One of the classes I teach is grade 10. It is the second year of high school level in my country. There are 44 students in the class. All the subject teachers go to the class one after another for the 40 minutes' period for each class as per the time-table. This is quite different from the system that I have heard somewhere in American schools. (I mean I heard in some American schools the subject teacher has her/his own classroom where the students of different grades come one after another.) The students sit on the sitting desk attached to the desk for writing in the group of 4 or 5 in a row with 2 or 3 columns. There are white board and the teachers use board markers. The rooms are not so spacious, so it's difficult to conduct any mingle activities for language practice. However it's well ventilated.
Since English is foreign language, out of 8 subjects only English is taught in English medium and even in the class of English language the teachers (have to) speak the native language (Nepali), the proficiency of students' English language is very low due to the lack of English language exposure. So it's a big problem and challenge for the teachers to improve their English language proficiency.
Sharing a Learning Objective:
Normally whenever I take any class for this grade, I prepare the objectives of the class in this way:
At the end of the class, the students will be able to:
(a) tell the story of "The Thirsty Crow",
(b) write the story of "The Thirsty Crow".
But when I read the link (http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/) provided by our tutor and some other websites, (www.mdfaconline.org/presentations/ABCDmodel.doc), (http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/),
(www.missouristate.edu/.../Writing_Student_Learning_Objective_12-06-...?), as well as the other classmates' posts, I came to know that the objectives that I use have some lacking.
In the above mentioned objectives:
(A) The audience is the students,
(B) The behavior is telling and writing the story. I think they are observable and measurable. I mean they can be heard and seen.
(C) I think the condition is not so strong in my objectives because I couldn't mention the context or circumstances of learning clearly here.
(D) I think the degree is not mentioned in my objectives, as I didn't state the level of mastery of the content.
I feel after reading the information from different sources as mentioned above, I could try my objectives in a different way, something like this:
(C)With the help of the picture story and clues words, (A) the students (B) will be able to:
(i) tell the story of "The Thirsty Crow" (D) in past tense for two minutes,
(ii) write the story of "The Thirsty Crow" (D) in past tense in about 150 words.
Reference:
(Adapted from: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/
The A.B.C.D. Method
The ABCD
method of writing objectives is an excellent starting point for writing
objectives (Heinich, et al., 1996). In this system, "A" is for
audience, "B" is for behavior, "C" for conditions and
"D" for degree of mastery needed.
1.
Audience (A) – Who? Who are your
learners?
2.
Behavior (B) – What? What do you
expect them to be able to do? This should be an overt, observable behavior,
even if the actual behavior is covert or mental in nature. If you can't see it,
hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, you can't be sure your audience
really learned it.
3.
Condition (C) – How? Under what
circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be
given or already be expected to know to accomplish the learning?
Degree (D) – How much? How much will be
accomplished, how well will the behavior need to be performed, and to what
level? Do you want total mastery (100%), do you want them to respond correctly
80% of the time, etc. A common (and totally non-scientific) setting is 80% of
the time.)
