12 Essential Teaching Skills And Ways To Improve Them

Updated 9 October 2022

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For influencing a future generation, a teacher requires various teaching skills to coach and mentor their students. With these skills, you can improve a student's learning curve and help them build a successful career. If you have a passion for becoming a teacher and imparting knowledge to students, knowing more about the skills required for this job can help you make an informed decision. In this article, we discuss what tutoring skills are, explore the skills of an excellent teacher and understand ways to improve this skill set.

What Are Teaching Skills?

Teaching skills are qualities that a teacher possesses for teaching students and fostering a happy environment in the classroom. These skills are essential for taking online and offline classes, planning lesson plans, fulfilling administrative tasks and interacting with other teachers and parents. You can help your students excel in their academic and overall development with these skills. A good teacher shows compassion, encourages creativity and provides in-depth information about various subjects. These tutoring skills are useful because it helps a student develop skills like critical thinking and analytical thinking.

What Are The Skills Of A Good Teacher?

Here are some essential skills that a teacher can develop for a successful career:

Instructing and presenting

The instructing and presenting skills can help you deliver lessons and instructions to students. The ability to explain a concept clearly and concisely is essential for this role. Typically, teachers with excellent instructional skills know various methods to present information, such as lectures, presentations, games, reflective activities and discussions. As every student's learning ability is different, it is essential to identify an effective way to deliver your instructions. A teacher with excellent presenting and instructional skills uses stories, idioms, metaphors and phrases to make the students interested in the learning process.

Patience

Patience is an essential trait of a teacher. As every child is different, you cannot expect every student to progress simultaneously. You require patience to speak to your students and understand the challenges they face during the learning process. For this reason, schools and educational institutions prefer hiring teachers who can display an excellent level of patience. Showing patience allows you to balance your expectations and a child's unique abilities. For instance, if a child finds it challenging to understand metaphors, a patient teacher might work with them after school hours.

Encouragement

Challenges and failures can have a negative impact on a child's motivation level. Often, schools prefer teachers who can constantly encourage their students. This helps students stay interested and focused on the learning process. By encouraging these students, you help them gain confidence and solve their problems. In a school, you can encourage your students by giving positive feedback or rewarding them for successful learning a new skill or concept. Also, you can encourage students by showing them what they are capable of and making them believe they can surpass challenges.

Creativity

Most students thrive and grow in a creative learning environment. So, building creative learning plans and lessons is essential for holding a student's attention. When students learn through a creative process, they can retain new information for a longer time. Using your creative skills, you can create engaging lesson plans and help develop a child's creativity.

Organisation

You cannot fulfil a teacher's job without being organised. So, make the best use of your time to achieve class objectives in a specific time period. This might include collecting necessary resources before the lesson, such as textbooks or extra study material. With excellent organisational skills, you can achieve your objectives, such as marking a large amount of homework and coursework and creating weekly or monthly tests. You can use digital planners to complete your tasks and prepare lessons in advance to stay organised.

Planning and time management

The entire teaching process requires meticulous planning to achieve the desired student's objectives. Good planning skills ensure your students learn and gain the knowledge within a specified timeframe. Ensuring timely completion of curriculum and planning skills can help you save time and effort. Schools prefer hiring candidates who can manage their time for curricular and co-curricular activities. Also, as you have additional tasks to complete throughout the day, exceptional time management skills can help you finish your work.

Conflict resolution

Often, conflict resolution skills help a teacher resolve conflicts between students. In a school, it is common for students to disagree with one another on various topics. You can help students come to an agreement and understand their perspectives. To solve a conflict, you might talk individually to each student and help them come to a consensus. You might even teach conflict resolution skills to your students.

Technology skills

To provide an enriching teaching experience, you can use various technologies, such as a learning management system (LMS) or a content management system (CMS). They might use different technologies to input students' marks and attendance and evaluate their overall performance. Also, you can use technology to create lesson plans, homework and study guides and incorporate them into your classroom activities.

Communication skills

You require excellent communication skills because it helps you impart information to students and ensures they fully understand the concept. Using verbal communication skills, you can make lesson plans that are easy to understand. Often, teachers require excellent written communication skills to give feedback on assignments and write progress reports for parents. The ability to use age-appropriate communication and various forms of communication is desirable for this role.

Confidence

To maintain discipline and authority in the classroom, you need confidence. A confident teacher is an excellent public speaker and can engage learners. You can display confidence in a classroom by inspiring learners and providing in-depth knowledge on a subject. Schools prefer confident teachers because they can teach the same trait to their students.

Corrective feedback

A student might make mistakes while learning new concepts. As a teacher, provide corrective feedback to your students when they commit mistakes. Feedback can help students make a conscious effort not to commit the same mistake again. The ability to use positive and professional words is essential for being a teacher. Using the right tone to correct your students when their behaviour and performance are unsatisfactory can help you motivate them to excel in their academics.

Active listening

Active listening is an essential tutoring skill because it helps you understand students' concerns. This makes the student feel that you have an interest in helping them and improving their skill. When you display such an attitude toward your students, they feel motivated to learn, increasing their trust in you. Being a good listener enables you to understand a student's ability and willingness to learn. With this knowledge, you can create lesson plans and coursework that suit a student's learning style, resulting in more effective learning.

Tips To Improve Your Teaching Skills

Here are a few tips to improve your tutoring skills:

Enroll in professional development courses

You can improve your communication and planning skills by taking a professional development course. Improving these skills can help you communicate the lesson plan and ensure timely completion of the curriculum. You can enroll in professional teacher development courses to strengthen a wide variety of your skills.

Receive student feedback

Another way to improve your tutoring skills is by receiving students' feedback on your learning style. It can provide you with insight into skills that you might further develop. You can collect feedback by providing a survey at the end of the academic year that allows students to share their learning experiences. You can include questions such as ‘What did you like about the teaching style?' and ‘What did you dislike about the school this year?'

Implement skill improvement strategies

Each skill requires a different strategy to improve. For instance, you can attend workshops and conferences and network with other teachers. By networking with other teachers, you can understand the learning activities they use to engage their students. This can improve your learning and presenting skills.

Set goals

Focus on setting goals for a skill that you want to improve. Start by identifying the skills that you want to strengthen and create steps to develop them. For instance, if you plan to improve your active listening skills, you might create steps to listen to others during a formal or informal interaction actively. Focus on setting a deadline for achieving a goal and track your progress regularly to ensure that you are moving toward your goal.