How Do We Design and Plan Instuction? (WW#2)

How do we design and plan instruction? Boy that's a big question! Before reading the readings for this week I brainstormed and wrote some ideas down of what I thought were important to developing curriculum, a course plan, or even a unit plan. I came up with a variety of ideas and thoughts of my own; however, after reading the readings my list increased by at least a page or two! There is more planning and designing than what I had expected. Although there is a lot of work that goes into designing a plan of instruction, I realize just how important it is to have this in place in order to have an organized and successful educational program. I believe chapter 7 in the handbook explains this need quite well by stating "Because there is so much planning behind the teaching and learning activities that occur in a classroom or laboratory, if a course of study isn't carefully thought out, teachers may resort to teaching a series of incoherent, irrelevant, or articulated topics." Wow, how many times have we seen this happen in schools or even experienced it as a student? It's that last minute, poor planning, unorganized lesson planning that we begin see the irrelevant or incoherent teaching. How does this positively help effect the academic success of our students? It doesn't. As teachers we need to make sure that we build a firm foundation or framework for our program that is well equipped to prepare our student for success.

 I really took interest in the Understanding by Design Framework by  Jay Mctighe and Grant Wiggins. Of the whole article that went through thier 3 different stages of backward design, I captured the the phrase that stood out to me the most, "Learning priorities are established by
long-term performance goals—what it is we want students, in the end, to be able to do with what they have learned. The bottom-line goal of education is transfer.The point of school is not to simply excel
in each class, but to be able to use one’s learning in other settings." I believe this once again reiterates the importance of having an organized plan of instruction for your program. Within your plan you must also make sure that you are achieving transferred learning. While reading this I couldn't help but to think how applicable this is for Agricultural Education. My Ag classes in high school were one of the few classes I can think of that taught me the knowledge, skills and dispositions of a topic that I could utilize in a variety of real life situations. As a future Ag educator I value this impact that my department could have on the cognitive success of each of my students. This is what motivates me to pursue this career path!

However, as I read, it comes with a lot of hard work because "piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance." Planning is key! My thoughts go back to one of our classes in AEE 412 last week when we discussed the top 5 characteristics/behaviors of an effective teacher. In class we did a vairety of mini expereiments that taught us about each of them. Although this would be considered part of the daily agenda, it was well planned out and I could shout these 5 behavors anywhere at anytime of the day. Why? Because I believe the instruction aligned with the educational goals, which means that the lesson was thought through and created in such a way that it met these specific goals. I was able to retain the information more easily because "transfer of learning" was achieved.


 Below is a really interesting video that exemplifies how transfer of learning is being utilized first hand at the college level and how it is impacting our society! Check out this link to read more:

     http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q3/daniels-awards-prize-for-competency-based-degree-to-purdue-polytechnic-institute.html