Make yourself available and approachable to all your students. Effective elementary school teachers are caring and truly want each and every one of their students to succeed. They do not hesitate to give a struggling student some extra attention or explore other strategies to teach a particular student when traditional methods are not working. They also make themselves available to parents and give them frequent feedback on their child's progress.
Establish clear classroom routines and fair rules. Your students, especially at the elementary level, need to know what you expect from them. Children need structure. Create routines for nearly everything, for example, when and how to turn in homework or how to ask to go to the bathroom. Do not create too many rules; normally, five rules is a good number and have clear consequences for them. It is also important when a rule is broken that you are fair and treat all your students with respect.
Create thorough and well-thought out lesson plans. Effective elementary teachers put the proper amount of time and care into their lesson plans. A lesson plan is a strategy and a guide for a teacher. Effective teachers consider goals, essential questions, subject matter and exercises for each lesson. Also they know that all lessons do not go as expected, sometimes the students grasp the information quickly and other times they may struggle with what is being taught. An effective teacher is not afraid to move ahead or add to a lesson in which students are understanding. At the same time, the teacher should not be afraid to reteach or spend additional time on a particular lesson.
Seek advice or help from other teachers. Whether you are a beginning teacher or a veteran, it never hurts to ask others about their teaching strategies. If one teacher stumbles across a great strategy for teaching a certain subject, do not hesitate to ask how he did it. The teacher will most likely be willing to help you or show you how he found the information.
Understand that all students learn in different ways. Some students are visual learners, others are auditory learners, others learn by doing and some learn anywhere in between. An effective lesson teaches to many or all of the above learning styles. Thus, it is more likely that all your students will be capable of understanding the subject.
Increase the amount of time students are engaged. Effective elementary teachers have their students spend little time in transitions (breaks or time in between a lesson). Their students spend greater amounts of time learning, reading and writing. These teachers have routines for getting out new textbooks and moving within the classroom. These routines make the transitions go faster, thus enable the students to get back on task more quickly.