Operationalizing - Planning to Teach
Operationalizing: Planning to Teach
Where operationalizing begins
- After instructional objectives are developed and a curriculum design is selected.
- It focuses on classroom teaching and instruction in three steps.
Step 1: planning
- Determine learners’ prior knowledge and skills.
- Establish the learning outcomes.
- Review appropriate resources and materials.
What planning means
- Reviewing Tyler’s sources of curriculum, as a rehearsal for teaching.
- Organizing content, sequencing tasks, selecting assignments, and defining classroom management and assessment.
Designing a curriculum is not the end. The curriculum still has to operate in a real classroom, and operationalizing the curriculum development process is the work of getting it there. It focuses on classroom teaching, and it begins only after the earlier steps are done: the instructional objectives have been developed and a curriculum design has been selected. From there, operationalizing runs in three steps. This article takes the first, planning.
Step one: planning to teach
The first step is planning for teaching and learning, and it has three parts:
- Determine prior knowledge and skills. Find out what learners already know and can do, so the teaching starts in the right place.
- Establish the learning outcomes. Be clear about what the teaching should achieve.
- Review appropriate resources and materials. Gather what the teaching will need.
These three echo ideas from across the whole guide: beginning where the learner is, stating clear outcomes, and assembling the materials a source unit would hold.
Determine prior knowledge and skills, establish learning outcomes, and review resources
Gauge where learners are, fix what the teaching should achieve, and gather the materials it needs. These echo beginning where the learner is and assembling a source unit’s materials.
What planning means
Planning here has a precise meaning. It means reviewing the sources of curriculum suggested by Tyler, the learner, contemporary life, and the subject specialists, and it acts as a rehearsal for what will take place in the next step, the actual teaching. Planning is the dry run before the live performance.
As a process, planning involves several concrete tasks:
- Organizing the content.
- Identifying and sequencing the learning tasks.
- Selecting the assignments.
- Defining the classroom management and the assessment procedures.
Each of these is a decision made before the lesson, so the lesson itself can run smoothly. A teacher who has organized the content, sequenced the tasks, chosen the assignments, and decided how the room and the assessment will work has rehearsed the lesson in advance, and is ready to teach it for real.
Reviewing Tyler’s sources of curriculum as a rehearsal for teaching
It involves organizing content, sequencing learning tasks, selecting assignments, and defining classroom management and assessment, all decided before the lesson so it can run smoothly.
How was this article?