It is awesome to have super fun activities that engage students. However, they must be deeper than that. Every lesson, including the creative ones, must relate to a standard for learning, or else what is the point? The teacher should be able to state not just what the students will be doing, but what they will be learning. These instructional outcomes should also look towards assessment, whether that assessment comes directly after the lesson, or is a few lessons in the future. Instructional outcomes can come in many shapes and sizes, thus there is no reason to have a lesson that does not have instructional outcomes along with it. Some examples of types of instructional outcomes include: factual and procedural knowledge, conceptual understanding, thinking and reasoning skills, and collaborative and communication strategies. Some also include disposition: not only should students understand the topic, they will hopefully enjoy it as well. Finally, the best learning outcomes connect with more than one discipline. Elements of setting instructional outcomes include:
Value, Sequence, and Alignment
Many concepts are designed to build off of one another. Thus, teachers should be aware of which lessons should building off each other. It is also crucial for teachers to ensure the understanding of all students in every lesson so that they do not get left behind in future lessons.
Clarity
Each lesson should have clear outcomes as to what students will learn, not simply what they will do. Each lesson should also show evidence of formative assessment and summative assessment.
Balance
In order to shape well-rounded students, our instructional outcomes must be properly balanced between different types of learning, such as factual and procedural knowledge, conceptual understanding, thinking and reasoning skills, and collaborative and communication strategies.
Suitability for Diverse Students
Instructional outcomes must be beneficial for all students in the class.
Implementing in the Classroom/Artifacts Demonstrating Competency
Value, Sequence, and Alignment
Many concepts are designed to build off of one another. Thus, teachers should be aware of which lessons should building off each other. It is also crucial for teachers to ensure the understanding of all students in every lesson so that they do not get left behind in future lessons.
Clarity
Each lesson should have clear outcomes as to what students will learn, not simply what they will do. Each lesson should also show evidence of formative assessment and summative assessment.
Balance
In order to shape well-rounded students, our instructional outcomes must be properly balanced between different types of learning, such as factual and procedural knowledge, conceptual understanding, thinking and reasoning skills, and collaborative and communication strategies.
Suitability for Diverse Students
Instructional outcomes must be beneficial for all students in the class.
Implementing in the Classroom/Artifacts Demonstrating Competency
- A statement of the standards that each lesson plan relates to
- Pre-planned formative assessment in each lesson
- A statement of how the learning of each lesson will be evaluated
- When teachers do an episodic lesson, they take time to "pack" before the lesson to tell the students what they should be doing, "collect souvenirs," meaning they give students activities to build their semantic knowledge, and after the lesson they "unpack," to help students draw connections between the fun and the semantic knowledge
- Outcomes are varied in order to apply to all students
- Outcomes are in the ZPD of all students
- Students help set goals for themselves
- Students are shown how the things they are learning connect to eachother
- While reading about Anne Frank in reading, students are learning about WWII in Social Studies
- Teacher has students pretend to be artists for the day and paint illustrations to describe a story, and then has art gallery walk and students try to guess what each picture is describing. This is done to help students practice using illustrations to describe the main idea of a text.
- All images labeled for reuse
- (2018). Static.pdesas.org. Retrieved 1 5March 2018, from http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/danielson_rubric_2.pdf