When I was a kid, I was a huge
baseball fan. I still am actually, but
when I was a kid, I was obsessed! I
played whenever I could, and I did everything I could to learn about the
game. If I was an expert in anything, it
was baseball. I even remember checking
out Ken Burns’ documentary “Baseball” from the library. It was nine videotapes long! (For our new
teachers, go Google “videotape” if you’re not sure what that is.) I watched that documentary three times one
summer. I was obsessed.
One
year, and I don’t remember how old, I remember being curious about how a
pitcher could make a curveball, “curve.”
As a kid, I did everything I could to find out about it. At that time there wasn’t an internet, so I
had to resort to more “traditional” means of research. I wasn’t quite sure what to look up in the
encyclopedia and unless I had a baseball expert around, there wasn’t anyone I
could ask. It was a tough spot. I had a question that was driving me nuts,
and no good way to answer it!
Things
have changed a lot since then. This past
week at the e3 Tech Conference we learned a lot about abundance of information
our students have today and how our teaching must change in order to best meet
the needs of our students. You know what
hasn’t changed in that time? Kids have a burning desire to satisfy their
curiosity about driving questions! I
was curious about why that baseball could move so much, and it was like an itch
that I HAD to scratch! I worked harder
on finding the answer to that question than I did on my Math homework, I’ll
guarantee you that!
Toward
the end of last year, and then in some conversations over the summer, I’ve
learned that there is a lot of uncertainly out there about this idea of a
lesson objective. It’s not that we don’t
understand what an objective is, but there is some uncertainty about what it
should look like when communicating it to students, etc. We know at a basic level that an objective is
what we want students to know or be able to do by the end of a lesson. It should be something specific, so that we
can do some sort of formative assessment, even if it’s as simple as thumbs
up/down, to know if we accomplished what we set out to do.
But what if our objectives were actually
driving questions? What if we were
able to frame them up in a way that generated a driving curiosity in our
students? What would that do for their
engagement and motivation? How would
that change our presentation of content knowledge? We know students are highly motivated when
they are working to “scratch” that curiosity “itch.” Just like when I was a kid trying to learn
about the Bernoulli principle; the real cause of the curveball, when kids are
chasing after the answer to a driving question, they are motivated. I was DRIVEN to find the answer to my
question.
One
of my favorite books on education is The
Art and Science of Teaching by Marzano.
I truly believe teaching is an
art. Not everyone can do it
well. You all are here because you’ve demonstrated that you have the art for
teaching. There’s no doubt about
that. It will be a challenge to take our
objectives and turn them in to driving questions. It’s not a challenge I am mandating you do,
but it is something I think is work experimenting with and thinking about. For some objectives, it will be difficult to
find a way to turn it into a question.
Here are a few pointers for doing this:
1. Start by answering this question, “What do I
want students to know or be able to do by the end of this lesson?” This happens
during the planning stage of teaching.
You have to know where you’re going before the kids can know.
2. Next answer this question, “What do I want
students to know or be able to do by the end of this lesson?” Some question, right?
Nope! Notice the focus is on one
single lesson or piece of time. You’ve
got to break the targeted knowledge into a manageable “chunk.” You’ll never be able to formatively assess
the objective if it’s not a manageable chunk.
3. Remember that students are motivated by a
challenge. So think about how you can
make the guiding question a challenge.
Kids may not be interested in finding the perimeter of a triangle, but
if you bet them they can’t figure it out, you’ll probably motivate them!
4. Remember that good, inquiry based learning
still includes instruction. It’s not
that you just turn your kids loose to find the answer by hook or crook. Remember, your job is to give them the
knowledge they need to be able to problem solve. We can’t just “stand and deliver” information
any more, but we do need to provide the supports kids need to satisfy their
curiosity.
Remember,
you don’t have to do this on your own.
You’ve got a collaborative team in your PLC that is all the support you
need to make this work. What about your
lesson plans? Well, please know that I would
love to see objectives written in the form of a driving, or guiding question
but I don’t require that. At most basic
level, for veteran teachers, plans must have a quality objective, relevant
follow up activities, and some sort of assessment.
What
exactly is the “art” of teaching? It’s
helping kids discover the knowledge you want them to discover without them
knowing you did it! Thankfully, all the
knowledge to be able to do this is right here already! You are an incredible group of teachers! Have a great weekend!
Dave
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