Joanne Dickinson, Beth Carter, Jennifer Armenia

EDUL 6020

Group Activity for Module 3

 

GPS taken exactly from Department of Education website to compare with Tyler’s criteria for good objectives:

 

1.  ELA6R1 The student demonstrates comprehension and shows evidence of a   warranted and responsible explanation of a variety of literary and informational texts.

 

2.  ELA6LSV1 The student participates in student-to-teacher, student-to-student, and group verbal interactions.

 

3.  ELA6LSV2 The student listens to and views various forms of text and media

in order to gather and share information, persuade others, and express and

understand ideas. The student will select and critically analyze messages using rubrics as assessment tools.

 

4.  ELA6R3 The student reads aloud, accurately (in the range of 95%), familiar

material in a variety of genres, in a way that makes meaning clear to listeners.

 

5.  ELA6RC2 The student participates in discussions related to curricular learning in all subject areas.

 

After reading from Tyler’s book (page 44), I read a profound statement – “. . . the real purpose of education is not to have the instructor perform certain activities but to bring about significant changes in the students’ patterns of behavior . . . .”  In other words – what is the student going to learn and how is he going to learn it?

 Looking at a sample of the Georgia Performance Standards for 6^th grade English/Language Arts, I examined them as to whether they meet three criteria of Tyler’s for objectives.  Three criteria that is mentioned in the book include 1) is the objective written for the instructor to do or is the student doing the learning – what is the student to do, 2) is the content area clear and precise, and 3) is the objective to generalized.  Each of the GPS does indicate what the student is to do. They clearly state what the student is to do; although the specific content area is not mentioned in each of the objectives, the Georgia Department of Education clearly states in the standards that these objectives relate to English/Language Arts; The objectives may be somewhat generalized, but this allows the teacher to plan the types of activities needed to help the student realize the objective.

At this point, I do not believe that the objectives from the GPS need to be rewritten. As state-wide objectives, they are broad and probably too many; however, at the local level, the GPS could be written in more specific and precise terms for teachers to use.