Learning Objectives
Learning Objectives: Here is one of the most critical components of lesson planning. I need to be able to provide my students a framework for the day's lesson, otherwise they fail to see any purpose in the lesson. Yet, I need to be able to construct objectives that will lead the class into effective learning.
Poorly written objectives can have many negative effects on students. For example, students may become overwhelmed with the material they will be learning and give up in class. One of my classroom expectations is that students do not give up. If I expect them to work hard all the time, I can't be setting them up for failure.
Additionally, objectives help us to reach the higher levels of cognitive learning. It is also really important to ensure that our lesson plans and teaching techniques match the level of cognitive learning that we write in our objectives.
Group Teaching Techniques
Before I start, here is a link I found to the top ten group teaching techniques. This is a helpful resource to have on hand for ideas when creating lesson plans.
One main lesson for me from the reading in Newcomb's Methods of Teaching Agriculture was that I need to work on re-framing my mindset when it comes to lectures. I despise lectures. So I don't want to plan "lectures". Yet lectures are a really great way of providing factual information to a whole group of students. However, excellent lectures avoid using monotonous teaching techniques.
With proper organization of the material, enthusiasm, variability in the rate and intensity of speech, illustration of major points, and a good summation of the content, lectures can be really exciting and engaging.
Personally, I like challenges. So I challenge myself to design the most engaging "lectures" so my students trash the idea of lectures being boring and dismal and dumb. But rather, I want my students to be excited to come to my class for the next lecture I have waiting for them.
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