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In competency - based education model, student and his/her learning is in the centre. When thinking about a lesson whose centre is the student, backward planning approach is helpful. This approach was described by Grant Wiggins in his book in 1998.
Teacher sets a learning objective for the student, clarifies how the result will be measured, which actions will prove what student know and can do, and only then thinks about how to achieve said learning objective in the lesson.
This approach is different from our previous experience of planning the lesson based on textbook, the topic in general or thinking through task perspective.
The Learning Objective
The Learning Objective
The learning objective is quite important in the lesson planning, for student motivation and involvement. Without the learning objective it is not possible do formative assessment and provide meaningful feedback to the student.
The teacher can ask himself/herself some questions in order to successfully formulate the learning objective:
What is the main thing that student need to learn at this lesson?
How is it important or appealing to student?
How does it relate to other lessons, subjects?
Can it be achieved in one lesson?
Can it be checked?
When setting the learning objective, successful learning objective principles must be considered:
Credible - realistic to achieve within the lesson and ambitious.
Essential - brings to a deeper understanding and must be in the context of the curriculum.
Meaningful – clear and understandable to the student – what does the student gain if he/she knows it or can do it?
Measurable – it is possible to make sure that the result has been achieved.
Active – operational – because we learn through action.
There are several levels that the teacher can use for self-evaluate his/her communication of the learning objective to the students. It is important to note that the level 4, where students are involved in the formulation of the target, is not the end goal since it will not be possible in all the topics. Sometimes the learning objective set by the teacher will be more effective. An option to see how far have I got in the study process:
The learning objective can be evaluated based on it’s thinking and learning depth - What actions, cognitive process is required from the student as the achievable result? Most used taxonomies to evaluate the cognitive and metacognitive depth of the learning process is Bloom’s taxonomy or SOLO taxonomy.
The learning objective depth based on the Bloom taxonomy:
Remember - can students repeat the information?
Understand - can students in their own words explain concepts and ideas?
Use - can students use the information in a new context?
Analyse - can students describe/demonstrate differences between concepts?
Evaluate - can students justify their opinion, make decisions?
Create - can students create a new product, construct knowledge?
SOLO taxonomy:
[9 Go Thinking – lets get the party started!; available here]
About effective learning planning and using nine events instruction approach so that every student achieves lesson objectives and learns
About effective learning planning and using nine events instruction approach so that every student achieves lesson objectives and learns
In school we experience a lot of interesting lessons. However, we do not remember everything we learn. How to encourage every student to actively connect to the lesson and leave it with acquired knowledge and skills? Part of the solution appears already in the lesson planning phase. This part discusses what needs to be taken into account to ensure that every student achieves the set learning objectives; what instruction events need to be thought of and in what order should students experience them to help them understand within context, draw conclusions, create, and to remember after a longer period of time what was learned. This part gives insight into the teaching planning model proposed by an American education researcher Robert Mills Gagné.
Gagné’s teaching planning model is based on the widely known model of cognitive information processing in cognitive psychology, which helps explain the potential impact of teacher behavior on learning. In order to identify the major learning events, the author observed the lessons of many good teachers at the beginning of the research, so this model is already in line with the practice of many teachers.
This model is designed whilst keeping in mind what processes in learning happen in the head of the student and how the teacher can encourage them and use them to ensure that every student reaches the objective of the lesson. The way a teacher teaches is closely linked to how a student learns. Therefore, when planning a lesson, the teacher should take into account not only what she/he wants to teach, but also how to organise learning in a way that promotes and supports student learning. Otherwise, the teacher may experience a situation where “we have already studied this” but later it turns out that knowledge has not been encoded into the long-term memory of the students.
The information that a student while studying learns or discovers, travels through the various types of memory, from the sensor register where we first perceive incoming information, to short-term and then to long-term memory. In order for the information to come to a long-term memory and stay there, the student must keep the attention to the learning process, link the information to their past experiences, establish a connection, reproduce it, and have to find a place for that information in the system that the student already has. Learning only happens when all these processes are active, therefore according to Robert Gagné's teaching theory and his nine teaching event patterns, the main teaching task is to activate information processing processes in a student's brain.
Robert Gagné offers nine learning events that are necessary to achieve learning objectives and goals - both in terms of one individual achievable learning objective within one lesson, and learning goals, which require longer time and a set of hours. In order to be able to understand the role and rationale of each learning event, it is explained how they relate to the learning process of the student. The following table provides structured information on what are the teacher's actions and techniques to enact each learning event. It is important to emphasise that this model is designed for teacher-targeted learning situations where there is a clear outcome to be achieved. Of course children and adults learn a lot in non-formal learning situations.
Nine learning events and their connection to three-part lesson planning
Nine learning events and their connection to three-part lesson planning
Many teachers in Latvia will recognise Gagne’s nine event learning instruction model three-part lesson planning method which has been developed and used many years, ever since the substantial Critical thinking and Science-Math project. Three-part lesson planning method has actualization, comprehension and reflection parts. As seen in the image, the goal for the lesson’s actualization part, which includes the three first Gagne’s learning events, is to prepare for learning. The middle part of the lesson or the comprehension part’s goal is to teach the student the new content and that includes Gagne’s 4th till 7th learning event. Lastly, the closing part of the lesson aims to reinforce learned and facilitate knowledge transfer (Gagne’s 8th and 9th learning event). Of course, tens of lesson planning models exist and each of them is suited for different learning objectives.
Educational researchers point out that all learning events do not necessarily have to take place in the same order, and that the teacher does not necessarily have to implement them in the same lesson. Perhaps one of the events has been experienced by students in the previous lesson and only a brief reference to what has been done in this case is sufficient. It is possible that some of the learning events can be carried out by students themselves. How much time needs to be spent on each event is closely related to how much teacher support a student needs to carry out the cognitive processes described. There are students and situations where everyone is coping, but sometimes the teacher's support in promoting the thinking process is absolutely necessary for students to reach the lesson’s learning objective and to utilize what they have learned in the future. The main goal is learning events is to stimulate internal information processing processes in the teacher's or students' own learning process.
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