Effective Teaching Styles: 5 Ways To Be A Great Teacher

Table of Contents

1.	Polish Your Teaching Strategies: Meet Your Students’ Learning Needs
2.	Five Effective Teaching Styles to Adopt in Your Classroom Today
3.	Benefits of Changing Your Teaching Style for Students
4.	What You Can Achieve by Changing Your Teaching Style?
5.	Proven Ways to Be a Great Teacher
5.	Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

31 December 2020

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Want to adopt effective teaching styles to make a difference in your students' lives?

Looking for teaching methods that you can use to enhance the learning process and interaction of students in your classroom? Read to know the best teaching styles and find five successful ways to be a great teacher. In the end, we have also answered some frequently asked questions about the same.

Polish Your Teaching Strategies: Meet Your Students’ Learning Needs

In the past few decades, traditional teaching pedagogies have considerably evolved. The old-school teaching strategies are now overtaken by culturally responsive learning styles and technology. With the rapid advancement of education, it has become more important than ever for teachers to change their teaching styles and adapt according to their students.

The modern teaching pedagogies involve five primary strategies to improve the learning experience of students in the class. These teaching styles advance the learning abilities of students by making them more involved and increase their interaction with their peers and educators. If you want to be a great teacher to help your students achieve better, you must adopt one of the five main teaching strategies.

Effective Teaching Styles - PDF

If you ever want to read it again as many times as you want, here is a downloadable PDF to explore more.

📥

Effective Teaching Styles: 5 Ways To Be A Great Teacher - PDF

Download

---

Five Effective Teaching Styles to Adopt in Your Classroom Today

It is no brainer that no two students are the same. Then, is it possible to teach all of them using one traditional learning style? The answer is a straight “no”. Considering their ethnicity, academic performance, life skills, and confidence, every class of students are unique. Hence, it is very important to change your teaching style from time to time and adapt it accordingly to meet the needs of diverse students.

Here are the top five teaching styles to influence the learning abilities of your students and make learning more engaging.

1. The Demonstrator Style

The demonstrator style of teaching is very helpful in striking the right balance and maintaining your authority in the classroom. This teaching style is a modern twist to traditional lecture-style teaching. Instead of solely counting on theoretical teaching and verbal lectures, the demonstrator style promotes interactive teaching by demonstrating through group activities, digital media presentations, 3-D models, etc.

This teaching style hence focuses on increasing the students' engagement by providing them practical knowledge of the concept. It further fosters the development of students by engaging them in group activities and seeing real-life examples.

2. The Facilitator Style

The Facilitator style of teaching is the main branch of reciprocal teaching. It is an activity-based teaching style where the teacher promotes students to self learn through groups and find answers to their questions themselves. Rather than getting a verbal lecture and direct answers to the questions, students are encouraged to involve deeply in their classroom setting and seek clarifications themselves.

This teaching style is very beneficial in enhancing the problem-solving and critical thinking skills of the students. It also boosts concentration and improves the attention span of the students. The role of the teacher in this activity-based learning style is to assist the students throughout but not solve their queries directly.

3. The Delegator Style

The Delegator style of teaching promotes collaborative learning through group activities. This learning style involves activities such as debates, open group discussions, etc. to involve students. The students get a sense of freedom when taught in the delegator style as the teacher is just an observer who organizes the activities.

This is a relaxed learning style that promotes students’ interaction with their peers. It also nurtures the cognitive skills of the students. However, this teaching style affects the teacher's authority in the classroom.

4. The Authority Style

The Authority of teaching is the oldest and the most common way of delivering lectures. It gives all the authority to the teacher where students are required to sit in a formal setting and listen attentively to the teacher. While this teaching style may or may not involve technology, it requires the students to take notes and retain the information given.

This teaching style is very common in higher institutions and has several drawbacks. Student participation is largely affected when the authority style of teaching is used. It also reduces the teacher’s engagement with the students and makes it difficult to answer each query. 

5. The Hybrid Style

The Hybrid style of teaching incorporates the student's preferences, diversity, backgrounds, personalities, and interests to address a topic of study. This is an effective teaching style as it meets the needs of all the students and encourages them to indulge in active discussions. Also known as the blended style of teaching, it helps mold the curriculum according to the group of students.

It is an inclusive learning approach and tailors the unique needs of all students. This teaching style has become more popular after the break of the COVID-19 pandemic as students are attending online classes and cannot physically meet or interact with each other.

---

Benefits of Changing Your Teaching Style for Students

Although every teacher has a unique style of teaching, varying it from time to time helps the students progress in the classroom. To be a dynamic teacher, you don’t need to completely change your teaching methods or lose your identity. All you must do is follow the general principles of contemporary classroom instruction and mold your teaching method accordingly.

You can reap some major benefits by adapting one of the five recommended teaching methods. Changing your teaching style helps in:

• Encouraging students to be actively involved in the class
   
• Enhancing the learning process of students by making studies more fun
   
• Making the students more disciplined and organized
   
• Promoting student engagement during the lectures
   
• Developing the communication skills of the students
   
• Helping students learn to provide feedback and be more expressive
   
• Ensuring the right behavior in the class
   
• Meeting the needs of diverse students
   
• Improving the academic performance of the students

---

What You Can Achieve by Changing Your Teaching Style?

Adapting modern teaching styles is not only beneficial for the students but teachers too. Shifting your teaching style to new educational pedagogies is sure to:

• Boost student engagement in your class
   
• Make your students more honest with you
   
• Increase your students’ willingness to pay attention to your lectures
   
• Make you a role model for your students
   
• Strengthen your teaching style
   
• Develop competence in your field
   
• Help you adjust your mindset easily in all spheres of life

---

Proven Ways to Be a Great Teacher

If you want to be outstanding in your field and be a great teacher, here are some tried and tested ways to be one. 

1. Be Patient

Teaching comes with a lot of challenges and one of the biggest hurdles for a teacher may be to answer the same questions over and over again. Being patient and trying out new and more creative ways to deal with your students' queries will retain your authority, improve the academic strengths of your students, and increase concentration in the classroom.

2. Plan Ahead of Time

Lesson planning helps you organize the instructions to be delivered and fosters your guidance in the class. It also helps save time and finish the lessons within the set time frames.

3. Be Open-Minded

When teachers are willing to listen to their students, they can nurture a positive learning environment easily. By being open-minded, you can also remove the socio-cultural taboos from your class.

4. Encourage Group Activities

Collaborative learning through group activities and discussions makes a class more attentive and active. It also fosters problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making skills of the students.

5. Be Gentle Yet Firm

While it is necessary to stay firm in your class to retain your authority, it is equally important to be gentle and kind. If you stay gentle and positive in your class, you will harness the power of love and appreciation within no time.

---

Conclusion

There are endless benefits of adapting effective teaching styles to enhance the active learning and academic performance of students in a class. However, there is no hard and fast rule to change your teaching style overnight. Also, no teaching style is perfect and comes with its set of pros and cons.

It is completely normal to blend two or more teaching styles in a classroom, depending upon the scenario. These teaching strategies can be used whenever and however needed during a lecture. So, analyze the curriculum, observe the student feedback, and understand your students’ learning styles to help them grasp their lessons more easily. 

About Cuemath

Cuemath, a student-friendly mathematics and coding platform, conducts regular Online Classes for academics and skill-development, and their Mental Math App, on both iOS and Android, is a one-stop solution for kids to develop multiple skills. Understand the Cuemath Fee structure and sign up for a free trial.