Lesson Objectives

In reading Chapter 3 of The Fundamental 5:  The Formula for Quality Instruction the subject of lesson objectives is addressed.  In walkthroughs of classrooms, I see a wide-variety of ways and uses of instructional objectives being utilized for student reflection.  I see a lot of "I can..." and a lot of straight technical verbatim from TEA.  I'm not sure how much is actually written for the teacher to reference or the students.  So, when I came across Chapter 3, I found my happy place.  In Chapter 3, objectives are written as "We will..." and in a statement form that is student friendly.  When beginning the lesson, the teacher actually references the statement and how it will be accomplished.  After the lesson, the students and teacher reflect on if they actually accomplished the objective or if reteaching or further addressing of objectives needs to occur.  It actually makes sense and is a useful tool in measuring success!  I hope that you find this a useful in leading your students to success!

Blended Learning

I am proud of the direction that our district and campus is moving toward blended learning.  The pathway of integrating technology into teaching lends itself to helping our students meet their goals and see success.
I was impressed when I recently read an article about the various districts across the country utilizing Blended Learning to help their students.  What I found was that our district is much like those illustrated.  We too use a variety of tools that others are accessing.  Our superintendent shared this vision of Blended Learning several years ago and shared a similar philosophy that others possess in that to increase student achievement and reach our academic goals, technology is key.  Blended learning allows teachers to target instruction in small groups.  If students are to be college and career ready then we need to have our classrooms look like those.  I'm thankful our superintendent and district is moving in the right direction to help our students!

Digital Resources and Goals

Today I shared our Instructional Rounds data and momentum plan with my entire staff.  I had just held a faculty meeting and shared how the ISTE standards require us to seek alternative resources for professional development and growth.  We reflected on the numerous resources from reliable sources that are available via Twitter, and other media.  So, in Instructional Rounds we found that we needed to find resources that would help us focus on improvement in our two target goal areas of higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy for teacher questions, and in increasing the levels of student discourse.  Put the two together (resources and goals) and we have found that there are numerous ways to help ourselves professionally and in turn, help our students achieve more and at higher levels.  We found videos, articles, anchor charts, and on and on that can help us master our goals and in turn help our students.  There are numerous professional websites, educational tools, and research based writers over the web that provide the resources that cannot be located through the typical print method.  I encourage our staff to seek resources and share them with their colleagues.  I look forward to seeing what we will find.

"I don't know"

I noticed today while reviewing the numerous topics that educators were discussing, was an interesting topic entitled, "I don't know."  It happens to fall right in line with what I'm looking for in regards to the feedback our campus received from our first "Instructional Rounds" visit.  One area that we will be focusing on as improvement will be in the area of student questioning or discourse.
In the article published by Heather Walport-Gawron she states that teachers need to realize the critical importance of using the statement, "I don't know," and that it is okay to make that statement to your students.  The power is in what you do with it.  She suggests the following:
Make sure your students know that no one knows the answer to everything, but there are ways to find the answers to the questions we have.  She also encourages you to teach the mindset that "I don't know" means "Wait, let's find out."  First, use Google and teach students the tricks to finding particular information and customize your toolbar to help you.  Second, offer students an opportunity to collaborate when seeing information i.e. Google and make it fun, such as a timed scavenger hunt.  Third, teach students to seek more than source so that your evidence is verified.  In closing, no matter how you teach your students to seek information, the power of "I don't know" can be used to honor confusion and help clear it up.