What Have We Learned About Setting Objectives?

Presented by: Keith A. AndersonApril 29, 2010Bremen High School District 228Half-Day Institute

Setting Objectives

Setting objectives involves specific teacher and student behaviors, including both decision-making and communicating.

First, teachers select and refine learning goals.

Second, goal setting is an act of communicating.

Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback

Increases student achievement by 23% Instructional goals narrow what students

focus on. Setting objectives provides students with a

direction for their learning. When written in the form of a question, the brain makes easier connections to store in memory.

Research shows that feedback generally produces positive results. It should be corrective in nature with respect to the specific levels expected, timely, and specific.

Setting Objectives

Objective: Set objectives that are not too specific (i.e., Understand how topography influences the way people live and the extent to which they must depend on others.

Example Question: How does where people live influence how they live?

Personalize objectives - Students should be encouraged to personalize the teacher’s goals adapting them to their personal needs and desires.

Communicate objectives - How do you use objectives as a pre and post test? How do you use objectives on a daily basis?

Setting Objectives

Studies of effective goal setting suggest that goals with a narrow focus will actually minimize learning, because students focus on what has been communicated as important.

If goals are too focused, students will ignore related information.

Setting Objectives

Setting goals for the improvement of their own learning can be done on a weekly basis or at greater intervals. Students set goals, design strategies and identify indicators of success as well as reasons for setting the goal.

Implementation

Teachers who set, define, and communicate appropriate learning objectives employ research-based strategies such as:

1. Design flexible and general objectives.2. Allow students to personalize and refine

3. Allow students enough time to adapt4. Use advance organizers to introduce goals. 5. Help students understand different kinds of goals. 6. Focus goals on understanding.

Develop metacognitive behaviors; using a variety of strategies to manage

thinking processes.

Strategies include:

1. identifying what you know and what you don't know

2. talking about thinking3. keeping a journal 4. planning and self-regulation 5. debriefing the thinking process6. self-evaluation

Strategy

A thinking journal can be a very effective tool used to encourages students to become co-investigators with teachers.

Strategy

Develop pre, during, and post reading activities that include the KWL method, reciprocal teaching and the development of graphic organizers whereby students must think for themselves and exercise some control over the text.

Strategy

Coordinating long-range curricular planning (students and teachers together), using KWHL a modification of the KWL strategy.

Strategy

Provide multiple opportunities for class discussions, which can be most beneficial in helping students become more aware of their dispositions and of the underlying beliefs about self that affect their will to learn, to choose, and to participate in a variety of learning challenges

Why Do We Need to Implement These

Strategies?Because learning in schools is traditionally dominated and controlled by adults, students seldom make decisions about their own learning.

Why Do We Need to Implement These

Strategies?A touchstone of effective learning is that students are in charge of their own learning; essentially, they direct their own learning processes.

Why Do We Need to Implement These Strategies?

A growing body of research indicates that when students are working on goals they themselves have set, they are more motivated and efficient, and they achieve more than they do when working on goals that have been set by the teacher.

Why Do We Need to Implement These Strategies?

When students realize that their thoughts control their actions (i.e., their locus of control is internal), they can positively affect their own beliefs, motivations, and academic performance (McCombs, 1991).

Why Do We Need to Implement These Strategies?

We as educators can nurture student self-direction and personal efficacy by providing students with opportunities before, during and after instruction to exercise some control of their own learning.

An emphasis on student self-direction and efficacy means

that:

We teach and engage students in specific strategies that offer them opportunities to make decisions and solve problems on their own without being told what to do at all times.

An emphasis on student self-direction and efficacy means that:

We provide them with strategies designed to help them process information effectively and to be self-confident, believing that they have the abilities to succeed.

An emphasis on student self-direction and efficacy means that:

We help students become more reflective about their thinking and learning processes.

Mission Accomplished

How will we know when our students have become responsible for their own learning?

Students will demonstrate responsibility for their own learning by: Becoming self-regulated. Developing learning goals and problems

that are meaningful to them. Identifying the big picture of how

specific activities relate to individual goals.

Developing and implementing personal standards of excellence.

evaluating how well they have achieved their goals.

Students will demonstrate responsibility for their own learning by:

Developing alternative routes or strategies for attaining goals.

Using strategies for correcting errors and redirecting themselves when their plans do not work.

Identifying their own strengths and weaknesses and understanding how to deal with them productively and constructively.

Shaping and managing change.

Effective Teaching Strategies – based on research

Make tremendous differences in student achievement gains!