Many teachers begin teaching without a clear lesson plan format
and without an operational curriculum in hand. Even fewer receive curricula
that are aligned with state standards. They have to figure
out what to teach and how to teach it. Can you imagine Starbuck’s
telling its employees to figure out how to make coffee without telling
them what bean to use or how to grind the bean? Or, American Airlines
telling its pilots here’s a plane full of passengers; now get
them to Chicago!
The New Pathways to Teaching in New Jersey is a program
for people seeking an alternative route to teaching. They have
been in other professions and now wish to enter the classroom.
One tool they give their teachers in training is a template to use as
a lesson plan format.
Ask Two Questions
Norm Dannen is presently in the New Pathways program
and is currently teaching advanced English at Southern Regional High
School in Manahawkin, New Jersey. His instructor in the New Pathways
program is Tom Vona, who was a teacher, assistant principal, and principal.
Tom also observes Norm in his teaching setting, so Norm is in good hands.
Norm’s situation is an exception to the rule. It is rather
common for a new teacher to receive no details about specific content,
sequence, instructional materials, or pedagogical methods.
New teachers are recruited by the thousands, and often few, if any,
support systems are put into place to allow their successful transition
into the classroom.
Teachers show up on their first day and are told to go and teach.
The new teacher may not even be walked to the classroom or be welcomed
to the school by the staff.
This would never happen for new employees at any company or non-profit
organization such as Home Depot, The Cheesecake Factory, or the American
Red Cross. New hires would show up on the first day of work and
expect to be trained on how things are done. Of course, what else?
Therefore, if you are a teacher looking for a job, it is important
that you ask two questions at the interview:
• Is there an induction program?
• Is there a curriculum for my subject(s) or grade level?
If you are not familiar with the term induction program, please read
“Improving
Student Achievement Is Simple, Part 1 and Part
2”.
Next, ask for a copy of the curriculum. Students come to school
to learn and the curriculum describes what the students are to learn
in a subject or at your grade level.
For instance, if you were to work for the Lafourche Parish Public Schools
in Louisiana, you would get a binder for a subject at your grade level
with
A list of the state standards
Lesson objectives that are aligned to the state standards
Suggested activities that teach to the lesson objectives
Sample tests that are aligned to the objectives to use for assessment
More on this can be read at “Applying
For a Teaching Job in a Tight Market, Part 2.”
Start With the End in Mind
The effective teacher starts with the end in mind, with standards
or goals. Perhaps you have heard of this as the “backward”
approach to curricular design as explained by Grant Wiggins and Jay
McTighe in their book, Understanding by Design.
As we said last month, standards represent a valuable guide post for
you. Standards do not tell you what to teach, how to teach, or
how to assess. They simply give you a base point from which to
start a lesson and serve as a goal when you assess the success of your
efforts in teaching the lesson.
These types of standards are typically generalized and most often are
found as state standards.
New Jersey has some language arts literacy standards, each of which
has lettered strands and learning expectations for each grade level
in grades K-8, as well as a combined cluster for grades 9-12.
Here are four of the 9-12 standards.
STANDARD 3.1 (READING) — All students will understand
and apply the knowledge of sounds, letters, and words in written English
to become independent and fluent readers, and will read a variety
of materials and texts with fluency and comprehension.
STANDARD 3.2 (WRITING) — All students will write in
clear, concise, organized language that varies in context and form
for different audiences and purposes.
STANDARD 3.3 (LISTENING) — All students will listen
actively to information from a variety of sources in a variety of
situations.
STANDARD 3.4 (VIEWING AND MEDIA LITERACY) — All students
will access, view, evaluate, and respond to print, non-print, and
electronic texts and resources.
Align Objectives to State Standards
Norm created a 15-day unit to have students interpret The Great
Gatsby artistically, thematically, and historically. In so
doing, students identified with the autobiographical nature of the novel
and applied the moral themes of this American literary classic to their
own development as young adults.
Students achieved these objectives through a close reading of the novel
(in class and aloud, with Study Guide Questions), writing exercises
(Compare and Contrast, character analysis), small group discussion (analysis
of the value of the American Dream as viewed by Fitzgerald), and critical
thinking skills, in accordance with New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards
for Reading, Speaking, Writing, and Media.
Norm wrote specific objectives that 1) are aligned to the state
standards, and 2) state what students will be able to do as a result
of the lesson.
Lesson Objectives for The Great Gatsby
Draw parallels between their own lives and the life and work of F.
Scott Fitzgerald in the context of the Jazz Age, the Lost Generation,
Prohibition, and the Great Depression.
Describe one significant event each in the artistic, musical, social,
literary, and historical context of the writing of The Great Gatsby.
Describe at least three autobiographical elements of Fitzgerald’s
own life that are reflected in The Great Gatsby.
Explain narrative Points of View and the importance of Nick Carraway
to the telling of the story.
Describe Fitzgerald’s view of the American Dream, as defined
by character and plot development in The Great Gatsby and
a related short story by Fitzgerald, “Winter Dreams.”
