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WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...

Back in the misty days when I was doing my training and was on teaching practice (OK, a couple of years ago…) I attended an INSET with Ron Rooney in County Durham. The focus of the training was on using specific words and language to trigger the correct response and outcomes in pupils - especially to do with the writing of learning objectives. Although I had a bit of a debate with him at the time, on reflection I’ve found them an extremely useful way of targetting exactly the knowledge, skills and understanding you want pupils to have developed, or to have begun to develop, by the end of the lesson.

A learning objective, as opposed to a learning aim, is the specific thing that you want the pupil to be able to do/understand, as opposed to the general aim of the lesson. For example:

• Learning aim: To understand the reasons why Harald Hardrada and William of Normandy wanted to invade England in the 1060s.
• Learning objective: To give three reasons why England was an attractive place to invade in the 1060s.

Learning objectives are specific, measurable and targetted (SMART). Ron argues that each department should come up with words which link in with a combination of Bloom’s Taxonomy and National Curriculum levels to provide some kind of scaffold to the learning in the classroom. I’ve linked these together with the Bloom’s Taxonomy for display in the Classroom I produced and shared in the Displays section of this site. Lesley-Ann Buxton, an administrator on the Schoolhistory History Teachers’ Discussion Forum led an excellent seminar on Thinking Skills on this after also attending a workshop by Ron. Paraphrasing one of her posts:

To raise the challenge of your Key Stage 3 lessons the teacher should aim to pitch the lessons objectives and activities within the Blooms Taxonomy framework. Below is roughly how the types of thinking from Blooms Taxonomy link in with the National Curriculum Levels of Attainment.

Basic Order Thinking: KNOWLEDGE (Remembering and recalling facts – storing information in basic form)
NC Level 2/3

Basic Order Thinking: UNDERSTANDING/COMPREHENSION (Translating information into other forms using your own words – making an interpretation of new material)
NC Level 4

Middle Order Thinking: APPLICATION (Using new information in new and concrete situations – relating information to own position)
NC Level 5

Middle Order Thinking: ANALYSIS (Breaking information down into parts – making clear the hierarchy or relationships)
NC Level 5/6

Higher Order Learning: SYNTHESIS (Arranging and combing elements in new ways – to create a picture that was not there before)
NC Level 6/7

Higher Order Thinking: EVALUATION (Making quantitative and qualitative judgements – developing opinions about the relative value of parts)
NC Level 7 +

Originally, Bloom had Synthesis as being a skill of a higher-order than Evaluation but Ron argued persuasively for them to be reversed (i.e. he had a reason but I can’t remember what it is!)

To quote Lesley-Ann again, who has done a lot of work in this area, this means being directed by the following guidelines when framing learning objectives:

Be specific as possible – use the trigger words (list, explain, create…) to share with pupils exactly the nature and level of the learning intended

• Avoid general phrases such as ‘to know’ and ‘to be able to understand’ - way to general
• Have a maximum of 2 or 3 learning objectives per lesson
• Always have single objectives (avoid mixing eg. Describe and explain)
• Use words that allows you and the pupil to assess if the intended learning has taken place by the end of the lesson (in other words to enable you to see the intended learning in some explicit form – assess does not mean test in this situation, but could mean questioning, looking at a product, listening to a discussion, seeing how the pupils make decisions…)

 

In the same post as the above on Learning Objectives, Stephen Drew shares a list of words that Christine Counsell uses with her PGCE students at Cambridge:

select, extract, relate, identify, choose, connect, link, explain, illustrate, remember, recall, find, design, prioritise, limit, extend, amplify, judge, classify, sort, arrange, justify, compare, contrast, define, analyse, join up, shape, organise, reconsider, reflect, support, evaluate, weigh, weigh up, create, construct, draw out, challenge, build, structure, represent, reorganise

I’ve found the above advice extremely useful in both clarifying in my own mind and communicating to pupils what it is that they need to be able to know, understand or be able to do by the end of the lesson. It may be an idea to pin Christine Counsell’s list of words next to your objectives board (if you have one) and add to it as you think of new ones!

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