Learning Intentions

Sometimes called: Objectives, Goals, Learning targets, Learning Outcomes, or rephrased as Essential Questions

Think about what a successful student in your class should be able to do at the end of the hour. What concepts should they be able to apply? What kinds of analysis should they be able to perform? What kind of writing should they be able to do? What types of problems should they be solving? Learning intentions provide a means for clearly describing these things to learners, creating a meaningful educational experience.

Your intention should:

• Answer the question: What should your students be able to do at the end of the class that they could not do before?

• Make the intended learning clear to students and show them how to be successful in class.

• Provide guidelines for assessing student progress.

Clearly defined intentions form the foundation for selecting appropriate content, activities and assessments. Learning intentions help:

• plan the sequence for instruction, allocate time to topics, assemble materials and plan class outlines.

• plan different instructional methods for presenting different parts of content. (e.g. small group discussions, independent work, etc).

• facilitate various assessment activities including assessing students, your instruction, and the curriculum.

Knowledge Focus

I know how to construct a pie graph

I know why rabbits are an ecological disaster

I know what causes thunderstorms

Skills Focus

I can identify persuasive strategies used by an author

I can demonstrate how varying levels of CO2 in the atmosphere impact our environment

I will be able to answer and ask questions about my independent reading book, I will do this by answering questions by one of my peers about what I am reading.

I will be able to predict what will happen next in our story, I will do this by telling the class my predication when prompted and adjust that predictions as we read the story.

Understanding Focus

I understand what happens when our bodies consume carbohydrates

I understand how persuasive language can position the reader to agree with an author

I will understand how a table and graph represent the same data, I will do this by creating a table using data.