Question
How do I determine goals for my lesson plan?
Answer
- Determine the overall purpose of the plan
- Where might your goals come from?
- Short-term and long-term goals
One of the first things that we have to do when we are getting started writing any lesson is to think about what the big goals are. These are not the specific objectives for the lesson, but my overall purpose. What is my big goal for this activity? Is it to have fun? Is it to target a particular skill? Your goals are going to come from different places. Your goals may come from a sheet of themes handed to you by your director. When I first started in my career, my big-picture goals came from the list of themes by month given to me by my director. Those were the starting point for my lesson, so those were my overarching goals. I knew I needed to target friendships in November and I knew I needed to target spring and new birth in March. I knew what my goals were because they were handed to me and I carried them out. You may not have your goals handed to you. You may have to search and figure out what your specific goals are for a particular classroom or for a particular program.
I also like to look at goals in terms of this is a short-term goal that I know is going to be successful at the moment, such as the kids are going to learn something right then. It might be a long-term goal where it's an ongoing process such as a lesson that we do over and over again or it's modified as the children become more skilled that they would be able to be successful toward the end of a time period.
Something that comes to mind is children being able to write their names. Our children sign-in in the preschool. In the beginning, sometimes it's just holding the pencil and making a couple of marks, but by the end of the semester, they usually can write their name. Sometimes they're writing their first name and their last name because they already could write their first name. Those goals get tweaked a little bit over time, but I know that the first day we do that sign-in, it's not a short-term goal. I know that they're not going to be able to do it perfectly that first time and it's going to be different for each child. My first step is always to ask, "What's my purpose?" Does the goal fit a particular skill or concept or standard that I need to meet? Does it fit my theme? Is it something that I think the kids will just really enjoy that day? That's a good starting point.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Writing Effective Lesson Plans for Early Childhood Classrooms, by Amber Tankersley, PhD.
