Teaching with Standards, Goals, and Objectives 2: Nuts and Bolts

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2. Nuts & Bolts

Introduction
Overview of Teaching
Unit Plans and Goals
Planning the Lesson with Objectives
Student-Oriented Objectives
Rubrics
Evaluation: Testing based on Objectives
Parts of a Lesson Plan
Computerized Lesson Plans
Notes and Modifications
Examples of Goals and Objectives
1.Rationale

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Articles and Lessons >> Classroom Management >> Teaching with Standards, Goals, and Objectives: 1. Rationale; 2. Nuts and Bolts >> Resources for Standards, Goals and Objectives >> How to Get Started Guides

The Nuts and Bolts of
Teaching with Standards, Goals, and Objectives

This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 dealt with rationale of teaching with standards and definitions of standards, goals and objectives.

Photos of pen and paper and students with fountain are from Hemeria through 1and1.

Scratching for Meaning image ©2008 V. Coskrey & W. Sterling

Getting Started:
an Overview of Teaching

Teaching is structured by subjects, standards for the subject, standards-based goals, student-oriented objectives and evaluation of learning. The teaching is organized into subjects and grade-levels. Finally, the teaching of a subject at a grade level is organized into units that are subdivided into lessons.

The goals of a unit are accomplished by teaching the objectives of a lesson. Student learning is evaluated by testing the student's knowledge and skills that represent the accomplishment of the objectives in ways proposed in the objectives.

Planning The Unit

Let's start with the unit. First, using the standards, decide on a set of goals by choosing the topics that will be part of the unit and how you plan to approach the topics in a broad sense. Then decide how much time you can allot to the unit. (In many cases the time allowed is so limited that the approach to the topic is confined to only a few activities.) Next, list the topics within sentences that are expressions of the goals for the unit. Group the goals and sequence them to show the flow of the unit over time. Finally, specify the time allowed for the unit.

Some examples of related topics in chemistry are balancing equations, reading equations, and classifying equations. These can be introduced within the same unit or across several units, depending on how you decide to handle them. In a typical textbook, they are covered in about 3/4 of one chapter, with associated material in other chapters.

Let's say that in one unit I choose these goals.

Students will read, write, and interpret chemical equations written in word-equation form, sentence form, and chemical symbol form.
Students will categorize specific chemical equations according to 4 basic types.

These goals will keep students busy for about 2-3 weeks, including 2 tests. Having students write equations in chemical symbols will extend the unit a few days. Also, introducing some ideas for balancing the equations seems logical at this point, but will extend the unit time frame even more. So I will choose two additional goals.

Students will begin to consider the balanced relationship between the reactants and products of a chemical equation.
Students will begin writing equations in chemical symbol form, but will not be expected to properly balance all equations.

Knowing I will teach another unit on balancing equations, I can limit the discussions on balancing or plan another test (or just a question or two) focusing on just a few balancing-equations skills as part of this unit. Often reading and balancing seem to go together and classifying comes third. With the goals I have chosen, simple classifying of equations is needed to use the terms other than "yields" --such as "becomes," breaks down into," and "makes"-- in the sentence equations.

Sometimes it depends on how the students approach the subject and how quickly they take to balancing concepts. Some take more time to see the underlying patterns, and splitting the units give them the additional time.

Think about learning the parts of a sentence, fractions, and the types of plants in the same basic ways. Students will learn to recognize the subject and predicate of a sentence and how they relate. Students will learn about fractions; to write fractions; and how to divide objects into halves, thirds, and fourths. How do you want students to type plants?

At this point, you can list the projects, readings, field trips, tests, labs, and other major activities of the unit. These can be organized by goals, or just placed in a list of activities beneath the goals. Each activity should match to at least one goal, however.

Write it all down on a page and you have a unit plan. You can write it in list form or outline style if you like. I suggest these categories.

Unit Title
Goals,
Major Activities
Tests
Time Span

Add these sections to your outline, but plan to fill them out as you make more specific lesson plans:

Equipment and Supplies
Expenses
Required Paper Work
Reservations
etc.

Feel free to modify the unit plan as you plan lessons and as you teach and modify you actual teaching activities. You will want to be flexible enough to change what you do based on student response, student interest, special circumstance, and all kinds of things; but not so disorganized that you do not accomplish the majority of your goals.

Personally, I think in terms of material covered for a major test as equal to one unit. My units were often 1-1/2 to 2 weeks long. A 3-week unit often covered 1-2 major tests and a few minor quizzes. In junior high science a unit might cover a chapter; in high school chemistry often 1/2 a chapter. A unit to me depended on how complex the material was and how it tied together. Some of my units used sections of several chapters, skipping over sections that I would return to later in another unit.

