I remember six years ago when the district officials for my school system first decided all classroom teachers must post state standards and objectives for every lesson taught. I dutifully copied all 200+ standards onto individual chart strips, laminated them (oh, what a waste!), and kept them organized numerically in a long cardboard box. I thought I’d made my work easy–each day, I’d just switch out the old chart strips for the new ones.
Then administration decided that STUDENTS must understand the daily objectives. The language must also be posted in kid-friendly terms, and any adult should be able to walk in to the classroom and ask a seven-year-old kid what the purpose of the activity was, and the student should be able to answer.
A handful of my colleagues were outraged. And all of us were baffled. Getting little kids to articulate (on demand, to total strangers visiting the classroom) what they were learning and WHY in every lesson seemed like an insurmountable task. And maybe an unnecessary one. But the new requirement caused us to ask ourselves some hard questions on a daily basis:
- Do students really understand why they’re learning this skill or concept?
- Can they make a clear connection between the activity and the outcome I’ve told them to aim for?
- Have I done my best to make this task and its objective meaningful and relevant to students’ lives?
I realized I wanted my students to know what they were learning and its purpose for their own sake, not for accountability to district officials. I began posting my objectives in kid-friendly language and incorporating them into our morning meeting discussions. I noticed students actually started reading and talking about the objectives on their own (“Hey, look, we’re going to learn the multiply by 6 today! Ooh, no more narrative essays, this week we’re doing expository!”) I made an increased effort to help them explore the purpose and meaning of their work, more than I ever had before. But I never felt like I developed my lesson purpose as well as I could have with my students. Like so many other aspects of my practice, I knew there was more I could be doing, but wasn’t sure what or how.
Enter The Purposeful Classroom: How to Structure Lessons with Learning Goals in Mind, a new book by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. Those names probably ring a bell for you: they’ve written tons of other books
Right at the beginning of the book, Fisher and Frey differentiate between a lesson objective (which is in the mind of the teacher) and the lesson purpose, which is the act of carefully communicating the objective to students. They address the SMART criteria for objectives and even touch on how inquiry-based lessons fit in. I love that they talk about how backwards planning (a la my beloved Understanding by Design
This is a fantastic book for any teacher who is serious about creating objectives and purpose for lessons. The Purposeful Classroom is no easy beach read due to the subject matter, but it’s written in a straight-forward, relevant way that addresses the major trends right now in education and ties them all back to creating meaning and purpose for students. Fisher and Frey explain in very simple terms how to write objectives that include both content and language components, and how those objectives fit with pacing guides.They even use the buzz-word du jour “unpacking the standards” in a surprisingly meaningful way.
I especially like the chapters on ensuring that a lesson’s purpose is relevant and inviting students to own the purpose. They discuss intrinsic vs. extrisic motivation as well as fixed versus growth mindsets, teaching kids how to set their own goals, and using “I Can” statements. The book concludes with a discussion of assessment: identifying outcomes related to the purpose and knowing when a learning target has been met (which is not as easy as it seems; sometimes we think the class understands a concept when most kids have actually just muddled through it.)
ASCD has generously provide me with a review copy of this book as well as an additional copy for a give-away. For a chance to win this book, leave a comment on this post before midnight on Sunday, February 19th. Tell us what YOU find to be the most challenging aspect of purposeful lesson planning. I’ll choose a comment randomly and announce a winner right here in this space on Monday the 2oth. Good luck–this is a book that is definitely worth digging into!
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UPDATE
2/10/12: CONTEST CLOSED. The winner is Rebecca, number 110! Rebecca, send an email to angelawatson [at] live [dot] com and let me know what your mailing address is. Thank you to everyone who participated and shared ideas about lesson planning challenge! You’ve raised some really important points, and I’ll be addressing some of these concerns in an upcoming post.
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There are so many things I struggle with when planning purposeful lessons. Fitting it all in is definitely a roadblock….there is so much! Making it interesting and relevant to the kids lives seems to be a hurdle at times, and putting the lessons into kid friendly language, that is easy for them to understand. I have so many books that I pull ideas from, it sure would be nice if there was a 1 tool that would take the place of all of the different tools I use……it is exhausting to constantly be running from one resource to another to obtain information for making writing purposeful!
This would help me so much! I start student teaching in the fall
This would help me tackle the hardest part of my job… meet district requirements *and* make our work together meaningful for students.
It’s a toss-up between fitting all learning goals in, in all classes and communicating their relevance to my students. I’ve found that relevance fuels motivation. Goodness knows, we need motivation!
The most challenging part is trying to make it meaningful for ALL students. Making sure my objective is relevant to all my students can be tricky.
