10 sentences rather than after 50 sentences and you increase the retention rate by 40 percent.

32. Wait Time: Wait five or more seconds after asking a question.

33. Reading: Use short lines and paragraphs. Note how periodicals and junk mail are written.

34. Determine the learning style of your students. Student achievement is greater when the teaching style matches the learning style.

35. Students score higher on a test measuring attitude towards school and attitude towards a subject when they learn from an activity-question approach than from a textbook-lecture approach.

36. Most teachers teach as they were taught in college, a non-validated model of teaching (book, lecture, activity, test).

37. Learn to make CHOICES to enhance your life. Stop DECIDING what to do because others are doing it.

38. When you see in a given situation what everyone else sees, you become so much a part of that situation that you may become a victim of that situation.

39. 80/20 Principle: 80 percent of the teachers are complainers or survivors; 20 percent of the teachers are happy and successful. 80 percent of the teachers expect the teachers' organization to bring them rewards; 20 percent of the teachers create and strive for their own rewards.

40. Workers are concerned with time and money. They sit at the back of meetings and put in time. Leaders are concerned with enhancement and cooperation. They have a career, are talented and are professionals. Some teachers are workers, others are leaders.

41. The four stages of teaching: Fantasy, Survival, Mastery, and Impact.

42. There is no nobility in being better than someone else. The only nobility is being better than who you were the day before.

43. Self-esteem results from school achievement. You cannot give someone a better self-esteem. The role of a teacher is to engineer student success.

44. Teachers can only give what and who they are themselves.

45. You may be the only stable adult your students will ever see in their lifetime. You may be their only hope and dream for a brighter tomorrow.

46. Each person has unlimited potential. Humans are the only species able to improve the quality of their lives.

47. You can have your achievements or you can have your excuses.

48. You are the only person on the face of the earth who can use your ability. It is an awesome responsibility.

49. The most important factor to a professional is the quality of the work and the commitment to the craft.

50. A professional is someone who does not need supervision and regulation to: have a continuing growth plan to achieve competence and continually strive to raise the level of each new group of students.

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51. I believe that every teacher can be effective.

52. Inside every great teacher there is an even better one waiting to come out.

53. Those who dare to teach must never cease to learn.

54. The teacher enhances the life and spirit of people.

55. It is the teacher who makes the difference in what happens in the classroom.

56. By far the most important factor to school learning is the ability of the teacher. The more capable the teacher, the more successful the student.

57. Stop asking, "What am I supposed to do?" Start asking, "What must I know that will help me to accomplish what I need to do?"

58. There is an existing body of knowledge about teaching that must be know by the teacher. Power comes to those with the knowledge.

59. Since there is no one best way to teach effectively, the teacher must be a decision maker able to translate the body of knowledge about teaching into increased student learning.

60. There is no accomplishment without RISK.

61. LOVE.

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Printed with permission from Harry K. Wong HarryKRose@aol.com