The goals for the unit kept me on track and helped me decide which chapters and sections of the text to use. The framework helped me choose the goals. (The framework was based on standards: see how it ties together?)

Planning the Lesson

With the unit decided upon, it is time to write objectives for each goal. Consider the goal: "Students will read and interpret chemical equations written in word-equation form, sentence form, and chemical symbol form."

To understand, interpret, read and write equations, a student must know that an equation represents a chemical reaction; understand the symbols used to express an equation; read the expression of a chemical reaction, and demonstrate the understanding of these skills and concepts.

Important Note: Teacher-oriented objectives are easy to write and to understand, but this is just scratchwork. Objectives written on lesson plans--especially if turned in to your boss-- are always student-oriented. Also note that these "objectives" can be use as part of the activity list, supplemented with items like, "students will complete practice worksheet #1."
Student-oriented objectives are discussed below.

From a teacher's perspective the objectives might be these.

Explain how an equation represents a chemical reaction.
Define and demonstrate these 3 different expressions of a chemical equation -- a sentence, a word equation and a chemical symbol equation.
Define and describe the use of the parts of an equation and the symbols used.
Present different equations in the sentence form and have the student assist you in transforming the given equations into each of he other types.
Give the students a set of equations to transform in independent practice.
Check for student understanding.
Test the student's understanding of the material taught

Note how each objective implies a need for reading, teacher explanation, discussion, and practice problems. I list specific activities after the objectives are written. Activities should match to at least one objective. It helps to use columns so that you can read across a table for objectives and matching activities. Outline formats are useful in single column plans, with sections labeled as Objectives and Activities, among others, including Homework and Evaluation.

Since the same activity often covers more than one objective, some designation for which objectives match to an activity is useful. If you number the objectives, then you can label an activity at the end of the description with an endnote such as (obj. 1, 2 & 5). Note: On the lesson plan, the objective label refers to student-oriented objectives. I started with teacher-oriented ones because they are easier to understand in the beginning.

Student-oriented Objectives

Now that you have visualized the teacher objectives and the activities that you will use to teach, you are ready to write student-oriented objectives. Remember, this is the preferred form of objectives used in a lesson plan--especially if someone else will be reading it. Some school systems require objectives to be in a student-oriented form designed after the teaching of Madeline Hunter and referred to as behavioral objectives.

Note: once you learn to write student-oriented objectives, writing these will become the second step planning a lesson. I offered the teacher-oriented objectives first in this discussion simply as a learning tool. The first step is choosing the unit goal for the lesson.

To write student-oriented, behavioral objectives follow a pattern of 3 basic parts.

Begin with the phrase "The learner will" which can be abbreviated as "TLW".
The middle section describes the expected behavior of a student who has learned the material expressed in the objective.
The last part is a statement of how you the teacher will know the student has learned the material.

An example of a behavioral objective for interpreting word equations would be,"TLW write a sentence interpreting the meaning of a given word equation in a way that describes the chemical reaction expressed in the word equation with an an accuracy of 90% judged according to a rubric/checklist of items required in evaluating the description of the reaction."

Of course, an experienced teacher assumes parts of the behavioral objective to be understood, even reducing the 3rd part to "correctly" or "90% correctly." Note the use of a rubric in the 3rd part. Without mentioning the rubric, someone else and maybe even you the teacher might not know how to objectively evaluate the skill. Without the rubric, you would be evaluating subjectively. The red marks you use to grade the results are actually a matching of the student's statement to the "mental rubric" that you use subconsciously, or the one expressed to yourself mentally or on paper consciously.

a c
Rubrics

The advantage of a written rubric--the rules against which you grade a project, discussion question, lab activity, or learned behavior--is that you can give it to the student as a checklist of what must be included in a correct answer to a problem based on the objective. These checklists are sometimes just the notes given in the teacher's discussion of the skill and example problems. Many students have trouble recognizing hte checklist from the notes, so providing a written rubric in addition to the notes helps the student learn.

Rubrics are especially important for complex objectives that depend on pre-requisite objectives. For example, separating the reactants with the word and or with a plus sign (+) is one item in the rubric. Recognizing the reactants for the distinct chemicals that they are is a pre-requisite or separate sub-objective that is often subsumed within the teaching of interpreting of a word equation. Often the teacher assumes that the student will realize that he is to list the chemicals separately without actually stating that he is to do so. Unfortunately some students do not make this cognitive leap. A teacher must know if this is so. Hence the inclusion of the behavior in the rubric.

