The Teacher Skills Checklist
The Teacher Skills Checklist is based on a synthesis of the research that investigated attributes or qualities of
effective teachers. This checklist is designed to help you identify those areas of teaching and learning you feel you
have achieved some degree of proficiency (P) and those areas in which you feel you need to further develop (D).
Prioritize the top three teaching behaviors you feel you need to improve
Quality Indicators Personal Top
Eval. Priority
Demonstrates active listening
Caring
Shows concern for students’ emotional and physical well-being
Displays interest in and concern about the students’ live outside school
Creates a supportive and warm climate
Responds to misbehavior on an individual level
Fairness
Respect
Prevents situations in which a student loses peer respect
and
Treats student equally
Creates situations for all students to succeed
Shows respect to all students
Maintains professional role while being friendly
Interactions
Students
Gives students responsibility
with
Knows students’ interests both in and out of school
Values what students say
Interacts in fun, playful manner; jokes when appropriate
Shows joy for the content material
Enthusiasm
Takes pleasure in teaching
Demonstrates involvement in learning activities outside school
Maintains high-quality work
Motivation
Returns student work in a timely manner
Provides students with meaningful feedback
Possess a positive attitude about life and teaching
Spends time outside school preparing
Dedication to
Teaching
Participates in collegial activities
Accepts responsibility for student outcomes
Seeks professional development
Finds, implements, and shares new instructional strategies
Reflective Knows areas of personal strengths and weaknesses
Practice Uses reflection to improve teaching
Sets high expectations for personal classroom performance
Demonstrates high efficacy
Uses consistent and proactive discipline
Establishes routines for all daily tasks and needs
Management
Orchestrates smooth transitions and continuity of classroom momentum
Classroom
Balances variety and challenge in student activities
Multitasks
Is aware of all activities in the classroom
Anticipates potential problems
Uses space, proximity, or movement around the classroom for nearness to
trouble spots and to encourage attention
Handles routines tasks promptly, efficiently, and consistently
Organiz-
ation
Prepares materials in advance; ready to use
Organizes classroom space efficiently
Interprets and respond to inappropriate behavior promptly
Disciplining
Implements rules of behavior fairly and consistently
Students
Reinforces and reiterates expectations for positive behavior
Uses appropriate disciplinary measures
Focuses classroom time on teaching and learning
Importance
Instruction
of
Links instruction to real-life situations of the students
Follows a consistent schedule and maintains procedures and routines
Time Allocation
Handles administrative tasks quickly and efficiently
Prepares materials in advance
Maintains momentum within and across lessons
Limits disruption and interruptions
Sets clearly articulated high expectations for self and students
Expectation
Teacher
Orients the classroom experience toward improvement and growth
Stresses student responsibility and accountability
Instruction Carefully links learning objectives and activities
Organizes content for effective presentations
Explores student understanding by asking questions
Plans
Considers student attention spans and learning styles when designing
instruction
Develops objectives, questions, and activities that reflect higher and
lower level cognitive skills as appropriate for the content and the students
Employs different techniques and instructional strategies, such as hands-
Instructional
on learning
Strategies
Stresses meaningful conceptualization, emphasizing the student’s own
knowledge of the world
Sets overall high expectations toward improvement and growth in the
Expectations
Content and
classroom
Gives clear examples and offers guided practice
Stresses student responsibility and accountability in meeting expectations
Teaches metacognitive strategies to support reflection on learning
progress
Is concerned with having students learn and demonstrate understanding
Complexity
of meaning rather than memorization
Holds reading as a priority
Stresses meaningful conceptualization, emphasizing the student’s
knowledge of the world
Emphasizes higher order thinking skills in math
Questioning reflects type of content, goals of lesson
Questioning
Varies question type to maintain interest and momentum
Prepares questions in advance
Uses wait time during questioning
Attentive to lesson momentum, appropriate questioning, clarity of
explanation
Engagement
Student
Varies instructional strategies, types of assignments, and activities
Leads, directs, and paces student activities
Clearly explains homework
Home-
work
Relates homework to the content under study and to student capacity
Grades, comments on, and discusses homework in class
Monitoring Student Targets questions to lesson objectives
Thinks through likely misconceptions that may occur during instruction
and monitors students for these misconceptions
Progress
Gives clear, specific, and timely feedback
Re-teaches students who did not achieve mastery and offers tutoring to
students who seek additional help
Suits instruction to students’ achievement levels and needs
Student Needs and
Responding to
Abilities Participates in staff development training
Uses a variety of grouping strategies
Monitors and assesses student progress
Knows and understands students as individuals in terms of ability,
achievement, learning styles and needs
