Embedded Files
Table 6.1 Web sites with standards for various disciplines
Developing Learning Objectives
Relating Objectives to Cognitive Processes
Figure 6.1 Identifying the goals and objectives of instruction
Planning for a Diverse Classroom
Identifying Additional Resources
Important Terms that Relate to Learning Theory and Development
When planning curricula and lessons, teachers need to attend to both scope and sequence. Scope refers to the span and depth that content will be covered in the curriculum, whereas sequence refers to the order in which content will be delivered. Together, a scope and sequence ensures that instruction is well planned, covers learning standards, and provides instruction appropriate for grade level learners. For example, the scope of a high-school English curriculum may specify instructional components (e.g., literature, composition, language/word study, etc.). The sequence may specify competencies at each level (e.g., English I: Connect literature with other art forms; English II: Connect literature to a universal theme; or English III: Compare and contrast literary selections).
Content Standards
In most school districts, state or national standards set both the scope and sequence of the curriculum. Standards provide specific learning goals for each grade level in basic disciplines such as reading, writing, mathematics, and science, as well as in other academic content areas. The development of and adherence to academic standards helps ensure that education is relatively comparable across schools within any school district or U.S. state. Table 6.1 provides Internet addresses for various content standards developed by national organizations. States may place their standards under curricular frameworks and indicate expectations for grade level performance; local schools may ask teachers to use curriculum guides to ensure that a year’s worth of lessons cover all expectations.
a Given the dynamic nature of many Web sites, you may find that you are directed to new or different links when you get to the site in question.
Used with permission from J. Ormrod. (2009). Essentials of educational psychology. (2nd ed, p. 284). Columbus, OH: Merrill. To purchase a copy of this book, click here.
Developing Learning Objectives
Content standards guide teachers in developing specific instructional or learning objectives, which are clear statements of what the student is expected to accomplish. Objectives are written as part of the planning process so that both teachers and students are clear about what the students are responsible for mastering. Objectives must be modified to meet the needs of all students, including those with special needs, and should address the diversity of the school population (see Chapter 4 of this tutorial). By connecting standards, learning objectives, and assessment, teachers can achieve instructional alignment that maximizes effectiveness in teaching and learning. Clear learning objectives also help teachers to assess student achievement fairly and accurately.
Objectives may be written from a cognitive or a behavioral perspective, but in either case, teachers must ensure that any objectives that they write are measurable and include language that specifies how students will demonstrate learning. Cognitive objectives emphasize thinking and comprehension and generally include words such as understand, recognize, create, or apply. Behavioral objectives focus on observable behaviors and use terms such as list, define, add, or calculate. Behavioral objectives tend to be used more frequently because they specify directly how a teacher will determine that the students have met the learning goal. For example, “Students will understand multiplication.” does not provide a clear, measurable behavior or a criterion for passing. “Given 20 double-digit multiplication problems, students will be able to compute accurate answers for 15.” is a more specific and thus better-written objective.
Note, however, that teachers should also attend to the tenets of constructivism and social learning theory when developing objectives and planning lessons. For example, learning objectives may specify behaviors outside students’ initial zones of proximal development (i.e., constructivist theory); plans to help students reach those objectives may include modeling (i.e., social learning theory) or extrinsic rewards (i.e., behaviorist theory). See Chapter 3 of this tutorial for additional details on these four learning theories, and consider how they can best be applied to lesson planning.
Relating Objectives to Cognitive Processes
Developing objectives, whether stated in behavioral or cognitive terms, requires attention to the various types of thinking associated with student learning. Many lessons should encourage higher-level thinking, which generally involves application, analysis, or evaluation of the new material. Examples of higher-level thinking include creative thinking, convergent and divergent thinking, critical thinking, inductiveand deductive reasoning, problem solving and transfer, and social negotiation. Each of these processes involves applying previously learned knowledge or skills to a new situation.
In general, students are more likely to engage in higher level thinking when they have sufficient knowledge about a topic, much of which is acquired first through lower-level thinking—cognitive processes that involve learning or remembering specific information or skills in more or less the same form in which they were initially presented. For example, students often need to engage in memorization of new material, such as vocabulary words, names of countries, historical dates, and the meanings of mathematical symbols. Other times, they must recallpreviously encoded problem-solving strategies, algorithms, or mental representations. Keep in mind that lower-level thinking is an important component of the learning process, and both types of thinking skills should be incorporated when developing learning objectives.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is often used by teachers as a hierarchical guide for developing objectives to address lower- and higher-order thinking skills. The taxonomy, in its current revision, describes learning objectives in three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The cognitive domain, which emphasizes academic and school learning, is particularly useful for planning class lessons and objectives. It includes six levels:
· Remembering: rote memorization of specific information
· Understanding: explaining information in one’s own words
· Applying: using information in a particular situation
· Analyzing: examining the various parts of information
· Evaluating: appraising information or data
· Creating: constructing something unique by combining information
Remembering and understanding are lower-order thinking skills, whereas application, analysis, evaluation, and creation are higher-order thinking skills. The affective domain includes five levels of objectives (i.e., receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and characterizing by value). The psychomotor domain, in the current revision, does not specify objectives by level. Figure 6.1 provides some guidelines for developing class goals and objectives during the planning process.
