[MUSIC] Welcome back to Teach English Now! So far we've discussed how to design a lesson plan, how to present and model instruction, and how to guide students through practice. In this module, we're going to focus on assessment. Before we talk about assessment, let me introduce to you to the idea of alignment in lesson planning. If you've ever owned a car, you may have heard the word alignment used to talk about your car's tires. If your car is properly aligned, it means that all four wheels are positioned so they keep the car moving straight forward, with all four wheels pointing in the same direction. Having improper alignment of one wheel can cause the car to shake or shimmy, as it moves down the road and can cause the tires to wear out more quickly. When instructional designers talk about alignment in lesson planning, they are referring to the idea that the objectives, activities, and assessments, like the wheels of a car, are all pointing in the same direction. This means that the activities of the lesson are designed to help students achieve the objectives. And the assessments are designed to accurately measure whether or not the students have achieved those objectives. Everything is connected and learning moves straight forward. Back in module two, we talked about objectives and how they should drive your lesson planning, and how objectives are different than activities. Remember? Good objectives are measurable and describe the results you expect to achieve at the end of your lesson activities. If you don't know what you want to achieve, how will you know when your students have achieved it? Clear and measurable objectives not only help you choose appropriate lesson activities, but they guide you when creating assessments by helping you know what your assessment items should measure. We'll get back to that in a minute, but there is one more thing I want to discuss with you first. A few months ago, I took my car to have its alignment checked. The mechanic told me that my car was out of alignment, which surprised me, because I didn't experience any of the shaking I mentioned earlier. He showed me the diagram on the computer which showed that all four wheels were pointed in the same direction, but they weren't pointing straight ahead, instead they were pointing just a few degrees to the left. So while my car was going straight forward, the wheels were actually going to the left. It was wearing out the tires and I had to have them replaced, costing me several hundred dollars. In lesson planning, it is possible for your objectives, activities, and assessments to be aligned, pointing in the same direction, but not pointing in the direction you really want to go. This can happen when teachers do not begin with the end in mind. It would be like spending hours studying ballet when your actual goal is to become a boxer. In language teaching, some teachers have a really fun activity that they want to do with their students, so they begin with the activity, and make their objectives and assessments match. Students have fun and maybe learn some English, but they may not be any closer toward their ultimate goal than they were before that lesson. Thus, when designing instruction and planning lessons, you should always begin with your objectives. Figure out what the big picture is and then break it down into smaller units. Sometimes, you may need to break those smaller units down to even smaller units with each of those pieces becoming a single lesson. Now, let's talk about using objectives to guide you in designing your assessments. If you remember in module two, I introduced the idea that objectives needed to be clear and include action words such as identify, state, demonstrate, and create. Words such as these describe actions that can be easily measured in assessments. Objectives that use words such as understand, know, believe, or learn describe states of mind that are hard to assess through quizzes, projects, or other types of assessment. So one of the most important things you can do, to keep your instruction aligned and pointing toward the big picture, is to write clear objectives. Using action words that will help you determine what activities will help your students learn and what assessment types you can use to evaluate their learning. In the next video, we'll talk about different assessment types and how you can really see how much your students have learned. We'll see you then. [MUSIC]
