Weekly Investment 5

This weeks weekly investment is focused on techniques we can include in our classroom instruction. From the readings, I learned that objectives are essential in challenging students to think. Objectives provide a roadmap for students in a class. They give students a sense of direction on where the class is in lecture. When writing objectives, it is important to use verbs and to be observed with some sort of measurements. Action-measurable verbs lead to clarity which begins to stretch the cognitive processing of students (Whittington).

One chart I found helpful in the readings had a ton of vocabulary words useful for developing objectives. The chart had four headings to simplify Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain. Remembering-Knowledge level;Processing- Comprehensive, Application, and Analaysis level; Creating- Synthesis level; Evaluating-Evaluation.

Remembering would be the lower level of cognitive thinking and Evaluating would be at the higher end. When writing objectives, I learned it's important to match the level of cognitive objectives to the level of the teaching. In other words, if your objectives are set to a lower level of cognitive like remembering, then you must teach at the lower level of cognitive. This helps limit student frustrations and avoid students giving up on content.

Before these reading, I struggled with writing objectives and not knowing if I was using the correct verbs. This week I am excited too what else I can learn about writing objectives!