Am starting to feel slightly exhausted by all the different objective introducing techniques whirring around my head like a cloud of relentless cheerful wasps. I long to use the same one all day for all my lessons but am stubbornly committed to seeing it through. At least until the end of the week. And the surprising reality is that as of today I have only managed to plough through 15 of the buggers!
Lesson 1 – Year 9 – Create Fun Signs
This was a lesson I’d agreed to cover for a colleague so that she could go on a learning walk around the faculty. She had planned the lesson and all I had to do was monkey about with the objective. So, I made my way over to RedKid.net to turn To be able to work effectively as part of a team into a ‘fun sign’. The bad news was the that the objective was too long to fit on the sign. And this wasn’t a particularly long objective. So, short of time and impatient I instead plumped for a quick ‘missing keyword’ and simply missed out effectively.
Ease 10 (didn’t work) Impact 0
Lesson 2 Year 10 – Going Solo
Now, I’m really excited about SOLO taxonomy and have written about it here. The objective was for the students to begin thinking about powerful forces in Of Mice and Men and I wanted them to be able to measure their progress from pre-structural to at least relational. So (gasp!) I didn’t have a learning objective, just a series of statements:
- I don’t know anything about powerful forces in section 1 Of Mice and Men (pre-structural)
- I know one thing about powerful forces in section 1 Of Mice and Men (uni-structural)
- I know a few things about powerful forces in section 1 Of Mice and Men (multi-structural)
- I can use the things I know about powerful forces to explain their impact on the story and characters in section 1 of Of Mice and Men (relational)
- I can use what I know about powerful forces in section 1 of Of Mice and Men to be able to speculate about how they will impact on the rest of the novel (extended abstract)
Ease: 7 Impact 4
Lesson 5 – Year 9 – Don’t Always Introduce Learning Objectives
How’s that for lazy! This lesson is a class I see once a week with a colleague taking their other three lessons. They have a lesson with her Period 1 and she had set up an activity which she asked me to continue. So, we began with a plenary of their previous lesson and then cracked on: introducing another objective would have felt unnecessary and I would have been doing it for no other reason than the illogical nonsense that lesson can only be successful if they follow an Ofsted approved path.
Ease: 10 Impact: 4
I have another 5 lesson day tomorrow and am beginning to buckle under the groaning weight of all this innovation. Hope you won’t be disappointed if I cheat a bit.
Cheat away!
I’m going to try and complete this challenge next week. I am daunted… but in a good way!
It’s been great in as much as I’ve forced myself to try stuff which I didn’t see the point in and wouldn’t normally do – have encountered some gems. But it is exhausting! I really want to spend some time consolidating now. Have just added a 49th technique – only 1 more to go…
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