TOUCHSTONE 10: I help students develop deep knowledge.
Explanation
Pushing students to critical thinking and to develop their abilities of deep knowledge of content is truly our goals as educators and is the main component of touchstone ten. Moving students into the upper portion of Bloom’s Taxonomy is the pinnacle of developing mastery of our content areas. We all expect students to leave our classes with the abilities to remember, understand and to apply their knowledge, however pushing them to analyze, evaluate and create original work with that knowledge should actually be the goal. The recipe for developing true understanding can be framed by the six C’s: curiosity, connection, coherence, concentration, coaching and context. Deep knowledge occurs when student’s curiosity makes connections with previous learning and they can become coachable in deeper knowledge of a subject. Educators can benefit students by making meaningful patterns and developing digestible chunks of information that are coherent to students. Educators can provide cues and ask connecting questions for students to connect prior knowledge to new information making new knowledge for the students. Helping students finding relevance in what they are learning is key. We need to show them the view from 1000 feet, as well as the details within a subject. Using advanced organizers such as KWL charts are a great way for teachers to apply new knowledge about what students want to learn in a subject. Keeping things fresh and challenging we should also tap into non-linguistic methods of instruction with models, visuals, technology and other representations of material to get students into challenging deep thinking. Concentrating student thinking on deeper knowledge requires proper planning for educators as we should put ourselves in the seat of the learner anticipating what questions could arise and what our learners are thinking during the lessons. We should also assess students on deeper knowledge requiring them to tap into critical thinking rather than traditional remember and regurgitate facts that today’s learner can ask Siri in the matter of moments. When planning we should never assume, as the old adage goes “assuming will a make an ASS out of U and ME.
Application
Planning my captains course and specifically the unit on goal setting I concentrated many formative assessments on pushing students into critical thinking and analyzing themselves through the athletic inventory and really made them dive in and create goals that will push not only themselves but their representative teams. Also in the unit summative assessment I used a variety of testing methods with a large portion being critical thinking exercise of creating a personal goal non-related to athletics. Students would have to create proper SMART goals and action steps to this goal within their summative assessment of the unit. Below are excerpts from the planning stage accessing this deeper thinking as well as an open ended exam question asking them for deeper knowledge on the goal setting process.
Planning Stage
Day 1- (10-15 minutes)-“PROJECT”
At the completion of the video students are going to be directed to a Google Form to take an Athletic Self-Inventory. This inventory will address sport competence, sport confidence, coach-athlete relationships, peer-teammate connections, current performance measures, and athlete behavior. The purpose of this athletic self-inventory is to identify to the students possible goals, short term and long term, that need to be set in the final project. The use of self-inventories are key for enrichment and freedom in learning. The results of these inventories would be evaluated by me as the facilitator to have Google Classroom discussion with the students to help identify goals and dig further into indicators and targets for the students. These results will be forwarded to specific coaches to deepen conversations with athletes and what they hope to achieve.
Day 2- (12-15 minutes) “WORKSHEET”
When the day 2 presentation is over, students will utilize the worksheet titled Setting a Goal. This worksheet puts them as an owner of their very own professional sports franchise. Students will create a Team Logo, one long term goal and three short term goals for their franchise. Along with the three short term goals, students will have to set two objectives per short term goal. The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize athletes with writing quality SMART goals, in a fictional setting. Keeping personal thoughts about themselves out of the equation, they can focus efforts on the five quality indicators of a SMART goal.
Day 3- (12-15 minutes) “PROJECT’
At the completion of presentation 3, students will move to a slide that will ask them to develop five action steps per objective they set in the worksheet assignment. These action steps may be as simple as, “go to sleep by 10:00 p.m. daily” to as advanced as a daily menu with nutritional information to gain/lose weight. The format will be a Google Form that I can see, so I may provide feedback and create a dialogue to help.
Exam Question
21. Create a SMART goal with a minimum of 2 indicators, 2 measures, 2 targets and 2 strategies to accomplish this SMART goal. The goal must be a personal centered, short or long term goal.
(Utilize the space below to accomplish this. The rubric on which this question will be graded is below.)
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