I’ve spent a lot of time in classrooms lately: observing as well as co-teaching and modeling lessons. One thing that I’m noticing really helps a lesson flow and stand out to students is having a clear objective in mind. Now let me be clear: I’m not a fan of teachers having to write their objective on the board every morning (like SWBAT) because of some admin requirement. In fact, I prefer to never write an objective for students to see, because it can often ruin the “surprise” of the lesson.
What I’m talking about is the teachers having a clear objective in mind, and being able to state it clearly. Let me share two examples to explain what I’m getting at.
A Struggle
Last school year, I was working with some middle school teachers to plan a lesson on slope. Together, we spent an hour planning a lesson that we were then going to go teach. However, in that hour we were not able to finish planning a lesson (and we went into teaching a lesson that was only about 80% planned!). It was a little stressful, but upon reflection, I realized the issue: We did not have a clear objective.
We started the day by talking about our goals for the lesson, and we even stated an objective. However, it was too vague. I can’t remember the exact wording, but we said something like Students will be able to understand slope. With this vague objective, planning was more of a struggle than we expected it to be. We spent a lot of time asking questions like
- Do we teach rise over run?
- Do we teach the slope formula?
- Do we include negative slopes?
- Do we want to include real world examples to highlight the use of slope?
- Do we look at how any two points on the same line can will you the same slope?
- Do we look at the formula y=mx+b?
- etc
We spent so much time continually asking what we needed to include that we hardly had time to plan what it is the students will actually do in the lesson.
If we had one, clear, specific objective in mind, it would have helped guide our planning, AND it would have helped me focus what questions I ask students in the moment during the lesson. It also would have helped me consolidate things at the end with more clarity.
If, for instance, we had stated an objective of calculating slope by counting the rise over run (as perhaps a first introduction to slope), we would have had that clarity in our planning. That is NOT to say that we couldn’t have a problem that includes negative slope or that we couldn’t tie it into the slope formula or y=mx+b. We also could have gone on a tangent (planned or not) about, say, simplifying fractions. Other things are possible, and sometimes things come up even if you didn’t plan for it. That is all good. The point I’m making is that having one clear goal for the lesson gives a driving direction, an objective we can (hopefully) achieve, in addition to other things that happen in the lesson.
A Success Story
This current school year I planned and taught a lesson on proofs with a group of teachers that went really well. A big part of that was the specificity of the objective. In this class, students had already seen proofs for a day or two. As we started our planning time, we talked about several options for lesson goals, and we settled on this: Students will understand that the order of the steps in a proof has a logical flow. That is, the order of the steps usually matters. You can change the order of some pieces, but not others, as the flow has to have a logical progression.
With this objective in mind, we planned a solid lesson that had a good flow to it. As one of the activities, we cut out the steps of a finished proof, mixed up the order and asked pairs to put it back into order. We also planned an Exit Ticket that checked in on students’ understanding of this objective. AND during the lesson, because I had this clear objective in mind, I could ask students (whether in their groups or as a whole class) questions like: Is it ok if I switch these two steps? What about these two? Students were able to talk about the logic of the proof and the connections between steps in a wonderful way.
Again, this does not mean other things didn’t happen. We talked about the “Given” and reviewed Triangle Congruence Theorems, discussing which one might be useful in a particular problem. Near the end of the lesson, students wrote their own proof (or two) from scratch. We will still reinforcing the ideas and skills behind proofs. However, that clear objective gave me a clear focus to keep coming back to!
In Conclusion
Having a clear objective gave a clear point to the lesson, a driving force. We didn’t need to write it down for students, and we could also go on tangents and explore some other things along the way. However, that one clear goal (One Goal to Rule Them All!) really helped focus our planning AND made it easier for us to question student thinking during the lesson, bringing out the main idea strongly.
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