Using such a rubric allows the teacher to know that a student has achieved an objective at a level high enough to progress without re-teaching. If the accuracy set in the behavioral objective is not met, then the rubric tells the teacher what needs to be re-taught and re-checked before the behavioral objective is evaluated again. Independent practice activities in classwork and homework are designed to evaluate this learn-re-teach-learn interaction in a non-threatening manner prior to the Unit Test that evaluates many objectives at once.

When I write my lessons, I plan to teach 1-5--usually 3--objectives per lesson. Often most of the objectives are sub-objectives of a major objective. In this unit of interpreting equations, 2 major objectives would involve writing word equations and writing chemical symbol equations. Each of these would have the same sub-objectives of defining and using coefficients, separating chemicals, separating reactants from products, and using the correct synonymous phrase for the yield sign (becomes, breaks down into, combines to make, etc.)(Reacts to become, and yields is not very meaningful in determining if the student actually understands what the equation says about the reaction!).

Some sub-objectives are not actually written into a lesson plan as a behavioral objective if a rubric is included since the sub-ojbectives become items in the rubric. (Note: the phrasing of the objectives as included in the rubric are not usually written in behavioral form.) The major objectives are always written as behavioral objectives in the lesson plan, even if rephrased in the rubric.

The rubrics of a lesson are listed by title in either the activity list or in the evaluation list. They are attached to the lesson plan along with the worksheets used in the lesson. The actual rubric can also be part of the worksheets of a homework or practice worksheet, or a section of the notes given to the students and labeled as "rubric" or "checklist."

Evaluating the Objectives

Test questions evaluate behavioral objectives and sub-objectives. Partial credit is sometimes given for sub-objectives handled correctly even if the major objective is not accurately expressed on a subjective question or problem. Discussion questions are considered subjective questions, as are short-answer questions that have more than one right answer which can be expressed correctly in many different ways. Objective questions have only 1 correct answer and include true/false, matching, and multiple-choice question types. Homework and classwork independent practice is always designed to get the student to use the skills and knowledge in ways similar to how they will be tested, but not necessarily in the same question format..

Enrichment activities give the student a chance to use or think about the skills and knowledge in new and different ways. Readings, both fiction and non-fictional works; field trips; reports; projects; and essays are useful enrichment activities. These are not graded as strictly as the tests or activities that you used to evaluate the learning of the behavioral objectives.

Which activity is which is another teaching decision; and the activities are categorized as such on the written lesson plan. Likewise with the activities categorized as remedial and review. How much credit and how accurately they must be graded depend on how well a student responds to completing the work and demonstrating his learning of the behavioral objectives. Hence some activities are graded; some are not. Sometimes students get A or F just for attempting the work or not. All in the name of motivating the student to do the work, emphasizing--and grading with timely feedback--the work needed to accomplish the behavioral objectives.

Teacher Tips for the Tutor or Homeschooler:
Writing the Unit and Lesson Plans

There are many formats for a lesson plan. Most have these 10 basic parts.

(1) Header--with name, school, subject, topic, and date;
(2) Background Information--with standard(s), textbook pages, unit, time span, and pre-requisites;
(3) Goals and Objectives--with some coded labels that refer back to standards and forward to activities;
(4) Lesson Introduction--with a description of a quick review that tells the student where this lesson fits in with what he knows and has been doing, and a quick motivational activity that focuses the student on the goals of the lesson;
(5) Activities--with a sequence that reflects how the lesson will be taught and coded labels to show how each activity matches to the objectives;
(6) Equipment and Supplies--with notes about whether advance planning and shopping must be done;
(7) Evaluation--with a list of rubrics and tests to be used, space to add your notes during the actual teaching on success of the lesson and on the identified need for review and re-teaching;
(8) Assignments--of classwork and homework with due dates;
(9) Supplemental References--with a list of workbooks, lab books, worksheets, supplemental readings, curricular packages and other references needed for the lesson, including any special bulletin board or poster that matches the lesson; and
(10) Enrichment and Remediation Activities--with references to any text needed and any notes about the activities.

Yes, these categories will all fit on a single page template, often printed in landscaped format. Incomplete sections are continued on additional pages that are stapled to the template page and labeled with the template section titles. Develop abbreviations for commonly used terms to save space.

It also helps to attach blank worksheets, answer sheets, and quizzes to the lesson plan. Worksheets and tests covering several lessons can be placed with the lesson where the activity is begun or with the unit plan. Alternatively, all worksheets, quizzes and tests can be placed in the chronological order behind the unit plan or after all unit lesson plans--whatever works for you. If you make up questions or discussion points on the fly, attach a copy of these to the lesson after you teach it. Make a copy or summary of any notes you gave and attach that, too. Needless to say, hard copies of lesson plans are best kept in folders or ring binders so that material can be added as needed.

