Since I work at a very collaborative school I am sometimes asked to participate in professional development workshops that will help myself and my colleagues better understand certain aspects of our jobs. Today was one of those days: I attended a workshop run by EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning on October 27th) about crafting Learning Targets (different from objectives).
Through the day's activities we talked about some of the framework of learning targets and why they are important for us to use as educators but also important for our students to use as well. Every day I read through the learning target with my students so they understand what they should be able to do at the end of the lesson. If the target is, "I can differentiate between different types of functions" then I want my students to know that we will be analyzing different graphs, tables, and equations to figure out what the differences are.
The most important aspects of today for me, though, were two documents: the Verbs to Use in Learning Targets and the Target-Method Match.
Using these documents one can figure out what phrases to use for a particular skill or piece of content you want to teach. Most likely if I want students to differentiate things my learning target will not include anything about calculation. That may be involved in the lesson itself but the focus - the learning - should be the differences between the functions. When I am ready to assess my students on these skills, I will want to make sure that the tool I use matches the skill in a strong way. Differentiating involves a lot of explanation so a multiple choice assessment would not be as good as a short or long answer question.
The information we discussed today is truly helping me hone my craft. I feel better suited to make lessons and decisions over the coming months since now I have written all the learning targets from important sections of our text. I look forward to using them!
Through the day's activities we talked about some of the framework of learning targets and why they are important for us to use as educators but also important for our students to use as well. Every day I read through the learning target with my students so they understand what they should be able to do at the end of the lesson. If the target is, "I can differentiate between different types of functions" then I want my students to know that we will be analyzing different graphs, tables, and equations to figure out what the differences are.
The most important aspects of today for me, though, were two documents: the Verbs to Use in Learning Targets and the Target-Method Match.
Using these documents one can figure out what phrases to use for a particular skill or piece of content you want to teach. Most likely if I want students to differentiate things my learning target will not include anything about calculation. That may be involved in the lesson itself but the focus - the learning - should be the differences between the functions. When I am ready to assess my students on these skills, I will want to make sure that the tool I use matches the skill in a strong way. Differentiating involves a lot of explanation so a multiple choice assessment would not be as good as a short or long answer question.
The information we discussed today is truly helping me hone my craft. I feel better suited to make lessons and decisions over the coming months since now I have written all the learning targets from important sections of our text. I look forward to using them!
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