In my district, we adopted a new framework for teacher
evaluation, UW CEL, and I learned a new phrase: Teaching point. What's that,
you ask? Learning target, learning goal,
performance expectation, lesson objective, power standard: while they each have
an important nuance of meaning, they all refer to what students should
understand or be able to do by the end of a certain period of time.
Posting those learning targets every day so they are visible
to all? Yeah, I've never done that, for
a variety of reasons. However, I have
repeatedly heard that all three frameworks in our state are based on research, and
hey, I want my students to learn, so when I read in our district’s framework
rubric about daily posting as one possible way of communicating learning targets,
I figured–I'm game, I'll give it a try—and I have been posting these in class
for the last two weeks.
I shared what I was doing with a fellow teacher—and we had a
very animated discussion (raised voices in the copy room!) about the pros and
cons of posting learning targets and how this might or might not fit into
teacher evaluation. I will say I put
some thought into how and when during my lessons I was going to post these targets
and discuss them with the students. I knew that for many lessons, about the
last thing that would be helpful would be to have a posted learning target at
the beginning of a lesson.
I’ll give you an example: Last week, my students extracted
DNA from an onion and from themselves. Then they wrote descriptions of what
they saw, and talked about possible reasons for this—it turns out human and
onion DNA, on a macroscopic level, are virtually identical. I wanted students to understand that the similarities
in the structure of DNA in diverse organisms like onions and humans are a piece
of evidence of evolution from a common ancestor. It was much more powerful to have the students
themselves first notice the similarities between their DNA, their lab partner's DNA,
and the onion's DNA, and try to come up with reasons why this may be. The students saw the evidence, the students
owned the evidence, the learning target was solidly achieved without explicit
posting at the beginning of the lesson.
I did post the target the next day, however, which did spur some further
discussion. I must say that most days in
the past two weeks I posted learning targets at the beginning of the lesson,
and I do think it was helpful.
So should I march into
my classroom armed with a few teaching points and a “By Gum, these students are
gonna learn” attitude? Well, a sense
of mission is certainly helpful, but really, this is where the nuance of the
teaching point versus a learning target comes in. It’s kind of like the National Board
Architecture of Accomplished teaching: teachers use their knowledge of students
to set learning goals appropriate for these
students, at this time, in this setting.
The entire architecture rests on knowledge of students. A teaching point
in my district's instructional framework is a target based on student learning
needs. Do my different class periods have
different personalities and learning needs?
Oh yes. Do the individual
students in each class have different learning needs? Yes again.
Clearly, one of the challenges is differentiating teaching points when
teachers have so many students. However, the
teaching point versus learning target idea, and the centering of teaching
points on students needs, does start to address some of the concerns raised in
a more general conversation at lunch in my school faculty room a while ago. The discussion revolved around welcoming the
students and establishing community each day, as opposed to just starting right
in on learning targets and success criteria. I think basing teaching points on knowledge of students could tie into this nicely.
A problem with having posted learning goals associated in
any way with a teacher evaluation rubric?
In some buildings in some districts, having learning goals written on
the board has become an item on a check-off sheet administrators look for on
walk-throughs, whether formal or informal. There are many legitimate
educational reasons a teacher may not have a learning target posted even if the
lesson was planned with a specific target in mind. The emphasis needs to be on communicating
learning targets in some way, multiple ways are even better, rather than a
requirement of posting. It seems to me that
effective learning targets may be based on content or process, may be phrased
as questions, or may be communicated in a variety of ways at various points in
the lesson.
I asked my students what they thought about me posting learning
targets, and whether they thought it was helpful to their learning. The student reaction? Overall, quite positive. One student said it helped him know what to
focus on each day. Another student said
she liked going over them at the end of the class period because it helped her
know if she had learned what she needed to that day. One student requested more “student-friendly”
language. (Well, she didn’t use the term
student-friendly, but that is the idea she was expressing!) Several students
were somewhat indifferent. One student
said he thought he was learning, but the learning target wasn’t really
helping–he thought he was learning from all the other things we did in class. I think this student has a good point–I don’t
think that posting a learning goal is what is going to make or break a lesson. I’m pretty sure a well planned set of
learning activities trumps the posting of a learning target any day.
