SD LISC Part 2 - Learning intentions and activity 1

In this part of the presentation, the speaker discusses the importance of effective learning intentions and how they can be strengthened. They explain that learning intentions should focus on what students will learn rather than what they will do. The process for developing a learning intention involves determining a teaching focus, assessing students' prior learning, and then designing a statement that reflects the syllabus content. The speaker provides an example of how they would develop a learning intention for a unit of work in English. They also discuss the criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of learning intentions, ranging from not evident to advanced. The audience is then instructed to complete an activity evaluating learning intentions using a rubric. Okay, this is part two, strategic delivery list. We're looking at slides 11 to 16 with the first activity. I'm going to start now. You are now going to spend some time unpacking what effective learning intentions look like and how these might connect to your syllabus. The learning intention for a lesson or series of lessons is essential in driving impactful learning within and across classrooms. It is a statement that clearly articulates what we want our students to know, understand and be able to do as a result of the learning and teaching activities. We know many schools have their own systems and structures for learning intentions and you might already have some sentence starters in place. For example, we are learning to or we will. However, today you'll be focusing on the process to go through to help you strengthen the learning intention so that students are able to differentiate between the activity and the learning. This will ensure it has the most impact on student learning outcomes. A carefully framed learning intention emphasises what the students will learn rather than what they will do. You are going to strengthen this strategy by being syllabus focused and explicit. We want to connect students to the learning intentions and success criteria to support them to become responsible for their own learning. This is a useful framework to refer to when planning a lesson or unit of learning or guiding your colleagues to develop meaningful and impactful learning intentions. First, you need to determine a teaching focus. Look at the syllabus outcomes and content and use your faculty programs. This process will determine the focus of the learning. This could be a big idea linked to the faculty scope and sequence or come from the sample units. The important part is what happens next to ensure the learning intention is relevant for your students in your context. You then need to assess students' prior learning. It's important to recognise what students already know so the learning connects to where they are at. A pre-task or work sample could determine what students already know about this focus. Look at student learning outcomes and consider where they are right now in relation to the focus area and the where to next. This allows teaching at the point of need and our learning intention to be specific. Finally, you then determine the learning intention. You would determine what you want your students to learn and design a statement that reflects the syllabus content but is in language students can understand. Using statements like I am learning too will definitely support this. Later you will look at some criteria in a rubric that can help you guide the development of an effective learning intention and success criteria within your team. I'm going to model what I would do in developing a learning intention for my teaching sequence. I'm going to think aloud to share my process with you as I want – I'm going to start this slide again. I'm going to model what I would do in developing a learning intention for my teaching sequence. I'm going to think aloud to share my process with you as I want to unpack the thinking that goes into developing a learning intention. This modelled example has been developed using the new English syllabus. However, a similar process should be used using the syllabus that is relevant to you. So in my school, Stage 4 Scope and Sequence, my Term 1 unit of work is based on the department's Powerful Youth Voices program. Now in this program I've chosen to keep the driving question how do composers use language forms and features to develop an appealing style for effective communication. Considering this, I've determined that my students need to work on understanding the specific language forms, features and structures utilised across different forms to further develop their writing. This is an outcome in the English syllabus. This activity I am focusing on is at the beginning of this program. This is where students compose a personal response to a poem. I've already looked at the poem Australian Air with my students so I'm going to direct them to write their personal response to the poem. I've looked at the syllabus and focused in on the outcome, content group and then content point highlighted on the screen, ensuring to consider how this modelled text uses language forms, features and structures specific to their form. In particular, as part of our class discussion, we looked at the effectiveness of both literal and figurative language in the poem Australian Air. Considering the nature of the task, which was to write a personal response to the poem, I will construct my learning intention for this learning. To ensure the learning is student centred, I started my learning intention with, I am learning to. I could have the learning intention, I'm learning to write a personal response to the poem Australian Air. While this is a good start as it is task related, it doesn't provide enough detail. I feel that I could also strengthen its connections to my focus syllabus content point using appropriate meta-language and verbs. Finally, to ensure the knowledge and skills my students develop are transferable, I need to decontextualise the learning intention so that it could be applied to other contexts as well. So my new learning intention is, I am learning to effectively convey a personal response to a text where I evaluate specific language forms, features and structures. I can now plan success criteria to illustrate the main learning that will be planned for and assessed. This will provide more information for students to support their learning. So from the thinking presented during the previous slides, we've developed a criteria to evaluate and then strengthen our learning intentions. This criteria has been created from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership documents around learning intentions and success criteria, which draws on the broader research in this area. The first level, not evident, is where there is no clear learning intention evidence within the task or lesson. The second level, not aligned, is where there might be a learning intention recorded but it doesn't align with the selected syllabus or the task for the lesson. The next level is beginning. Here you can see that the learning intention aligns to the syllabus. It might be specific to the task rather than generalisable. There could be some sophisticated syllabus content language rather than having been adjusted to make it appropriate for students to access. As you become more confident with learning intentions, you will see greater alignment between the syllabus and learning intention or the task and learning intention, but often not both. The learning intention is content or skills focused and written in student-friendly language. At the advanced level, there is a clear alignment between the learning intention, selected syllabus content, through the lesson from the introduction, explicit teaching, student task and right through to the plenary or reflection activity. In these learning intentions, we would also find an appropriate level of challenge that prompts students to extend themselves in the learning activity. You will now complete your first activity. Using the rubric for learning intentions and the learning intention examples found in your workbook, you are going to evaluate what level of learning intention each example is. Using the language of the specific criteria points within each level of the rubric will allow you to describe the aspects of each learning intention that characterise it. This will, in turn, allow you to consider the ways that your learning intentions can be developed and refined to be most impactful. Follow the steps below this video to complete the activity.