Learning Objectives

Welcome to my first blog about teaching! You know what's so nice? When you're away from school for three out of four days, but you make it back in time for dismissal on the last day, and the kids see you and kinda do a double take, and then smile and say, "Oh, Ms. Brezek! You're back! We missed you!" or "Hey best friend! How come you're so late to school?" (mostly) Love my students!

The last two days I've been in a training. Our district is using a new data collection system from a company based out of Phoenix. It's called Look 2 Learning. It's basically where you go into classrooms to collect data about learning, but you do it by talking to students. These little chats are conducted by teachers and admin and last from 2-4 minutes in length. They are non-evaluative and only used as a means to collect data about topics such as these:

• Whether or not the child knows the objective
• The thinking level of the work
• The qualities that make the classroom either: engaged, on-task, or off task (more to come on this...)
• (and there's more, but that's the short list)

No individual data is given, no feedback to teachers when the people doing the walks collects data, and at one point or another, all teachers walk to collect the data. Once it's collected, it's then used to plan for improvement that will lead to student achievement. Right now, the L2L team is making those decisions but eventually, after all teachers have walked classrooms and understand the system better, all teachers will participate in choosing areas for growth and then doing PD to make it happen.

So back to my training, now that you have a little background. Today, we were talking about posting objectives. I was raised by an amazing district and I learned the value of posting objectives so kids can focus their learning. This practice has been named in research and has outstanding results that are tied to impressive student achievement. However today, I saw the posting of objectives in a new way.

Let's say you're a 9th grade English teacher and today you are going to have your kids diagram sentences, so, like the good teacher you are, you post on your board: "Today we will diagram sentences." Now, instead, let's say you are a 9th grade kid and you come walking into class, and check the objective that is already posted on the board. As you're walking to your seat in after seeing the plans for the day, do you suppose you are thinking, "YES! Diagramming sentences....this was what I was hoping to do the second I woke up!! I can't wait!" No. You are most definitely not thinking that.

This does not happen.

Here's the thing - just because you post (or don't post) your objectives doesn't mean the kids will (or will not) know what you're doing. What if instead, your lesson on diagramming sentences went like this:

(Nothing posted on board.)

Kids come in and sit down. Teacher starts, "Hey kids, grab some paper and a pencil and write down three things that happened to you last night."

9th grader writes:

1. Went skateboarding with friends at park.
2. Dropped my phone on the concrete and shattered the screen.
3. Was late getting home and in trouble for broken phone.

Teacher next tells students to share out with their group about their night last night and gives them a few minutes so they can pay mind to their egocentric ways - telling and talking about their stories.

Next, the teacher tells the students what they are going to be doing - still diagramming sentences - but with their personal stories. Now, even though they are still doing the same objective (and the teacher may have now just written the objective on the board) it's better, because the kids have come in and have had an opportunity to do personal response (one of the 8 qualities that lead to high engagement found by the two guys who came up with this process over the course of walking upwards of 16,000 classrooms).

I can totally see now how by doing just that personal response piece, the lesson has been tweaked, just a tiny bit. While the kids are, at the end of the day, still diagramming sentences, they didn't come in and see the objective, think, "Aaawwwwhhh, damn," and go to their seats with a negative attitude about how they will spend their next 45 or 50 minutes. Instead, they are doing the same thing, aware of how to focus their learning, and have just a tiny ounce of positivity about it, because the teacher made them take a teeny-tiny part of ownership in the process.

You know, sometimes you go through life doing stuff without objectives - like dating or getting married. You start dating someone or you get married and maybe you're not sure of how it's supposed to go or what to do next, but that doesn't stop you from doing the activity. That being said, perhaps it's okay in school if students are engaging in work that was crafted by thinking of not only higher order thinking levels, but also qualities that engage students when they are used (more to come on the other 7 of these) and high yield academic strategies, such as note-taking or considering similarities and differences (lots of Marzano's work) even if for the first part of the lesson they may not be sure where they're going...but the teacher knows, because they crafted the whole experience.

So, along with lots of other great ideas I have from the past two days, I'm going to keep this in the back of my head. Sometimes teachers come and walk my classroom and ask the bonehead who doesn't know the objective even when it is posted on the board!

Thoughts?