Struggling in a class?  Do you feel lost and can make sense of what the instructor is doing?  Do you space out, stare out the window and come back to reality only to be confused by what is going on in the classroom?  

Struggling in class? Here’s why Engagement Matters

The job of an educator is not only to teach content but to achieve engagement with 75% or more of the classroom.  Content knowledge is insufficient without classroom engagement. 

Engagement is not solely on the educator but on the student.  A student with the attitude that they must be entertained is leaving all the heavy uplifting to the educator.  The student is not taking responsibility for their role and not prioritizing their education.  

There is reciprocity.  An educator must do everything they can to engage most of the classroom, and the student must want to learn.  A relationship that is lopsided will wear out either the educator or the student and optimal effort will not be given.  

What does an educator do at the beginning of class and what is the pedagogy behind it? 

Educators have a set of duties that they must complete before they being teaching.  The beginning of the class is structured to achieve these duties and to get the class thinking about the lesson at hand. 

Not all educators do this because they may have adopted a pedagogy that works for them but regardless of the pedagogy, these tasks must be completed. 

The Role of Educators in Student Success

Educators must take attendance.  Attendance is mandatory.  There is a financial element to taking attendance which the school cares about.  For the educator, accurate attendance taking is a must because it is a record of who is in the classroom and who is not.  The teacher is responsible for the people in the classroom.  There may be a liability issue if an educator marks a student present, but the student is not there or if a student is present, asks to go to the restroom and does not return to class.  If something was to happen to the student, the teacher has created a record that the student was under their care and that may cause legal issues for the school and the educator.  

Teachers make mistakes and in most cases the mistakes like marking the wrong student absent or forgetting to take attendance can be fixed but attendance must be taken.  Educators will be hounded by the front office to submit their attendance.  

An activity that allows the educator to take attendance, answer emails or catch their breath is a warmup or a bell starter.  The purpose of the activity is to engage and prepare the students for the lesson.  The activity could be to write a journal entry, answer a question, draw a picture, watch a video and answer questions etc…

As a student, take the warmup seriously.  

If you have classified the warm-up as busy work, take the warm-up seriously.  

The warm-up is not a perfect activity.  The intended purpose of the warm-up might not make sense, or it may not achieve its goal but what is key is that you engage the warm-up and give it more thought than an action checklist.  

The instructions may be unclear or not make sense.  If the instructions are unclear or do not make sense use the written class objectives as a guide to try and make sense of the instructions.  

Go above and beyond what the warm-up is asking you to do.  If you finish early, write in your notes about how you think the warm-up connects to the lesson.  Write down a few questions about what you think the lesson will be about.  If you did pre-reading, write questions about what you read and how the warm-up and the lesson will connect with the reading.  

The purpose of these hints is to shift your mindset from this is busy work to there is something deeper to the activity and you must find the connection.  Your assumptions and connections may be wrong but now you are engaged to identify that your connections and assumptions were off which means you have bought in and are doing your job to be engaged.  

The Purpose of Class Objectives and Their Implementation in Study Habits

Educators are taught to write class objectives on the board.  The objectives apply to the lesson and inform the student what the expected goal at the end of the class or the lesson unit are.  

A lesson is not taught in a single day.  There is a correlation between a chapter and a unit.  Typically, one unit is one chapter.  There are instances where a single unit is made up of multiple chapters. 

A unit lesson is a series of lessons that teach the entire unit.  

If you view school as you must learn something new each day, your expectation is narrow and can impact you negatively.  

You can be negatively impacted if you have the mentality that you did not understand the lesson for the day and now you are screwed.  A classroom should not be set up in a way where each school day is learned all or you are screwed.  

Why Warm-ups and Lesson Objectives Are More Than Just Routine

If you have a test and you have no idea what is going to be on the test, the problem could be related to the class structure, an educator not writing lesson objectives on the board or you do not understand how teachers set up their lessons.  

Lesson objectives are the roadmap to what is going to be on the test.  

If you’re teacher does not write lesson objectives on the board or does not provide you with a handout with all the objectives on the handout, the reason why you are lost is the fault of the educator.  

If you’re teacher provides lesson objectives, the objectives are a roadmap to what is going to be on the test or assessment.  The complexity of the content may require more time spent on going over the content by you, but in terms of what will be covered on the test, the educator is letting you know through the lesson objectives.  