Computerized Lesson and Unit Plans

This might seem like a lot, but you will find that much of the work is added in on the fly, in advance of the lesson, in coded labels, and by cut-and-paste if you are using a computer to write the plan. I used an Access database and designed an input template for writing plans and a report template for printing a plan with copies to be turned in and to place on my desk for my use. I wrote on my copy as I used it to add modifications to activities, assignments, discussions, deadlines, timespans and whatever. These notes helped to rewrite the plan for future use and to adjust future lessons.

A Word Xp Form

A template for planning a science lab worksheet is available for free download. It is based on my use of "The Scientific Method" paradigm in planning lab activities.

The image below is of the Access Xp report form for the lesson plan database I wrote and sell.

Get more items from Valerie

You might use a form for the lesson plan and use Word's database for forms. This works well, but I liked the Access database where I could alter the table as I needed to and could include columns for my extra notes that would not be part of the printed lesson plan. I also liked the ability to search. After a while, the framework of standards and objectives were entered and could be easily placed into another database table that could be combined with this one through queries.

This image is an example of my lesson plan template in the report view from which copies are printed. My Access Xp database template for lesson plans is available for purchase. (Look for the buy now button on the linked pagel) It is my modification of the lesson plan form once used by a school district in Mississippi that was based on the Madelein Hunter Plan.

Notes and Modifications

In the database I kept links to worksheets, tests, and other computer-accessed material, making it easier to locate and print these materials. Notes for adjusting the lessons in the future can be linked or added to a special column in the database, and then you can alter the lesson plan for future use at your leisure.

Why not scan the lesson plan you wrote on, and then add a link to the image into the database for future use? If you use the plan straight from a computer view while teaching, use text notes to refer to changes or use the record input view. If you add to it from the input view, consider using a different color text so you can follow your changes.

Example Goals and Associated Behavioral Objectives

Remember, it is best to learn how to make the full statement of an objective so that the full power of the behavioral objective can be used. However, once you learn how to write the full objective and have practiced enough that you begin to think in behavioral terms and perspectives, you may chop parts out of the written objective in your plans. The evaluation section states the guideline (rubric) for the test questions used to evaluate the learning of the objective. This part is often not written in the lesson plan. However, as you can see, knowing how the objective is to tested guides you in choosing appropriate demonstration and practice activities.

Example 1.
- Goal: Undertanding fractions.
- Grade Level: K-2
- Objective: The learner will identify the fractions represented by diagrams of common shapes divided into halves, thirds, and fourths as demonstrated by correctly stating the fraction that matches the section of a pattern block set with 100% accuracy on an oral quiz using pattern block math manipulatives
- Objective: The learner will identify the fractions represented by diagrams of common shapes divided into halves, thirds, and fourths as demonstrated by correctly matching the fraction to the diagram with 100% accuracy on a written test.
- Objective: The learner will write down the fraction that represents the shaded portion of a diagram of common shapes divided into halves, thirds and fourths with 80% accuracy on a written test.
- Objective: The learner will divide sets of objects and diagrams of sets of objects into fractional groups of halves, thirds and fourths with 100% accuracy using manipulataives in a practicum and written tests. (Best divided into 2 objectives!)
- Objective: The learner will write the fraction that represents the division of sets of objects and diagrams of sets of objects when divided into halves, thirds, and fourths with 80% accuracy using manipulatives in a practicum and written tests. (Another 2 in 1 that would be better written as 2 distinct objectives.)

Example 2
- Goal: Understanding mitosis as the process of duplicating cells with identical genetic material.
- Grade Level: 9-10.
- Objective: The learner will rank-order the stages of mitosis in chronological order with 100% accuracy on a closed-ended written test question.
- Objective: The learner will match a given description of a mitotic stage to the name of that stage in a matching test question with 80% accuracy.
- Objective: The learner will label a diagram of a chromosome choosing words from a set of given terms used on all diagrams with 80% accuracy as part of a written test.
- Objective: The learner will rank-order images of mitosis as seen under the microscope with 100% accuracy on a close-ended written test question.
- These are just a few of the possible sub-objectives that can be written for a major objecive for which students will describe the process of mitosis. A more advanced class would not require the closed-ended test questions but could be asked to describe mitosis in an open-ended discussion-question. A beginning biology class would find such a question daunting, especially if graded for 80%-100% accuracy.