Tuesday, November 27, 2012
purpose of learning
The way that I make it explicit the purpose of learning is that I start with the I can statements and refer back to them throughout my lesson. I feel like starting with the purpose of learning helps the students to become goal oriented during the lesson. I finish the lesson by asking them if they met the "I can" statement. This helps to conclude the lesson and remind the students of what they have accomplished. When applicable, I remind the students of how they can apply this new knowledge to their daily life. Today we took an assessment and I was able to introduce the test by reminding them of the I can statements that we have met. I explained that now is the time to show me that they did meet them like they said they did. The students seemed less anxious when I gave them this connection to the fact that they had already mastered the skills and this was just a way to make sure they could do it independently.
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Remember, too, that helping students see the real-world relevance of what they're learning is an important part of the purpose-setting in your teaching. I'll refer again to the article you cited in your last lesson plan that pointed out that students' background knowledge about a topic is not sufficient to establishing purpose (or buy in). Instead, according to the article, students need to be interested in what they're learning. We can nudge students toward interest by having conversations about what they already know about a topic, but also why it's important/useful/relevant to their lives.
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