Upon reading the first four chapters of Ozar's book Creating a Curriculum that Works (1994) I was taken back in time to undergrad at Boston College. I remembered that when I was studying at the School of Education, they made us write up so many lesson plans with the same format for every lesson. We had to start with the outcomes. Before we even began the procedure writing we had to think about what we would like our students to be able to do as a result of this imaginary lesson plan. I also recall being told to use those verbs from Bloom's taxonomy when I wrote my outcomes. This continued for my entire undergrad experience so even though I don't write my outcomes for every lesson I would like to think that somehow that thinking has been ingrained. While I complained and found it quite labor intensive and annoying, the significance has really not come through until reading Ozar's book. What Ozar said was so true, " Outcomes, as statements of intended student learning, do provide a clear basis for selecting reaching/learning strategies, materials, assessment tools, etc.; the stronger and more appropriate the outcomes, the more powerful and potentially effective the resulting curriculum."(p.22) Now granted I was always only writing one lesson plan (which now is a fraction of my day), I was being graded, and I was a college student with a lot more time, but my lessons that were led by the outcomes were no where near Industrial age teaching. :)
The second thing I was immediately drawn to (that I had tried to block out forever) in my memory was a few years ago when the staff of my school labored over the student learning expectations (now I realize they are graduation outcomes). We knew that when WASC visited in the coming year they would be looking for evidence of our SLEs. We needed to make sure they were written in a way that we could provide evidence for them. I went right back to them after reading and found many of them still began with "students will understand". Ozar would not have been impressed. When WASC finally came we had to create an evidence box that showed the students were working towards the SLEs. That box was the bane of my existence. Not only was it difficult to show evidence for some of our SLEs because of how they were written but having a file box of evidence only lent itself to evidence on paper. Ozar talks about how after we write the outcomes we then need to think about the assessment and it needs to be a "valid indication of achievement of the outcomes." (p.23) As educators the other night we felt that our visual representations were not complete without verbal explanation. So how do I file that in a box? Isn't there a better way?
Another interesting thought from the whole WASC process was that my principal toyed with the idea of having us color code our lesson plan books according to the SLEs we were addressing in our lessons. We all moaned and groaned about it so it didn't happen. The teachers didn't want people looking through their plan books and didn't want to have to color code all their lesson plans. Now I realize what a valuable tool that would have been in our planning had it been mandated. Sort of ironic that the teacher's fought against quality planning. :)
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Oh how I can relate! The lesson planning process that we went through in college focused so heavily on student learning objectives and seemed so labor intensive. Meanwhile teachers in the field kept saying, "don't worry you never use those in real lesson planning." And let's face it, unless we're forced to we don't always include the words "students will be able to..." in all of our lessons. However by practicing that process, it became ingrained as part of our way of thinking and today makes our most effective lesson plans.
ReplyDeleteMeghan, thank you for validating what I thought I already knew: Wasc seems to be a universally ridiculous time for everyone. My old principal made us color code/stamp our books, but there was so much lost in the process. It wasn't a collaborative curriculum building experience, it was the opposite. Building curriculum needs to be from the Students point of view, and can't be done alone. It sounds like you are really thinking about your kids and what you teach and why- that is huge! I think we as teachers have to be creatures of constant change to meet the kids at their level. Keep up the good work you are doing- first grade teachers have a high place in heaven reserved!
ReplyDeleteAs a member of the WASC visiting team for Kevin's school, I'm not going to take those comments personally. In all seriousness, this reading did make me think of WASC and the "evidence boxes." Thankfully, that particular requirement is no longer used. That being said, the idea of evidence of learning is so powerful to me. I do think for Ozar's vision to become real we need to find a way to create the time, reward the work, and promote the positive impact it has directly in the lives of our students. Otherwise, it simply becomes another half-hearted exercise that feels more like a bureaucratic hoop than improving curriculum for all students. I'd love for our class to discuss how we could make this real at our schools given all that constrains us from making it happen.
ReplyDeleteYour comments regarding the writing of curriculum outcomes is so true; they do take a lot of time to think through. At times, the focus needs to be on whether an outcome has been written or is it a goal. Reading through this portion of Ozar's book made that process much clearer to differentiate between the two. Your comment on your school's WASC visit is probably quite the same experience as many of us in the class. As a faculty, we spent many hours working on SLE's. We had a six color poster made of these to hang in each classroom. Our folders in our evidence box matched the colors on the poster of the various learning outcomes. The more we worked with these, the easier it became.
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