Figure 6.1 Identifying the goals and objectives of instruction
Identify both short-term objectives and long-term goals.
An elementary school teacher wants students to learn how to spell 10 new words each week. She also wants them to write a coherent and grammatically correct short story by the end of the school year.
· In addition to goals related to specific topics and content areas, identify goals related to students’ general long-term academic success.
o A middle school social studies teacher realizes that early adolescence is an important time for developing the learning and study strategies that students will need in high school and college. Thus, throughout the school year, he continually introduces new strategies for learning and remembering subject matter—effective ways that students might organize their notes, mnemonic techniques they might use to help them remember specific facts, questions they might try to answer as they read a textbook chapter, and so on.
· Include goals and objectives at varying levels of complexity and sophistication.
o A high school physics teacher wants students not only to understand basic kinds of machines (e.g., levers and wedges), but also to recognize examples of these machines in their own lives and use them to solve real-world problems.
· Consider physical, social, and affective outcomes as well as social outcomes.
o A physical education teacher wants his students to know the basic rules of basketball and to dribble and pass the ball appropriately. He also wants them to acquire a love of basketball, effective ways of working cooperatively with teammates, and a general desire to stay physically fit.
· Describe goals and objectives, not in terms of what the teacher will do during a lesson, but rather in terms of what students should be able to do at the end of instruction.
o A Spanish teacher knows that students easily confuse the verbs estar and ser because both are translated in English as “to be.” She identifies this objective for her students: “Students will correctly conjugate estar and ser in the present tense and use each one in appropriate contexts.”
· When formulating short-term objectives, identify specific behaviors that will reflect accomplishment of the objectives.
o In a unit on the food pyramid, a health teacher identifies this objective for students: “Students will create menus for a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, which, in combination, include all elements for the food pyramid in appropriate proportions.
· When formulating long-term goals that involve complex topics or skills, list a few abstract outcomes and then give examples of specific behaviors that reflect each one.
o Faculty members at a junior high school identify this instructional goal for all students at their school: “Students will demonstrate effective classroom listening skills—for example, by taking complete and accurate notes, answering teachers’ questions correctly, and seeking clarification when they do not understand.
Sources: Suggestions based on Brophy & Alleman, 1991; N.S. Cole, 1990; Gronlund, 2000, 2004; R.L. Linn & Miller, 2005; Popham, 1995 as noted in J. Ormrod (2009) Essentials of Educational Psychology. (2nd ed. p. 285). Columbus, OH: Merrill. To purchase a copy of this book, click here.
Task Analysis
When developing objectives and planning lessons, some teachers engage in the process of task analysis, which is a method of identifying specific knowledge, behaviors, or cognitive processes necessary to master a particular subject area or skill. Task analyses can be behavioral (e.g., identifying the specific behaviors necessary to perform a particular skill), based on subject matter (e.g., identifying the specific topics, concepts, and principles to be taught), or based on cognitive processing (e.g., specifying the mental processes involved in the task or activity, such as recall, elaboration, etc.).
Having identified the task’s components, the teacher has a better understanding of what students need to learn and what they need to do to demonstrate that learning. Once the task has been analyzed, writing objectives and planning classroom activities to help meet them are relatively straightforward.
Unit and Lesson Planning
As part of planning, teachers should ensure that classroom activities and assessments are tied directly to the learning objectives at the curricular level, the unit level, and the lesson level. The curricular objectives are frequently determined by state and local standards, as discussed previously. Teachers often have more flexibility in determining unit and lesson structure and objectives.
Unit planning is an intermediate step between curricular planning and lesson planning. Units comprise related lessons that together address a common topic or theme. A unit can last anywhere from a week or two to a month or more, depending on the topic and the age of the students.
Units may be subject-focused or interdisciplinary. “Nouns” (in elementary Language Arts), “Electricity” (in middle-school science), and “The Civil War” (in middle-school social studies) are subject-focused units; each addresses a single topic or theme within one content area. Within a subject-focused unit, each individual lesson addresses one or several related components of the overall topic (e.g., proper nouns, collective nouns, mass nouns versus count nouns, etc.). Typically, standard textbooks are arranged in (subject-focused) units, with each chapter representing one unit.