I have found that some standards are written so vague that it’s hard enough for the teacher to understand it, much less the students understand; but still, we try to make everyone understand. My students actually have a copy of their standards (for my class) inside their textbooks, but ironically the students don’t know they are there until I point them out to them. My district has also suggested that we post our standards, and it’s funny I had a similar idea as your article, I was going to print out all the standards and post them on the wall, bulletin board, etc each day as I needed them. Then I discovered that I use so many during a week, that I would be wallpapering my walls with them, so I did not follow through. Again, I go back to the rational that the students have a copy in their books; however, as the article pointed out, they don’t read them. They truly do not have a clue of why we do the lessons that we do in class until I explain it to them; it would be nice for them to understand why we are studying parts of speech, phrases, and clauses to improve their essays without me having to stress it to them everyday.
I find the hardest part to be making the learning relevant and connecting to the students everyday lives… And trying to fit it all in!! So many objectives, so little time!
The most challenging aspect of purposeful lesson planning is connecting it to the students. As a teacher the challenge of taking teacher talk and putting it chunks of learning for the students to be successful in.
The hardest part of purposeful lesson planning for me is how to infuse the learning with not just the objectives, but with the joy of learning I want to leave with my students. I miss the days we could stay devoted to a topic that they LOVED, and didn’t have to move quickly to cover the objectives. My students are very young, and I think if we don’t encourage their natural enthusiasm for school, we will lose them down the road.
The aspect I find to be the most challenging of purposeful lesson planning is discovering clever ways to make all learning fun and explain how they might use what they learn in real life. Making the personal connection is not always easy for a teacher to do for every lesson. Once the students’ expectations for your lessons are carried out in this manner when you don’t have something fun for them you lose them instantly!
I teach Early Childhood Education to high school students and we have a preschool right in our classroom… Trying to deal with teaching the standards to the ‘bigs’ who teach the the preschool standards to the ‘littles’ keeps me dizzy! I can always use more guidance with this!
I find it most challenging to just remember to post the standards daily. I have strips with student friendly wording but it still doesn’t seem to make it relevant to my students. I would love to read about ways to more effectively communicate to my students what we are learning and why. I have been looking for a resource like this!
Students should know why they are learning what they are being taught, it speaks to the idea of usefulness. People don’t do quality work unless they see it as somehow being useful. We don’t like jumping through the hoops that local, state and national entities force us to jump through, especially when they are virtually clueless w.r.t. education. We should expect the same from our students: if they think we are just making them jump through educational hoops, we should not expect quality from them, either.
I find as a first year teacher that I struggle with many things. The main thing is motivating students, or students understanding the purpose in learning specific skills. If I can get the students to understand the purpose or usefulness behind the topic, they will usually get on board with me. As I saw in a previous post, objectives are very vague, and I struggle with what should I teach. I would love to add this book to my collection.
My biggest challenge is addressing each child’s learning gaps in a way that he/she can best learn. It’s a complicated dance.
I teach grade 7 and it’s pretty straightforward for the students to understand our province’s standards. What they are amazed at is that the government tells teachers what to teach each year, and that they can see this document on the internet. It’s an eye-opener for them academically that our little in-school monthly standardized test isn’t the thing that determines their grade, it’s all those other little things as well!
I don’t have the same requirement as many teachers to exactly match a standard to a lesson plan. Ours are quite broad and can encompass just about any sensible learning activity. To get students to understand why we are doing something is often as simple as making an argument for being an intelligent, creative and well-educated person because these are the people who dislike NOT knowing things. Or I have them face it as a challenge: are they ABLE to do it? Great! Then they win over the “boring” thing. They’ve mastered it and can move on.
I can’t help it. . . I just feel that forcing teachers to “post” objectives and “coach” students on how to answer questions about what they’re learning is disrespectful and a waste of precious classroom time! Effective teachers constantly reflect on their lesson objectives and ways to make learning relevant to the diverse group of students before them.
The most challenging aspect is making it relevant to the kids. I know why I’m teaching what I’m teaching, I need them to understand also.
Teaching kindergarten, I find it difficult to make standards/learning objectives relevant to five & six year olds. Our district would like for all students to be able to “state” standards/learning objectives when asked.
My biggest challenge is matching learning objectives to meet the needs of all my students while also meeting the “needs” of my district’s expectations.
Boy do I need this book! I’m halfway through my first year teaching (still alive!) and I feel like I’m finding my own way at last. My school is under the gun to make AYP this year after missing he mark the last two years. My poor fourth-graders are feeling the pressure with our state writing test approaching in 9 days. I feel passionate about teaching the whole child, not just prepping them to perform on our standardized test. Finding a balance has been one of my greatest challenges this year.
I struggle with phrasing the objective in a kid-friendly manner and with planning lessons that fully engage the students and fulfill the purpose and meet the objective.
I would say the most difficult for me is to fit everything in. There are so many objectives to teach in so little time. It makes it difficult to spiral back and move forward. Also, I teach at a Title 1 school and many of my students come from homes where education takes a back burner to the troubles of everyday life. Another difficulty is making my students see the relevance and value in what I am teaching them.
My greatest challenge is posting essential questions and learning objectives in such a way that my 3rd graders really get it and take ownership of those goals/objectives.
The most challenging part of lesson planning is preparing instruction for all types of learning styles.
I,too, struggle on how to get students to articulate the purpose of an activity. I look forward to reading this book!
