Outstanding Teaching

Book excerpt: In an era when schools and teachers often seem to operate at one hundred miles an hour, Teaching Backwards offers a more reflective and measured approach to teaching and learning. Where many teachers focus on delivering content in a linear fashion, those who teach backwards start with the end in mind. This means that they know in advance what levels of knowledge, attitude, skills and habits they expect their learners to achieve, they define and demystify ambitious goals, and they establish their students' starting points before they start to plan and teach. Teaching Backwards ensures that learners consistently make great progress over time, and offers a practical, hands-on manual for teachers to further develop their attitudes, skills and habits of excellence both for themselves and for their learners. This book is the follow-up to the best-selling Outstanding Teaching: Engaging Learners. It is based on the analysis of thousands of hours of primary and secondary lessons, part of Osiris Education's Outstanding Teaching Intervention programme over the last seven years.