Replying to Brenda's Backwards planning

In Brenda's post about Backwards planning post she posed a question that I think is in the heart of every student teacher going into their career. She wondered if these strategies and methods that the authors of our textbooks and perhaps even our own instructors were teaching us were truly feasible within a real classroom. Those of us that find themselves drawn to urban schools will be walking into some of the toughest classrooms in the world. With these classrooms in mind it is incredibly tempting to assume that nothing more than the transmission process is a feasible way of teaching.

But I think Brenda answers her own question for all of us when she mentions her skills in backwards planning. In speaking of her goal to win a race upon her military base she highlights the power of beginning with the end goal and planning her actions accordingly. By planning our lessons around what we hope our students to learn we focus less on making certain activities work and more on how and what our students are learning.

This focus allows teachers to take even summative assessments like tests and papers and make them formative in nature. With the focus on the end product of what you are trying to teach your students you can course correct them if they are struggling or raise those objectives to challenge students that are surpassing your objectives.

How does this apply to the question of how we can take seemingly optimistic activity and make it workable in a problem classroom? Because by focusing on the final product we can alter the above activities so that they make those goals.

When we have our students in mind we can make our lessons serve them best.