I want to learn not only how to incorporate all outcomes but how to making it meaningful and important for the students. I want to inspire my students to become independent learners.
Working as part of an inclusion team, my coteacher and I do not always agree about the lessons to be taught and how they are to be presented to maximize the benefit to both groups of students, those regular ed students and those students with IEPs. Hoping this book can shed some light on what is best. Thanks!
One of the biggest challenges is getting all of the information on the board. I teach second grade, so that means all subjects in my class. Finding the space to put it all up is tricky. When I finally have everything up, the poor kids can’t read it unless they come close because it is too small for them to see. I can understand listing what we will be learning, but we have to include essential questions along with the objectives. Did I mention we must include bell work, homework, and a summarizing activity known as a “ticket out”? I would LOVE to have help in making this process easier and most of all MEANINGFUL for my kiddos.
Because I teach at a Charter school and we have an extended school day you would think that I would have more time for our units, but we pack so much into our day I find myself just trying to get through the units. Just trying to get through doesn’t give me much time to evaluate and think about purpose like I know I should.
Using kid friendly terms and making lessons relevant and meaningful (and engaging and fun)to kinders is a great challenge most of the time. And time..,finding the time to develop lesson plans without taking so much work home is a huge challenge.
Trying to explain why prime factorizing is important! When do we use it?!!!
I think it is very important that my students know the purpose of what we are learning. I would love to read this book to find out how to do this in the most effective way.
Putting the purpose in kid language is definitely the biggest challenge for me.
The hardest part I find to lesson planning is differentiating the guided practice for all students. This is something I hope the book would help me with.
As our district/state moves into adopting the Common Core as well as principals doing Downey Walk-Throughs – this book is very timely and I will be reading it! As I begin wrapping my arms around the new standards, what a great idea to start out with all of us (me and my students) understanding the whats and whys of our learning….and the principals that will be looking for the displaying of said standards!
Sometimes, it’s difficult to pinpoint one objective. I usually start my lesson plan with an objective, but (in language), trying to incorporate the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing (and culture) often means that the same objectives get used over and over, just with different vocabulary, etc. It can take meaning away from the objective when it’s so often repeated. That’s a challenge.
For me the hardest thing about purposeful planning is the material that these young children are being exposed to. Some of my students are just not ready for these rigours tasks. No matter how I present it I just know some children just need more time and unfortunately with pacing schedules they won’t get it. So trying to find that “extra time” can be challenging but is a must when planning for my class.
I agree with everyone that posted. Students need to take ownership of their learning. Regardless if I get a free copy, I think I’m going to order the book immediately. I’m always on the lookout for ways for improving myself as a teacher and my students.
My district is just now making the transition into stating teacher objectives. This book sounds like one I ought to read. I love reading professional books. Jazzes me up for a great school year! Thank you for sharing the info.
I think the most challenging thing about purposeful planning is three things:
1. The time it takes in the midst of all the other responsibilities we have
2. The lack of true training and peer mentorship
3. The lack of understanding among new teachers, who are career changers.
My district began this practice this year. I believe it is important that students know which skill or standard they are practicing/learning and why. However, it is often difficult to make every lesson relevant to students so that they have that connection and motivation. The most challenging aspect of purposeful lesson planning for me is how to make the material meaningful to students while keeping them engaged. Students are not always able to comprehend that we are learning skills to enable us to learn new skills later on in school. I look foward to exploring the techniques and strategies in this book!
The most stressing part about purposeful planning is trying to plan lessons for the students when their background knowledge is so diverse. I feel like I am trying to meet so many needs in their lives in order to get them to the place where the concepts and skills can make any sense to them. It’s frustrating to know where the students are supposed to be by the end of the year when you see what they have when they come into your classroom. I love teaching – but the pressure of trying to meet the goals expected of teachers with students that are not educationally prepared makes teaching tough these days.
It has become more challenging to create lessons that are relevant to students and to have them recognize and BELIEVE IN the relevance of the lessons for them. We have the same requirements to post ‘kid friendly’ objectives and for students to be able to explain what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how their learning will be demonstrated. Objectives cannot address all of that in any concise way!
That book sounds fascinating! I have been trying to get my students to connect to the purpose of our lessons for awhile, but it an be tough. I would love some clear cut explanation on how to do this in a kid-friendly way!
I also post kid friendly learning targets each day. I find that sometimes it is freeing. When we get too immersed in a lesson and I feel that I am losing some of them, I stop and refer back to the “bottom line” of the topic. If they get that, they are doing okay. The rest is “nice to know” but not necessary. You can see the relief in their faces. Knowing the expected outcome/goal is good for them.
Differentiation of students learning styles and connecting with the lesson.
Sometimes my/the lesson objectives do not meet all my students’ needs, therefore tweaking objectives by differentiating is necessary.
Presenting purpouse in kid friendly language is a big one for me teaching first graders. I see the bigger picture of what we’re learning but I’d love some tips on how to make it more purpouseful for them!
Getting the students to buy-in to the purpose of the lesson.
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