So am I going to keep posting learning targets in my
classroom after my two week trial period? It was helpful enough for student
learning that yes, I think I will.
We ought to be able to differentiate the way Todd describes… even leaving kids completely to their own devices (at the secondary level at least, I can’t speak for elementary). I’m glad your Supe didn’t start talking legalese.
As for targets, I had a surprise drop-in observation the last day before holiday break…I’d been out with sick family for two days, but made it in the last day before the holiday to try to clean up the mess. I had kids going three directions–some revising an essay, some working on a vocabulary task, some doing a mini-project for poetry. Not only different tasks, but different units, different goals, and who knows what targets. That’s a real classroom. I think it has to happen sometimes. In a shop class, or in a class with multiple levels, I think it is less about “posting a learning target for all to see” than it is about the students knowing why they are doing what they are doing. If they can communicate why they are engaged in the task (not “to finish,” but what skill or learning is happening), I would argue that you’ve still done your job, even if there is a different answer to “why” for every kid in the room. An administrator who is a reflective educator ought to be able to recognize when context or content is unique, and adjust his/her assessment of the teacher accordingly.
Maren, great post. I really mean that. I am done ranting, (for now.) Knowing and working right next door to you I am impressed at your willingness to try new things and not just try them, but to be very intentional in your teaching. Who knows, following your lead, I might even try posting my learning targets myself. I actually do have them and I present them to the class, though in a very informal way. I also appreciate that you and all the other folks who have commented are not learning target Nazis. Everyone shows flexibility and knows there are times when giving away the ending at the beginning is guaranteed to make a lesson about as interesting as watching the SuperBowl the day after it is played.
I have no problem with learning targets per se. Letting students know what they are supposed to be learning and using that goal to focus one’s teaching is important. What I have a problem with is that it is being mandated to teachers that we “communicate” them to students. Every teacher all the time.
You mention that there are districts that are checking on their teachers to make sure that such targets are posted and presumably adhered to. That is what I have a problem with. As teachers we are expected to, and I think it is important to, individualize our instruction. But our own assessment, i.e. our evaluation, is being tied to an essentially everyone fill in the worksheet style of teaching. No learning targets? Teacher down by a point.
As you know among other classes I teach woodshop. It is certainly the most individualized teaching I do. I have some thirty kids working on dozens of different projects at thirty different skill levels. Please, who ever dreamed up this mandate explain to me how I communicate meaningful learning targets, that reflect that individualized approach.
“ Today’s goal: students will not spill blood.”
I trust that our current administrators have enough subtlety that they aren’t going to be using a check off sheet approach to evaluation but on the other hand administrators change.
Speaking of which, one of the high points of my teaching career happened about five years ago, luckily well before any learning target expectations. In physics about five or six students had been gone an entire week. I started the class and I took that group of students across the hall to work in the computer lab to bring them up to speed. I worked with them for about twenty minutes while the rest of the class was fending for themselves. I finally went back to my room and I was pleased to see everyone was on task. What I was a little shocked to see was the the superintendent was sitting in my chair. I asked how long he had been there and he said about fifteen minutes. I sort of apologized, and he said not to worry, the kids were doing great.
But had he been looking for learning targets I would have been in a world of hurt. Not only were learning targets missing, hell the teacher was gone too.
I tend to use a question or two that I project onto the screen at the end (or beginning) of the period, and I use this as an exit slip for me to assess how things went during the lesson.
I might have a question such as: “How do the final three pages of To Kill A Mockingbird reinforce Harper Lee’s central message to her readers?” I may even have a second question such as: “What sentence components are required in a complex sentence?”
I like this better than a statement of learning since it guides a student more like what he/she may see with an actual assignment or outside assessment; plus, it allows me to assess whether or not my primary objectives were met. Plus, I can combine the two and have the student answer the question in the first example in the form of the second question example. I like this growing series of layers.
