Tuesday Teaching Point October 29

Tuesday Teaching Point

October 29, 2013

·       Equitable Access to Rigorous, Standards-based Instruction

·       Results-focused Professional Learning and Collaboration

·       Strong Partnerships with Families and Community

·       A Culturally-Responsive Organization

Teaching Point:

Teachers will learn a phraseology to be used when posting a teaching point, and be able to write learning objectives in a consistent fashion across the school. To date we agree that having a clear teaching Point is important. Last week I wrote of the importance that Teaching Point or your Learning Objective be tied to a Standard. Today I want you to consider one method we can all use to communicate Teaching Point. As a school, how can we be consistent in our communication of teaching point?

Indeed, a district wide convention is that you write your learning objective(s) on the white board. At a minimum that is to be expected in your classroom. What I have seen, however, is that each teacher posts their teaching point differently. I fear this can be confusing to students as they move around from classroom to classroom throughout the day.

Experts say a posted Teaching point should be stated in so-called “kid friendly language” so that the student knows the learning of the class is about him or her. That means the Learning Objective should be stated in a format that stems from a phrase like “Today students will learn________, and be able to _________”. I am asking that this phrasing be used in each classroom. Some acceptable tweaks to this might be:

“Today students will continue to learn________, and be able to _________”.

“Today students will review (or reflect upon) their learning about ________, and practice their ability to _________”.

“This week (or By Wednesday) students will learn________, and be able to _________”.

“Today students will demonstrate what they have learned about________, and that they can _________”.

There are more. I intend to go a little deeper into this notion of “Kid Friendly” next week. But what is important is that each learning objective clearly states “What student will learn and be able to do.” There can be no confusion about what the student is going to learn. And gives focus to the aims of the teacher.

Teaching Standard:

The inspiration to write a little more in depth about Learning Objective came from a passage a book by Jan Chappuis, Seven Strategies of Assessment and Learning. In Chapter 2, she lists the first two strategies as 1: Provide students with a clear and understandable vision of the learning target, and 2: Use examples of strong and weak work. The author goes on to state, “Taken together Strategy One and Strategy Two, provide students with a vision of what they are to be learning. When we invest time up front to build the vision, we gain it back later in increased student motivation and the resulting higher quality work.” (Chappuis Page 17)

Charlotte Danielson: This week’s teaching point is based in Domain 3A “Communicating with Students”. Proficiency is described as “The teacher clearly communicates instructional purpose of the lesson, including where it is situated within broader learning, and explains procedures and directions clearly.” Furthermore, a distinguished teacher, “links the instructional purpose of the lesson to student interests; the directions and procedures are clear and anticipate possible student misunderstanding.”

5 Dimensions: In the dimension of Purpose, the Sub-Dimension is Learning Target and Teaching Point. A vision is that Teaching Points are based on the Teacher’s knowledge of the student’s learning needs in relation to the learning target. That means one might consider how the teaching point supports the learning needs of individual students in meeting the learning target.

Teaching Assessment:

I will be around this week to take a picture of your learning objective as stated in these terms. I look forward to what I find and sharing with you how we narrow the message about what we are teaching in class, and most importantly how we communicate that, consistently.

Professional Collaboration and Learning:

On Friday November 1, PCT will be the second meeting of our all staff Success team. We will check in on the progress of our struggling students and the ways we are intervening to support them towards success. We meet in the Library at 1:00. We will have visitors to observe our work. 

BTW:

Pumpkin Pi…Have a Happy Halloween and a great November, starting this week!