Identify how an author can use elements of Symbolism and Color in
the creation of fictional characters that have greater depth, meaning,
and immediacy.
Write a Fitzgerald-style narrative, creating their own characters
and applying literary elements and events from their own lives.
Objectives are important in the teaching of a lesson.
- Objectives are classroom learning targets. The students know
what they are aiming for, thus, they know what they are responsible
for learning.
- Objectives remove the mystery to students. If they do not
know where they are going, they won’t be able to get there.
So they moan, but rightly so, “Boring!”
- Objectives give students a focus and enable them to check for their
own understanding. They are more likely to know if they know
something or not.
- Students are more likely to buy into the lesson and are more likely
to participate in activities if they understand why they are doing
it.
Thus, communicate your objectives with (not to) your students.
Teachers who set and share objectives for learning can realize an average
percentage gain of 22 on standardized tests. The quality of the
lesson objectives accounts for much of what we see or do not see in
the classroom. (Wise and Okey, 1983 as found in The
First Days of School, p. 214)
The Lesson Activities
Standards and objectives actually improve your creativity.
Use objectives as the bulls eye on a target. As you start a
lesson, write the objective on the board prior to and leave it there
during the entire lesson as the goal. It also helps that
the teacher can point to it as the lesson progresses and the students
know upfront where they re headed.
With the lesson objectives set, the effective teacher can creatively
design activities that are aligned to the objectives. This is
the creative heart of any lesson, the lesson activities.
All activities selected must be directly focused on achieving
the objective and must contribute to students being able to achieve
the stated objective and hit the bulls eye during your assessment of
mastery of the goal.
The creativity comes when you reflect on how you will implement the
standards and objectives. It’s no different from going to
a hair dresser. There are standards of how a hair salon is operated.
How your hair is transformed is all up to the creativity of the hair
stylist, provided nothing is used or done that will violate a standard
and harm the customer.
This is the same in the classroom. Implementation of the objectives
is all up to the teacher.
In the best case scenario, the best lessons are the creative efforts
of the members of a collegial grade level or a content department with
everyone contributing and evaluating the best ways to enhance student
learning.
Each day’s lesson typically begins with a correlated
bell work assignment, a motivator, or something that will focus the
students on the day’s lesson. Thus, start with
a motivator or an attention grabber to engage the students. In
educational terms, this is called an “Anticipatory Set,”
that is something used to get the students set to anticipate the lesson.
Norm says, “To focus attention on the lesson, I display an interdisciplinary
transparency highlighting an historical element of the 1920s that is
relevant to the story line of The Great Gatsby at the beginning
of each class period.”
To see what activities he used each day, please click
here.
The Students Come to School to Work
The purpose of schooling is for the students to learn and achieve.
For students to learn, they must do the work. If you go home at
the end of the day exhausted, it may be you are doing all the work and
not the students. Schools are built for the students, not the
teachers. See how Steve Geiman came to this realization.
When people go to work, “work” means to get the work done.
Students are no different. When they come to school, they all
know they are to get the work done, and the better they do the work,
the better the grade they earn.
But, it can be difficult if not impossible for a student to
get the work done when the assignment does not spell out what the student
is to do. There are no standards, no objectives, and
no activities done for a specified reason. It’s like shooting
arrows blindfolded hoping that one will hit the target.
Poor assignments like
Read chapter 7.
Open your book to page 143.
Do this worksheet.
Watch this video.
Break into groups.
Write a paper on the Byzantine period
add to the confusion and misdirection experienced by students.
Because the students see no reason for the assignments, many students
will blurt out and ask, “Why? why? and why do we have to do this?”
It basically comes down to what you teach and how you teach it!
You teach for learning, not for coverage. The student’s
incentive is to get better learning; the teacher’s incentive is
to get better results.
| This can be done as follows: |
- Your lesson is aligned to a state or district standard.
- Your lesson has an objective to focus the lesson.
- Your lesson shows what you do to teach the objective.
- You have a test that is used to assess for learning.
|
Therefore, the greater the structure of a lesson and the more
precise the objectives on what is to be accomplished, the higher the
student learning rate.
Setting the Stage for Learning
This month’s column focused on how a teacher, Norm Dannen, uses
objectives to communicate to his students what they are to learn.
In a future column, we will share with you how Norm Dannen assesses
and tests his students on that learning.
Unless you know where you are going, you will never be able
to test if you have arrived at the designated point and hit the bulls
eye.
As you wind up this school year reflect on your past lessons and identify
those that were successful for your students. For those successful
lessons, more than likely you had very specific learning outcomes in
mind and targeted activities that moved your students toward accomplishment
of the goals.
While the summer is meant for you to relax, refresh, and recharge,
we encourage you to use it as a time to reinvent your lessons and identify
and align them with state standards and create targeted lesson activities
aimed at achieving the goal.
Your students next school year will reap the rewards of your time spent
as they achieve more. Your competency as a teacher will grow as
your students continue to gain in testing. Teaching is so much
easier when you know where you are going and how you’re going
to get there.
Have a great summer and an even greater next school year!
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