Freed! Getting started already taught me several lessons. I didn’t jump the hurdle I knocked it down. This is the process of trial and error. I have erred. My errors were biting off too much to chew and not having a clear plan of attack. I now have a new goal (and a clear plan of attack) .
Jumping into the middle of a curriculum unit and trying to find the goal and teach to the goal is not helpful in trying to identify a specific learning intention, or target, for your students. It effectively truncates the trajectory you are trying to map out for your students. Mapping this trajectory is a huge task to undertake and is definitely not the goal of a weekly lesson plan. The better way to approach this, I think, is to start with the Standard as your main goal and map out the skills it will take to reach that goal adding the sub-goals to your main goal as you go along, backward mapping. In other words, scaffolding the learning to hit the bigger target. Doing this allows you to break that big goal into lesson sized chunks thereby providing your day-to-day lesson goals. This doesn’t happen in the middle of a unit. And it doesn’t happen with the weekly assessment as the goal which is what tried to do at first. It is a long-term plan. Not a short-term plan. I bit off too much at once. Not only that, I tried to bite the apple core bypassing the peel all together. No wonder it was so hard!
I needed clearer plan of attack so I could get started now not later. And I found one. I sat in on a staff meeting yesterday introducing us to the concept of “Close Reading” an element of the Common core. It miraculously provided me with a clearer plan. Creating my long-term goals, as I mentioned earlier, needs to happen and will happen, but at the beginning of a unit not in the middle. I am not beginning a unit so that is not my current plan of attack. Instead I need a short-term goal so I can get my feet wet, try a few things, and see what works. I have already decided to focus on comprhension. So I have created a smaller trajectory with the goal of simply understanding a reading passage. I have a a clear plan of attack
This is my new goal, clearly understand a reading passage. I have a plan with bite sized lesson goals all aiming to help a student understand a reading passage. Smaller trajectory, smaller goals, clearer focus, still Formative Assessment. Pressure for CST testing is coming. This goal will help students be more successful on CST tests, become better readers, become better thinkers, and allow me to experiment with the Formative Assessment techniques that I have learned. These images show my idea of the trajectory and how it breaks down. This is the plan I will use for the next couple of weeks. I will keep you posted.
On a mission to teach students how to be thinkers 