In contrast, interdisciplinary units are designed to include multiple content areas, all focused on the same theme. Themes of interdisciplinary units are frequently realistic and focused on student interests and experiences outside the classroom. For example, “Recycling” is an interdisciplinary unit that may include science (e.g., chemistry involved in organic waste), social studies (e.g., history of Earth Day), language arts (e.g., writing letters to the editor or essays), and math (e.g., computing volume and surface area of compacted trash). Effective teachers plan learning activities directed toward important global issues, and well-designed interdisciplinary units address those issues as they integrate ideas from different content areas.
Planning interdisciplinary units can be challenging at the middle-school and secondary levels because it usually requires cooperation and collaboration among teachers from different classes and/or disciplines. First, teachers need to agree on a theme, a process that can involve brainstorming sessions to identify and share content objectives. Next, teachers must address and reconcile sometimes disparate teaching methods, goals, and assessment measures while planning specific and integrated lessons. Teachers need also to share specific resources and discuss how content-specific activities can be used for an interdisciplinary goal. Finally, collaboration for interdisciplinary units should involve shared reflection after the unit is complete; the teachers should honestly evaluate themselves, each other, and the success of the unit as a whole.
At the primary levels, interdisciplinary units tend to be planned within single classes or sometimes across grades. Some teachers createcurricular webs for unit planning. Curricular webs are graphical representations that show interrelationships among course content and are used when planning interdisciplinary units. Webs are nonlinear, fluid unit plans that allow teachers to move cohesively to any element within the web as teachable moments arise.
Curriculum webs are advance organizers used within an emergent curriculum, an idea based in part on constructivist theories of learning. An emergent curriculum often begins with a general idea of student and teacher interest and progresses based on interactions among the teacher and students, rather than along a predetermined plan developed in advance by the teacher. It requires flexibility and creativity on the part of the teacher but is often seen as more fun, more relevant to contemporary issues, and more meaningful to students.
Unit planning thus involves selecting the appropriate topic or theme, determining whether the unit will be interdisciplinary or subject-focused, developing individual but integrated lesson plans, planning learning activities, selecting appropriate resources for those activities, and designing assessments to measure student learning. Note that unit planning can emphasize a cognitive component (e.g., addressing specific information-processing skills to be used), a constructivist component (e.g., encouraging students to develop and test their own hypotheses through interactions with the environment), a social learning component (e.g., modeling during an internship or field trip), and/or a behavioral component (e.g., with an emphasis on rewarding appropriate behaviors).
Because units comprise lessons, lesson planning is a necessary component of unit planning. Lessons typically are conducted in a single class period; lesson plans most commonly include a breakdown of class time by activity, indicate the content to be introduced and/or practiced, and identify the materials and procedures by which that content will be delivered. When planning lessons, effective teachers specify the topic and objectives for the lesson (which should be clearly tied to the unit goals and should specify measurable outcomes), any relevant prerequisites, the methods by which the material to be learned will be presented and practiced, and some plan for evaluation of student learning (see Chapter 9 of this tutorial for a detailed discussion of formative and summative assessment). Note that assessment should measure student achievement as well as the effectiveness of the instruction and the lesson or unit.
Planning for a Diverse Classroom
One sometimes-forgotten but very important component of lesson planning involves preparing adequately to meet the needs of a diverse student population. As discussed in Chapter 4 of this tutorial, most classrooms will include students with a range of abilities, interests, background preparation, and motivations. As a result, many school districts and state departments of education recommend that lesson plans directly address this diversity with the inclusion of sections for enrichment and remediation.
Enrichment. Enrichment refers to the provision of activities that go beyond the basics of the curriculum—additional topics and activities that can be used to keep gifted students motivated, highly motivated students engaged, or simply all students increasingly involved in a topic of interest.
Remediation. Remediation also adds to the curriculum, but usually for the opposite reason—remediation is provided when students need additional practice or alternative approaches to master the basic curricular material. Well-planned remediation activities are especially important when a classroom includes students with learning disabilities or English language learners; because these students must be adequately and fairly accommodated, effective teachers think about their needs as they plan the lesson, not just after a difficulty arises. Remediation tends to be individually focused, for example, extra assistance such as tutoring (by peers or more-experienced individuals), additional worksheets or exercises, and directed feedback with scaffolding.
Note that enrichment and remediation can, but need not, involve pull-out instruction (i.e., separating the special-needs students from the rest of the class). Teachers can provide individual enrichment activities (e.g., extra reading) or activities in which the entire class participates (e.g., field trips to the local science museum); they can plan a variety of remediation activities at different levels to ensure that all students’ needs are met.
