Today was an eyeopening experience. We began by taking an assignment and dissecting it to figure out what proficiency would look like, what skills students needed to gain proficiency, and finally what instruction would need to look like.
The activity provided opportunities for discussion surrounding proficiency and how our expectations played into proficiency. The greatest impact that this activity had was the discussion on what instruction would have to look like in order to reach proficiency.
In essence, what we are really focusing on is presenting "e" (the activity that requires the highest level of thinking) to students and then directing instruction so students can reach our highest expectation.
I think that we all understand that we need to design our lessons backwards, but this activity really demonstrated how to get into the task to make sure its measuring what we want and that we have directed instruction that way. I think most of the groups created assessments, so we created focal points for an entire period of instruction. Doing this makes instruction focused and meaningful
The most powerful thing that I walked away was the idea that the assessment or task should be presented to students before instruction so that they have an idea of what they are expected to do.
(this post is cross-posted on the ILT blog: achsilt.blogspot.com)
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1 comment:
Tonia,
This is an interesting post. How do you think your instruction and the instruction of your colleagues has improved since this experience? What has changed about how you operate in the classroom?
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