P.S. I am in a Marzano district and we have discretion over our presentation and communication of targets, goals, and objectives.
I’m not a very structured or sequential teacher and I find that posted targets – mine are titled, “What I will know / be able to do by the end of today” – help me stay focused, so that even if the lesson meanders down a heated discussion of a poem’s meaning, I can keep pushing them to think about “To what effect does Langston Hughes use rhyme?”
I don’t give the answers out in my objectives, but I do want my students to be able to anticipate and explicitly capture the academic language and skills they’re acquiring. I post a week’s worth, both to help me build one lesson on the previous, prepare for what’s coming next, and so students are reminded of what they’ve learned.
One thing a mentor told me years ago is that I teach literature and history because I love them, they come easily to me, and I don’t even really know how I can do what I do. For students, those skills need to be broken down, sequenced, and undressed. She didn’t say undressed. But how I analyze a poem and then love it is actually a very clearly defined string of small skilled tasks. I can list them, and I can teach them, and now my kids, who didn’t meet standard on last year’s MSP can argue over whether We Wear The Mask or If We Must Die is a better poem, and why. If putting something up on the board helps me help them get there, great. I’ll do it.
Raised voices? As Al Pachino said, in Scent of a Woman, “I’m just gettin warmed up,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKAxnB6Ap4o
Interesting point, Maren. I’ve been posting my learning targets for a few years.
When I have an , open-ended or inquiry lesson, in which I don’t want to the students to know ahead of time what they’ll hopefully figure out, I make my targets vague. For example, I’ll write “Tell how slope affects erosion.”
For the most part, though, I find that posting targets keeps me and my students focused. That said, I’m a VERY structured, sequential teacher; it might not be a good idea for someone who isn’t.
No, the UW CEL framework certainly doesn’t require that targets be posted on the board–it just requires that they be communicated through verbal and visual strategies. (Posting targets on the board is listed as a possible observable, but it is very clearly labeled as “possible,” not required.) Also, for the record, to the best of my knowledge(I might be wrong), no administrator in my district required a daily posting of learning targets before we had an instructional framework. I do know it has happened in other districts.
And, yes, the “raised voices in the copy rooom” conversation I have been having with another teacher has been ongoing, informative, and reasonable–although heated at times! Perhaps we may even revisit this issue in the lunch room (no raised voices in that conversation)–although we do like to just eat our lunch as well!
Does the CEL framework actually state that they must be posted on the board, and at the beginning of class as well? We’re on the Marzano framework, and our simply defines that the “target” (in our lingo) OR the long-term goal is communicated to students–and even that has been troublesome since our leaders initially interpreted that as “on the board at the start of class.” Our framework, though, doesn’t mandate when, where, how… it could very well be at the end of the lesson, it could very well be that the target the teacher has in mind is eventually constructed by the students…for all the reasons you’ve pointed out. I am in favor of targets/points/objectives, whatever, but if your rubric actually states that it must be written on the board and presented at the beginning of each lesson, then I’d have the same reaction as you…that’s too confining or restrictive, and relegates a system that I think has great potential to a mere checklist, and that is my worst fear.
One phrase I hope all evaluators recognize from your post is this: learning points (insert wording there) are “one possible way of communicating learning targets.” Our leaders need to remember that there is no One Right Way. We need to have those in-the-copy-room-raised-voices interactions but continue them until they become reasonable conversation. As for targets, I’m doing them too for the first time this year. I’m glad you were willing to consider the merit of something you hadn’t done before rather than to just reject it outright…for change to happen, it needs to happen on a daily level. The key is, too, that if we test something out and it doesn’t work, we need to voice that effectively and work to change the system.
Thanks for sharing this! I have struggled with the same thing. It seems that for inquiry lessons posting a learning target sometimes defeats the purpose of letting the students figure “it” out. Other times, it’s helpful. It should be at our discretion and there should be flexibility in the eval for us to explain why we have or have not used learning targets. 🙂