First of all, knowing clearly the objectives of the lesson is valuable to the teacher himself/herself. It is the first step for a teacher to start planning the lesson at all. Another question is whether and why students should know the attainable objective of the lesson. Gagne supports this by explaining that the notion of what exactly needs to be learned in the lesson helps the student to start his internal cognitive control mechanisms. They help the student to understand what is the most important in the lesson, what needs to be given special attention, what must be clearly understood or what the student must be able to do over the course of the lesson. If a student does not know the learning objectives for that lesson, he/she works at his discretion and/or guesses on what is important and what needs to be learned. This, however, may not correspond with the learning objectives that the teacher wanted to reach. The teacher can simply report the learning objectives, ask the student to read it, or, in an organised process, give students the opportunity to discover the planned learning objective, thereby allowing students to have a deeper understanding of what is exactly expected and why it is important to learn it. [Skola2030.lv]
The description of the method. At the beginning of the lesson the words in a sentence are jumbled on the board (or in the presentation). Students should recreate the aim of the lesson from these words in a limited time. If this method is used, students remember the aim of the lesson better at the end. This method may have different levels of difficulty:
a) the words are in the right order, but without correct case endings ;
b) the words are in jumbled order, but in the right case;
c) the first part of the sentence is given, but the second should be put together. [source: materials of Fulfillable mission] (Method is offered by Latvia)
The Latvian language. “I, the, grammatical, after, be able, lesson, define, this, sentence, centre, the, of ”. “After this lesson I will be able to define the grammatical centre of the sentence”.
The description of the method. At the beginning of the lesson the teacher writes a key word on the board, related to the aim of the lesson. The students are asked to do a mind map on how this word relates to other subjects, real life and the world in general. (Method is offered by Norway)
Mathematics. Key word: Percent. Words students could choose: clothing sale, statistics, newspapers, salary, loans, money.
History. Key word: Revolution. Words students could choose: American Revolution, French Revolution, riot, violence, change, intolerance, social injustice, development.
The description of the method. Teacher offers students the learning objective. It may be printed, included in a worksheet or on the screen, etc. The students are invited in pairs to think about it and write criteria for the learning objective by offering questions - How could you know that the objective is well achieved? Which actions could show that you have achieved the objective well? What does someone do who is good at….?
After that, the teacher looks over the criteria versions and the class together agrees which criteria will be used during the learning process and/or at the end of the lesson to evaluate the quality of the achieved result and objective. (Method is offered by Latvia)
Form 1 teacher offers an objective: Today you will learn how to write cursive small and capital letters ļ and Ļ. students study ļ and Ļ written by the teacher and propose criteria - the letter must reach both - lower and upper lines but cannot cross them; the letter softening mark must be right under the letter; the letter is the appropriate size and so on.
The description of the method. Before beginning the topic, the teacher prepares all lesson objectives which students must achieve during the lessons for the topic. students have several options what to do, based on what the teacher chooses:
a) students can plan in how many lessons they could achieve the objectives, which can be achieved in that lesson;
b) students together set criteria for the objectives that are to be achieved in that lesson;
c) the teacher asks students during the lesson to look at the objectives and mark the ones already achieved or which objective corresponds to the task they had just done.
d) at the end of the lesson students mark which objectives they achieved and the quality of the gained result.
e) at the end of the lesson students read the next lesson’s objectives and plan the resources that should be brought to the lesson.
Especially useful is using the objective list before studying for the final topic test. For example, the teacher asks students to look over the list and their notes to analyse how well the objectives have been achieved and then plan what still needs to be learned before the test. (Method is offered by Latvia)
Math (Example)