Why Teachers Need to Just Say No to Learning Targets

Office Space: "Hello, Peter. What's happening? Listen, are yous going to have those TPS reports for united states this afternoon?"

School version: "Howdy, Ms./Mr. _____. What's happening?  Mind, are you going to have those learning targets posted this afternoon?"

While you picture your administrator wearing Pecker Lumbergh'due south red suspenders and peering creepily over your desk, ask yourself how frequently you answer that question with an believing "no."

In theory, learning targets provide a map of where we're going in class, of what students are expected to know and be able to do. While well-intentioned, information technology's off the marking. We're failing to remember what it'southward like to exist a child in a classroom. Learning targets play into a height-down power structure instead of lesser-up learning. They don't foster appointment, and they're meaningless without purchase-in.

Acme-down design

Growing upward, if we had a good instructor, we knew where nosotros were going without being told by a learning target. My all-time teachers had a gift of making expectations and goals clear. My worst teachers, on the other hand, didn't know where they were going, permit alone where they were trying to lead usa. If my tenth grade history teacher had posted a learning target, it wouldn't have changed his class. We even so would've taken turns reading from the same boring history textbook, we still wouldn't accept done any activities, and nosotros still would've spent the bulk of the hour silently scheming how to remove his toupée.

In a top-down, highly static manner, learning targets are another way to disseminate information to students without really letting them exist a part of the procedure. What if there was some other way?

Bottom-Up Engagement

I worked for a principal who had a saying: You take to continue the principal matter the main affair. And what's the "main thing" in our line of business organisation? Kids. A simple style to bring kids deeper into the pedagogy and learning process is to ask college order thinking skills questions:

• Why are we doing this activity?
• What'southward my goal?
• How does this connect to what nosotros've been doing?
• Why are we doing X instead of Y?

Structuring a classroom this way puts kids in the driver'southward seat; it makes kids analyze their own learning, and it doesn't take long. I like to ask these questions when I introduce a new type of activity in form, then the next time nosotros exercise a similar action, they're already on lath and sympathise why we're doing it.

If we take this arroyo instead of simply posting learning targets, students gain the opportunity to understand their class, their teacher, and their ain learning. This creates a buy-in which we can then parlay into further student engagement.

But what if?

So what if kids don't know why they're doing an activity? What if they can't explicate the goal or the connection to prior learning? Then it'due south time to swallow our pride and reevaluate what we're doing and how we're doing it. Sometimes it'southward an event of non beingness articulate, of not explaining well enough and losing students along the way. But we need to be open to the possibility that if our students can't articulate the answers to those questions, then maybe we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. Asking higher order thinking questions is best practice in whatever discipline or grade, and the responses allow us know if we're using advisable methods to achieve our students. Learning targets, on the other hand, don't allow for feedback to better our exercise.

Merely say "no"

Each time a "Lumbergh" asks about my learning targets, I confidently explain that no, I don't utilize them because I don't think they're best for kids. And then during observations I invite them to see what I do instead and how I invite the students into the procedure. If we can articulate why a different way achieves a similar, appropriate goal only in a more student-centered way, we tin can safely bet that nosotros won't exist asked to "go ahead and come up in on Sabbatum" to work on our learning targets.

What is your take on learning targets? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, things teachers practise every day that are a complete waste matter of time.

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Source: https://www.weareteachers.com/no-learning-targets/

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