When teachers start designing our annual planning, there are several aspects to be taken into account. One of them, are those goals we expect our children to achieve at the end of the academic year. However, they are usually higher and therefore not plausible to be targeted. Thus, the main issues which arise are how we choose the aims, and what we do in our classrooms to have our children achieve them.
First of all, we have to bear in mind the goals which the government states in their programs, so we can outline what it is expected for every level and the means to do so.
Then, as part of the means, it is definitely a must to teach our children how to learn and assess the process of learning at all times, providing effective and permanent feedback. Evidencing understanding to our children is also a way to encourage them in the understanding process. On the other hand, integration of contents becomes a need among the different areas of learning and with EFL. Having our children make connections promote higher thinking abilities and transference: evaluation, analysis, application, and even creation through the big ideas.
Big ideas, as defined by Wiggins, are definitely the best tool to have our students understanding, considering their pedagogical power.
Big ideas have to be tackled and brought down to earth, in order to be manageable by both teachers and students. Students are to know the process, the different steps, the causes and effects which belong to different areas of learning, in order to fulfill the expected outcomes proposed in a learning unit and/or activity.
Wiggins also mentions representative challenges as a means to reach understanding. Supporting and boosting learning to explore new contents from the inside, following even unknown processes. The latter have to be clear and explicit in terms of what it is expected and how it has to be pursued. In addition, assessment, if included, has to be explicited beforehand.
All in all, Wiggins puts forward a test for teachers in both macro and micro level. The former, when seeing the scope of what we desire and look for in our learners at the end of a process - based on a bigger scope: what it is desired by the authorities: the policy makers and curriculum designers. On the other hand, the micro level, which is the classroom practice. What do we want our students to do in a class? Are our goals clear and attainable? How do we guide, provide and encourage students to go through the right track to do so? Finally, what is our role to do so?
9 comments:
Hi Loreto,
Your post made me think about a thorny issue in our Chilean educational reality. What if teachers do not have let's say the affective-cognitive-social skills to think about big ideas and meaningful questions promoting tranfer?Pretty scary right?
I think initial teachers trainning must provide students with at least a brush of I don't know...common sense?.Difficult task I guess but I'm sure you and me and all of us know those teachers who lack those abilities and go around this world spreading their empty contents to little children....
Let's be careful then..i'm not saying that I'm perfect but at least I'm aware of what matters!
Thanks!
Vicky
Hi Loreto
I agree with you on the aspect that sometimes we consider goals to high to be achieved, and obviously our students do not get them. And this last part is completely our fault as teachers because “probably” we do not have planned our lessons considering the real variables that could affect our students’ learning process. This gap is due to the time pressure we all have suffered when teaching. Probably we should cover lesser contents and more deeply in order to provide real understanding to our students. How a teacher who works thirty and something hours teaching in a classroom plan the lessons properly considering contents, time, and real understanding among some variables? It is not an easy question to answer: however, it is good for us as teachers to be aware of matters like these ones. Perhaps, we could do something about it if someday we have the chance to do it.
Are our goals clear and attainable?
This is definitely a key question posed by Loreto. Quite often, when we carry out our planning at the beginning of the year we end up with objectives which seem to be very ambitious. In fact, at some point over the academic year, we feel frustrated and disappointed about our students' performance.
Why our aims are targeted so highly?
Mainly because we prefer to base our planning decisions on external variables such as the school or the ministry's standards. Naturally, we should always consider these compulsory demands, but we could find a middle way taking into acount students' actual educational performance.
Additonally,the problem is caused by our lack of knowledge in our students' reality in terms of cognitive and affective factors. Therefore, it turns out to be logical for us to feel frustrated if students do not achieve our aims. That is why I found extermely relevant and useful Loreto's idea about informing our students about our objectives and about assessment. They should also be aware of the aims and the corresponding evaluative aspects we expect from them.
Loreto:
I found challenging your last questions: What is the role of teachers? According to the text, one of the most important roles of teachers is to teach our students how to learn in order to encourage autonomy and transferability. The most effective tools in doing so are big ideas. However, several problems arise when we have to apply these ideas in the classroom. On the one hand, the importance of critical thinking and values are seen as indispensable. On the other hand, preparing our students to get good results in examinations such as PSU or SIMCE is vital in order to succeed in the quality of education. Focusing on training students to get good results in test clearly have an opposite effect to the one which is intended by Wiggins. This situation makes me wonder if the government is really aware of what effective learning is.
Hi Loreto,
I agree with your statement “First of all, we have to bear in mind the goals which the government states in their programs”.
I think it’s a must for us to know and understand the goals stated by government in order to analyse them and relate them to our own educational reality. In this way, we respond to the government requirements, but more important, to our students needs. According to this, “The main issues which arise are how we choose the aims, and what we do in our classrooms to have our children achieve them”. Clearly, these are the keys to put in the earth what we are expected to do in our lesson and what we want our students achieve. To do so planning to set clear and attainable goals is a must as well as designing strategies to be learnt and applied by our students in order to aim the learning.
Hi Loreto!
There are so many aspects to be considered when carrying out a lesson that sometimes we seem to be lost, especially when most of the time we lack the support of the rest of the people involved in the process of teaching. That is why it becomes more and more crucial to have the necessary time and will to share our work with our colleagues and the other members of the community; to have a break in the middle of the road and analyse what has been done and the way to continue. Team work is essential to improve. We are not alone, that we should not forget.
My Dear Loretillo:
Your wise words remind me of the following concept: Responsibility (or... was it commitment?). What you describe is THE steps to follow in order to make the wheels of education easily turn. But as wheels are not only made up of tyres, but of some other components, in real life it is very difficult to make these wheels turn to have a nice journey towards effective education. Responsibility here is quite an issue as we, the tyre-teachers have the best of the intentions to make the wheels turn, but sometimes, the rest of the components, namely, bolt-bosses or the bearing-policy makers are not quite interested in what quality means when talking about education. There are some institutions who hire engineers as bosses of the education department (because they are mind-structured) and some other specialists to teach in the classrooms (nothing better than a native speaker without strategies to teach English), but they forget to include the ones who have been raised to teach. And everytime teachers give an opinion, we are stigmatized as communists, revolutionaries or anarchists... just because we mention the words "critical thinking". Consequently, the plans are a bunch of unconnected contents that foster isolation and confusion instead of transferability and understanding. Again, the objectives are unattainable because evrybody has forgotten about practicability. What to do, then?
Greetings.
I simply guess that we don't have a positive position about our capacities and abilities about our students and ourselves. Why should I bother about students who study in a school that has a name of a spaceship; students who won't have a future, no expectations in life, and will never succeed basically. This weekend I saw during the TESOL conference (you too) a band of jazz made up of students from a really vulnerable sector, and it's the most amazing thing I've seen lately. So, what are we talking about? big projects are really attainable, It was so cool to see these guys playing like real professionals, why is it that we can't make that with some of our students? and I'm not saying all of them, just a little group, and if they don't manage to learn the language, probably just making them think a bit about a few things that will be good in their lives. We can plan big things I guess, it's teachers who believe they can't.
I think we plan with quite high expectations about what we want our pupils to learn and we end up the year rather frustrated not because the objectives are too demanding, it's not a problem of content.
I feel that it's a problem of means.As somebody else previously said,we know what we want them to learn but the means are not the proper ones,MAYBE.
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