Moreover, note that effective enrichment and remediation, either within the classroom or as pull-out instruction, often require assistance from specialists and para-educators. These individuals play important roles in all instruction and should be included throughout the planning process. Typical specialists include special-education teachers, library media specialists, teachers of the gifted and talented, IEP team members, counselors, or English language specialists. Para-educators (or paraprofessional educators) are individuals who are supervised by teachers or other professionals and can include teachers’ aides, instructional assistants, communication aides, and, in some cases, work-study students from local colleges or universities. In general, para-educators provide direct services to students and their families, such as tutoring, parents’ activities, translation, and library assistance. Especially when supervised by the classroom instructor, the activities and support for para-educators should be addressed as part of lesson planning.
Identifying Additional Resources
Developing lessons to help students meet educational objectives, especially in today’s increasingly complex digital environment, requires thorough understanding of the resources and materials available to support student learning. Specifically, teachers should be prepared to identify and use, in addition to textbooks and other standard curricular materials, the following:
A library collection (books, magazines, pamphlets, reference works)
Computers, the Internet and other electronic resources
Videos, DVDs
Artifacts, models, manipulatives
Guest speakers and community members
Students are increasingly using multimedia resources at home as well as in school, and technology-rich learning environments are becoming more readily available both for direct instruction (e.g., computer-based tutoring systems) and as supplemental support (e.g., problem-based learning simulations). Manipulatives and other hands-on materials help facilitate active learning and can make abstract ideas more concrete, which may be especially helpful for students in lower grades. Guest speakers can serve as models for students and can increase communication and help to develop positive relations between the school and the home and community.
When selecting new technologies or other hands-on learning materials, teachers should be sure to let the pedagogy drive the technology and not the reverse. In other words, resources should be selected because they provide something special to help students achieve their learning goals and not simply because they are new or attention catching. Most important is recognizing how to select content to achieve lesson and unit objectives.
Important terms that relate to learning theory and development
The following definitions come from Ormrod, J. (2009). Essentials of educational psychology (2nd ed., pp. G1-G5). Columbus, OH: Merrill. To purchase a copy of this book, click here. A few definitions come from the glossary of Woolfolk, A. (2009) Educational psychology (11th Ed., pp. 553-562). Columbus, OH: Merrill. To purchase a copy of this book, click here.
Advance organizer. An introduction to a lesson that provides an overall organizational scheme for the lesson.
Authentic activity. An approach to instruction similar to one students might encounter in the outside world.
Backward design. An approach to instructional planning in which a teacher first determines the desired end result (i.e., what knowledge and skills students should acquire) and then identifies appropriate assessments and instructional strategies.
Bloom’s taxonomy. A taxonomy of six cognitive processes, varying in complexity, that lessons might be designed to foster.
Convergent thinking. The process of pulling several pieces of information together to draw a conclusion or solve a problem.
Creative thinking. New and original behavior that yields a productive and culturally appropriate result.
Critical thinking. The process of evaluating the accuracy and worth of information and lines of reasoning.
Curricular web. Visual representation of organized content and useful for instructional planning as it identifies how concepts are connected.
Deductive reasoning. Process of drawing a logical inference about something that must be true, given other information that has already been presented as true.
Divergent thinking. The process of mentally moving in a variety of directions from a single idea.
Higher-level cognitive process. A cognitive process that involves going well beyond information specifically learned (e.g., by analyzing, applying, or evaluating it).
Inductive reasoning. Collecting data to draw a conclusion that may or may not be true.
Instructional goal. A desired long-term outcome of instruction.
Instructional objective. Desired outcome of a lesson or unit.
Lesson planning. Instructional planning that requires writing a predetermined guide for a lesson that identifies learning goals or objectives, necessary materials, instructional strategies, and one or more assessment methods.
Para-educator. Also known as a paraprofessional educator, a person who is trained to serve as an instructional assistant or teacher aide and is responsible for specialized assistance to classroom teachers or students.
Problem solving. Going beyond the simple application of previously learned rules to formulate new answers and achieve a goal.
Proximal goal. A concrete goal that can be accomplished within a short time period; it may be a stepping stone toward a longer-term goal.
Scope. The breadth and depth of content to be covered in a curriculum over a certain period of time, e.g. week, grading period, year, or K-12.
Sequence. The order in which content is delivered to learners over time.
Social negotiation. Aspect of learning process that relies on collaboration with others to co-construct meaning while respecting different perspectives.
Task analysis. The process of identifying specific knowledge, behaviors, or cognitive processes necessary to master a particular subject area or skill.
Transfer. Phenomenon in which something a person has learned at one time affects how the person learns or performs in a later situation.
Unit plan. A long-range plan covering one topic through multiple lessons and integrating the learning of skills and concepts for various subject areas including reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies and the arts.
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