Importance of Learning Targets in a Classroom

 

 “What is the importance of setting clear learning goals?”

“ “In order to know where you’re headed, you must be aware of your own personal goals.” The same can be said for academic goals. Setting clear goals for learning has huge benefits for both students and teachers.” (Voyager Sopris Learning, 2023)

 

The above quote isn’t from our module materials this week, but I felt compelled to find one statement that summarized the importance of setting clear learning goals for both teachers AND students. This quote communicated what I wanted to convey… you cannot get to your destination without know where you are going. If you were hungry, would you ever get in the car and just drive, hoping you run into an establishment that served food you liked? Would you ever show up at the airport and just ask them to put you on any flight, hoping you would end up at a destination that was appealing to you? No!! But that is what we ask our students if we tell them to show up to class, do as they are told, and study for the test without understanding the why or ultimate goal.

Sometimes it’s not even that the goal was not articulated… it’s that we, as a teacher, haven’t provided enough clarity or scaffolding for the students to gain a deep enough understanding of the intended outcome. I was watching a funny show with my son just this morning where a teenager was asked by his father to put his dirty plate in the kitchen. The father was later frustrated when he found the plate on the floor of the kitchen. In the moment of frustration, the father realized that he son had technically delivered on what he had asked him to do. So what did he do? He went back to his son and said “My expectation is that you take this plate, throw the old sandwich in the trash, and place the dirty plate in the dishwasher.” I liked this because I feel like it is a real-life example of what happens when we don’t set clear and understood targets for students and people in life in general. And the structure of UbD process helps teachers ensure they aren’t going to be coming back to students asking them to redo their work because of lack of understanding. As the PowerPoint from this week’s module pointed out, “UbD fosters transfer of learning to create independent problem solvers.” UbD allows teachers to put the student to be at the center of learning. Students are no longer blindly following the teacher, expecting them to tell them where to go. They are now in a partnership along with their instructor.

But how do we know that we’ve created strong and understood learning targets? And that students are following the right map to get there? Assessment!!  I really appreciated that the PowerPoint also challenged teachers adopt the following perspective: “Thinking like an assessor (not only an activity designer) is key to effective design” (Powerpoint). Backwards design makes sure that we start with the end goal in mind, ensuring that we are going to track and measure progress toward that goal through assessment, and only after both of those measures are understood plan our instruction. And I like how Grant Wiggins sums up his total perspective on UbD… “It’s really important to not see UBD as a thing, as a program, as a script. It is a set of tools for being a better designer. Use the tools that work…. It’s a way of thinking in addition to the set of tools. Really think hard about what your long terms goals demand of short term teaching and assessing. It’s a way of being more disciplined, more focused, more mindful of priorities.” (Grant Wiggins, 2012)          

In the YouTube video, “What is UbD? Grant Wiggins Answers”, a young teacher describes her experience student teaching in a classroom that didn’t utilize UbD juxtaposed with her experience with a school that uses it: “It was in a very traditional setting… and kids came in and they didn’t realize what they were doing or why they were doing it. It was just a random list of activities and kind of went from one day to the next and they just had to learn it because they had to learn it and it was going to be on a test so they were going to get a grade for it. Whereas with UBD, they come in and know exactly why they are learning it. It puts the learning on them. It makes a learner active classroom. It gives the students more independence and more autonomy.” (2012)

I feel like the initial classroom she described is my current placement to a T. My CT posts the learning targets on a whiteboard for each unit, but I haven’t heard her reference them once during a unit. Students are introduced to each daily activity without any additional learning context. What’s interesting is that there is one student who almost questions daily “Why do we need to know this? Will this help me get a job?” This student is basically crying out for someone to help her understand why this is important to learn.

And that takeaway leads me to my two-week unit…  This week’s UbD knowledge in conjunction with our two week unit assignment makes me so energized to see how much more engaged students will be and the learning they are able to produce if I help lead them through the unit rooted in targets. I am still brainstorming the different ways I can incorporate this goal, but one clear way is bring it into our morning classroom PowerPoint. Each morning, students walk in and see the “Question of the Day” posted on the visual touchscreen and understand the expectation is to write and answer the question in their journal. My plan is to play around with posting it under the question of the day to help provide context to students who are curious about what’s around the corner or I might put it on it’s own slide to give it its own moment. Somedays it might necessitate that I change it’s placement but one thing is for sure, I’m going to incorporate their learning targets and goals in every activity so we can get there together.