Why Do I Need a Teacher’s Guide?

The teacher’s guide occupies a space in your desk drawer or on your bookshelf, or at least, I hope you have a teacher’s guide available for your use. A teacher’s guide is a valuable tool—especially for less experienced teachers—but one that is often not used to its full potential. What makes a good guide so useful?

Daily lesson plans

A teacher’s guide consists mainly of the daily lesson plans that a teacher uses to teach each lesson. A good lesson plan will include the following.

• Objectives: These are the goals of the lesson. They guide the teacher in knowing what is important to teach and what the students should have learned by the end of the lesson. A list of objectives can serve as a checklist for lesson presentation.
• Preparation: This can be a list of materials needed for the lesson, board work that needs to be put up, or other things that teachers and students need to be successful with the lesson.
• Review: Students need review and drill. A good teacher’s guide will help you to know what the important areas of review are.
• New teaching: This section provides insight for teaching any new material. It may include exact words to be used during teaching or it may just give ideas for presenting the lesson.
• Extra ideas or activities: The teacher guide may include material that can be used to expand the lesson for interest or for the fast worker. These ideas can be used to spark ideas of your own.
• Student work pages with answers: It is a valuable teacher’s guide indeed, if the student material is also included. However, for some teachers, this is all the teacher’s guide is used for. There is much more in the book than just the answers. Make good use of all the material.

Introduction and appendices

Before you start teaching a course, read the introduction. Mid-way through the course, read the introduction again. The introduction will give you an overview of the course and its parts. Often there is vital information needed for teaching the course in the introduction.

• Scheduling: How often do you need to have the class to get through the course? How long should classes be?
• Grading scale: What grading system has the course been set up to use? Is every question worth the same amount of points? Is it recommended to take a score for every lesson or only certain ones? The introduction should give you some tips on score keeping for the course.
• How to use the guide: A good teacher guide will often arrange the material in practical ways. It may use symbols for certain parts of the material.  Words a teacher should say may be bolded. Read the introduction to become familiar with how the guide is set up.
• General thoughts about teaching the course: The introduction will often lay out general procedures for structuring a class period. If it is an elementary math class, it may give ideas for fact mastery. If it is a reading class, it may give a guide to conducting oral reading.
• Rationale behind the course: A good introduction will give you an idea of why the curriculum publishers produced the course in this particular way. If a teacher understands the rationale, they may be able to teach the course more effectively.

Often teacher guides include appendices at the end of the book.  A wise teacher will familiarize themselves with the appendices because they are there to be helpful.

• Index: A good teachers guide will include an index, making it handy to see where a certain objective is taught.
• Scope and sequence: This is a list of the skills taught in the course and the order in which they are taught.
• Extra material: Many teacher guides will have appendices included that expand the lessons. These can be in the form of extra practice materials. They could be ways of adding more to the lessons. There may be lists of resources or recommended books that further enrich the lesson. If a teacher needs more ideas, check the appendices.
• List of vital parts: A good teachers guide will include a list of the necessary items needed for the course. This could include any materials needed for teaching science, lists of all the math facts learned in the course, spelling words for the spelling tests, and more.

Don’t reinvent the wheel—but use it effectively

Someone, most often someone with teaching experience, has put thought and their experience into producing the teacher guide as a help to others, especially the less experienced. If you are a new teacher, the guide will provide structure and aid you in planning and teaching your classes. Teacher guides also expand ideas for those who wish to venture further. They save a lot of time and energy for the teacher.

A guide, though, is just a guide. It will lead you along the right path. But many times, a guide has much more in it than one teacher can make use of. A reading guide may have various ways to practice vocabulary words, build reading comprehension, read orally, enjoy poetry, add a craft to the story, etc. If a teacher uses every single idea in every single lesson, they will run out of time and energy. The ideas are there for aid. The teacher will need to decide which ones are most needed for their class and time frame.

When not to use the teacher’s guide

Teachers guides are beneficial and needful and are written with those of less experience in mind. They give framework to the class. However one should not become so tied to the teacher guide that they miss what is happening in class. The guide may be set up for a lesson every day, but the guide does not know when Johnny is struggling to keep up or Susie doesn’t understand the new concept. The guide also does not see Timmy making funny faces at the back of the room or Nancy and Jane whispering behind their books. If the teacher has only eyes for the guidebook, they won’t notice either. And, if you teach long enough, you will no longer need the guidebook for many things. In fact, you may have written your own guidebook.

 But every so often, I still go back and read the introductions in my guidebooks. I want to remind myself why I’m teaching this particular course.