A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the learning objectives for the class meeting. Then, you can design appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. Clear and appropriate targets are a must. The benefits are 1) limiting teachers’ accountability; 2) limiting student accountability; and, 3) providing a more manageable teacher workload.
It is needed for the teachers to state the achievement target and must remember the following types of achievement targets.
Knowledge Targets. Teachers expect students to master some content. This is more than memorizing facts. One masters content when one gains control over it; when one understands and is able to retrieve the specific material for use as needed.
Reasoning Targets. Rarely do we (or should we) ask students to master content merely for the sake of knowing it. It’s virtually always the case we want students to be able to use the information to reason and solve certain kinds of problemsmean by reasoning and problem-solving proficiency. In order to help students master effective reasoning, we must first ourselves be confident, competent masters of the judgment criteria.
Skill Targets. In most classrooms there are things teachers want their students to be able to do. Instances for which the measurement of attainment is the student’s ability to demonstrate certain kinds of skills or behaviors, for example, elementary group activities, middle school science lab, high school public speaking or presentations. In all of these cases, success lies in “doing it well.”
Product Targets. Yet another way for students to succeed academically is through creating quality products – tangible entities that exist independently of the performer but that present evidence in their quality that the student has mastered foundational knowledge, requisite reasoning and problem-solving proficiencies and specific production skills. Examples might include a term paper, a school shop project, and/or science lab reports.
Dispositional Targets. This final category of valued targets is quite broad and complex and includes those characteristics that go beyond the academic into the realms of the effective and personal feeling states, such as attitudes toward something, sense of academic self-confidence or interest in something that motivationally predisposes a person to do or not do something. Examples could include the student’s attitude or feelings towards the teacher, the content, the assessment methods, etc. Since these effective and social dimensions of learners are quite complex, thoughtful assessment is essential.
By: Mary Charlotte R. Bonus | Teacher II | MNHS-Cabcaben | Mariveles, Bataan
