Of the readings I read this week, Writing Objectives in Secondary Agriculture
Courses that Challenge Students to Think written by Susie Whittington really is getting stuck in my head (2005). I have been thinking extensively about this specific reading because I struggle with writing objectives. We are instructed to have objectives that contain a behavior, condition, and criterion. When writing an effective objective I must think about: What do I want my students to be able to accomplish, in what type of situation, and to what degree?
I struggle with objectives at some points because I tend to only include a behavior and condition. For instance, my first unit plan includes an objective that says: Describe environmental factors that influence animal behavior. Reading about objectives by Whittington makes me more aware that some of my objectives have been appealing to a lower cognitive level in my students. Some of the skills for writing objectives will come with time, but at least I can pinpoint my weakness and work on it. To fix the above objective I might change it to something like: Identify and predict how environmental factors influence animal behavior in a lab setting.
I think this objective has greatly improved and can make students more aware of what they are learning. According to Whittington, having an objective using 'list', 'explain', or 'create' can have students exhibit higher cognitive thinking including remembering, processing, and formulating respectively. I believe my improved objective shows that students won't just have to list environmental factors, but instead will remember the factors and then critically think about how they would impact an animal in a lab setting.
I will have some work to do upgrading my objectives to higher cognitive thinking thanks to Whittington, but as she said, "When we write objectives designed to challenge students at higher cognitive levels, we, as teachers must equally challenge ourselves to teach at higher cognitive levels" (2005). So if you want your students to do great, we as teachers must first lead by example!
If you wish to get some information on objectives:
Whittington's article: http://www.naae.org/profdevelopment/magazine/archive_issues/volume77/v77i5.pdf
Helpful page on writing objectives: http://depts.washington.edu/eproject/objectives.htm
This is a helpful chart to think about how you want students to evidence what they learn:
I struggle with objectives at some points because I tend to only include a behavior and condition. For instance, my first unit plan includes an objective that says: Describe environmental factors that influence animal behavior. Reading about objectives by Whittington makes me more aware that some of my objectives have been appealing to a lower cognitive level in my students. Some of the skills for writing objectives will come with time, but at least I can pinpoint my weakness and work on it. To fix the above objective I might change it to something like: Identify and predict how environmental factors influence animal behavior in a lab setting.
I think this objective has greatly improved and can make students more aware of what they are learning. According to Whittington, having an objective using 'list', 'explain', or 'create' can have students exhibit higher cognitive thinking including remembering, processing, and formulating respectively. I believe my improved objective shows that students won't just have to list environmental factors, but instead will remember the factors and then critically think about how they would impact an animal in a lab setting.
I will have some work to do upgrading my objectives to higher cognitive thinking thanks to Whittington, but as she said, "When we write objectives designed to challenge students at higher cognitive levels, we, as teachers must equally challenge ourselves to teach at higher cognitive levels" (2005). So if you want your students to do great, we as teachers must first lead by example!
If you wish to get some information on objectives:
Whittington's article: http://www.naae.org/profdevelopment/magazine/archive_issues/volume77/v77i5.pdf
Helpful page on writing objectives: http://depts.washington.edu/eproject/objectives.htm
This is a helpful chart to think about how you want students to evidence what they learn:
Stacia,
ReplyDeleteGreat Job!
DF