The lesson objectives are connected to the warm-up, entrance ticket, lesson, activity, and exit ticket and review.  

If you’re teacher uses a flipped classroom model, the educator should still provide lesson objectives.  

The lesson objectives are in your textbook.  The verbiage your teacher uses may be different from the verbiage in the textbook, but it is common for educators to take the objectives in the textbook and use them to write their lesson objectives or to copy the objective and write it on the board. 

The whole unit is made up by the lesson objectives.  There is a hierarchy to the objectives meaning that achieving the intended goal of the objectives should be easier at the beginning of the unit than at the end. 

The goal that needs to be achieved by the lesson is described by the verb in the lesson objective. 

In the following objective, “Students will identify the disadvantages the north had in the civil war”, the verb is to identify.  To identify is to point out or to notice.  Think of a prison lineup where a victim is asked to identify the individual that committed the crime against them.  The victim only must know what the individual looks like and sounds like.  The task is completed when they point to the individual.  The victim does not have to disclose if they know the individual on a deep level or why the individual committed a crime against them.  

The objective can manifest as a multiple-choice question on a test.  A set of options are given and as a test taker, you identify which are the correct disadvantages by filling in the oval or circling the answer.  

In the following objective, “Students will explain how north disadvantages during the civil war led to early outcomes in the war and how the north overcame the disadvantages,” the verb in the objective is explain.  

The objective is asking the student to do more than just identify.  The student must identify the disadvantages and be able to address the impact the disadvantages had on the north and how the north overcame the disadvantages.  

The objective manifest itself on a test as an essay question, short answer or project presentation.  The achieve the objective, every part of the objective must be achieved and will require more time and effort than bubbling or circling an answer.  

Students should never be asked to start a lesson being able to do the latter objective.  The lesson builds from identify to another achievable objective.  This method of scaling objectives and building from one objective to the next is known as scaffolding.  

Scaffolding is used to support construction workers while they do construction. The scaffold protects the workers and protects the work they have done.  When the building or home that they are working on can stand on its own, the scaffold is removed.  

A unit lesson advances in difficulty with the idea that the previous lessons and activities are scaffolding the student.  

To be able to do the most difficult objectives, a student must be able to do the easier objectives.  

Objective Writing is Not as Easy as One May Think

New educators struggle with objective writing.  New teachers must balance a lot of different tasks and have not had the time to develop their lessons.  

Experience informs educators of what works and what does not work.  When a new teacher writes a lesson plan, they are experimenting.  Experiments fail.  Through the failure is how scientist and teachers refine their experiment so that one day it will succeed.  

Knowing the content and knowing how to teach are two completely different skill sets.  Teaching is helping students develop their ability to think.  The second objective I provided above, requires a lot more thinking than the first objective.  The objective requires planning, organizing and developing the ability to express what you are thinking.  

Teaching is a daunting task, marred with failure and self-doubt.  

A teacher must be able to write down achievable objectives and develop lessons with activities that will guide students to the desired goal while adapting the lesson to different learning modalities and skill sets.  

How Student Can Take Control of Their Learning

What I want to convey and explain is how as a student something as mundane as a warm-up and an objective on the board has a deeper importance than beyond what is seen on the surface. 

What may seem like busy work or work meant to burn time while the teacher takes attendance, is the key to the pathway to engagement and the structure of the entire unit.  

Engage with the warm-up beyond what the educator is asking you to do.  Write down questions about the activity, about the objective.  Guess how you think the warn-up and objective connect to each other and to the lesson.

Use the objectives as a study tool and gage your content knowledge and your skillset against the objectives.  Is the verb in the objective something that you can do?  If you are not able to do what the objective is asking of you, what can you do and where do you need to improve? 

The last thought I will leave you with is if an objective uses the verb to understand, change the verb to an actionable verb. 

Understand is too broad of an objective.  The educator has not given thought on how to understand looks like.  How do you assess understanding?  Regurgitating definitions is not understanding.  Knowing facts and dates is not understanding.  

An educator that writes objectives with this language is a bit green and is struggling with developing their lessons.  If the educator has been teaching for a few years and they are still writing objectives with this language, it is a sign that the educator is not good at their craft, or the school is not helping the educator develop their craft.  

In this instance, use the objectives in the textbook or search for lessons dealing with the subject matter and apply the objectives in those lessons to your learning.