In this first unit of Module 5, “Standards,” I have learned of three methods to dramatically improve my effectiveness when it comes to unit and lesson planning. These methods are “Unpacking a Standard,” “Backwards Mapping,” and writing “SMART Objectives.” In this post, I will reflect on what I have learned in Unit 1.
Unpacking a Standard
The first activity in Module 5 was “Unpacking a Standard", and at the time, I thought this was a very intimidating first activity. However, I was excited we were starting down the road to lesson planning. I was also pleased that I was back to designing Prezis, which is something I've only learned since I've started down my own road to a certification with Teach-Now, and have already taught my son, my many nieces and nephews and plan to teach with Prezis in my future classrooms. Unpacking a Standard involves identifying what the standards require the students to do in order to accomplish learning a particular concept. This lesson and activity was partially difficult because we do not follow the Common Core State standard system in Virginia. However, I'm grateful for this entire Module involving Common Core (and especially unpacking standards) as I will be moving to a state that has an education system that does revolve around Common Core. With the difficult language and lengths of the some of the standards, I can see why learning this application will be an extremely useful tool for me as a future educator, and one I imagine I will become more comfortable with as I gain more experience reading through the standards and planning my lessons based on them.
Backwards Mapping
Backwards Mapping has the educator beginning with the end in mind; that is, before planning activities, the teacher must know how he or she will determine whether the students have actually learned what the teacher has taught. This is something which I can most definitely see the value in, although it's easy to for me to fall into the habit of Forward Planning (assembling a group of activities loosely tied to the learning outcomes for a class). It doesn’t take much additional time or effort to plan backwards, and I can tell that students will learn much more when the the teacher approaches lesson planning in this manner. In addition, this makes designing assessments much easier, and gives me more confidence that students will reach the desired learning outcomes in a more efficient manner.
I enjoyed the videos (in the Required Study section) of Jay McTigue and found myself watching several more of his lessons on You Tube as well as reading more of his articles that were not in our Required Reading. I like how he was able to give me clarity towards the Backwards Design and Backwards Mapping ideas, and how he suggests we should not focus so intensely on student standardized test results or "teaching to the tests" as we sometimes call it. He also gives many great teaching examples and analogies from his coaching days, and how he implemented differentiated coaching/teaching to the swimmers: he explained he would coach different methods to the sprinters than he would to the butterfly swimmers to get different outcomes.
I also enjoyed backwards mapping on my way to the blog post in Activity One where I outlined proficiencies for my Social Studies standard and created learning activities as well. This was a very exciting lesson for me as I pieced together some activities I observed on the American Revolution from the public school where I volunteer, and was able to use my creative juices to brainstorm and revise the activities to a higher learning level and incorporate more 21st Century learning for middle school students. Finally, as I begin my journey towards a new career (with which I have no experience whatsoever), this Backwards Mapping approach to planning will be invaluable in helping me outline exactly what I need to teach and be able to determine when students have accomplished their learning objectives.
Writing SMART Objectives
Writing SMART objectives is something I have observed and read about in the past, but have not done myself. That will change once I begin my student teaching. I can see the value in sitting down and making myself write objectives in this way because it requires me to think more deeply about why students are performing an activity and how they are going to benefit from it. Using SMART objectives also helps me to think about the timeframe for certain activities and will help with time management in my role as a new teacher. I cannot say that I didn't struggle with the "Time Based" objective. I wasn't sure where to find that information but knew that once in the classroom it would probably be more clear when I received teaching materials. I also had to try to pull myself back from writing a full-blown activity for the "Measurable" objective. I will definitely be practicing on writing more SMART Objectives before I use them in the real world, as I will also cite more examples in the future to read and study for reference. I think this particular method will be a learning process for me, but one that I want to pursue.
In summary, this was a challenging but rewarding unit that I realize is critical to unit and lesson planning as well as instructing teachers how to understand the standards. I look forward to learning more about lesson planning as well as Common Core Standards and look forward to putting these practical lessons we've learned to work for me and my students.
*In addition, this week's lesson was a repeat for me as I took a portion of this module in January with another cohort. It's been valuable to see how the rest of this cohort has designed their info graph and written their SMART objectives as well as outlined their standards in their Prezis. This is definitely a different group of teachers (which shows different and unique perspectives), and as I knew it would be, it's becoming very beneficial for me to retake this module as I'm not as rushed as I was the first time taking the module since I started it when the cohort was already 2-3 weeks into the module.
