Kid-Friendly Math Objectives

Last November, the superintendent came to observe me as part of the teacher evaluation process.  Of course, my lesson plan included an objective.  And, of course, I shared it with the class.  My kindergarteners are used to discussing the objectives for Math, Read-Alouds, and Writers' Workshop.

    I can arrange numerals in order from 10 to 20.

I expected a few hands would go up to ask about the academic language: "arrange," "numerals,"  'in order."  But, no. Instead, there was a loud groan, as Emma complained, "Not the same objective again!"  At first, I was mortified that this little plaintiff was going to ruin my observation. Instead, several other students came to the rescue and reminded Emma about the meaning of an objective and how there might be many lessons to help us really master an objective. It became a valuable academic discussion!

After the observation, I continued to reflect on objectives, why we share them with kindergarteners, and how many objectives we really need to cover the content standards.

I think kindergarteners benefit from discussing familiar objectives. Their confidence is stronger when the objective is familiar.  They are more able to make connections to prior learning. They understand big ideas better.

Just think about cardinality.  There are 4 standards addressing cardinality: 4a, 4b, 4c and 5.

To my way of thinking , these counting skills are subskills of  "counting objects." Plain and simple.   If a child counts objects accurately and consistently and correctly answers the question, "How many objects?", then K.CC.,4a,4b, 4c and K.CC.5 are mastered.

So this year, I'm going to put aside all of my too-specific objectives and use fewer objectives. I'll revisit the same objectives more often.  Here is my trimmed list of kid-friendly math content objectives:

I always write my objectives on sentence strips.  I have devised a few tricks so that I don't use as many sentence strips:

If the objective is a group objective, I stick a post-it note over the word "I."

If the objective is the same except for one word (eg: "weights" instead of "lengths,"
I have taped a flap that can cover the earlier term.

 I post the day's objectives in a small pocket chart.

Each day, the classroom helper removes the objective from the chart and brings it over to our meeting area so we can discuss it.  I have tried to write objectives that are kid-friendly but still use some academic language:  'describe,"  "identify," "compare" are terms kindergarteners can and should learn.  I've also included some math language: "objects," "attributes," and "numerals."  We read the objective before we go off to practice it, and again at the end of each lesson.

MY REFLECTIONS:

Emma really had me thinking about the value of sharing objectives with kindergarteners.  Obviously, she was quite intent on learning something new each day.  Just because an objective is the same, it doesn't mean something new isn't being taught or can't be learned.  As the year progressed, Emma and her classmates continued to like to "think like a teacher!"

What do you think about the number of math content standards?  about discussing objectives with kindergarteners?  about the use of academic language?