Lesson 13 - Choosing Teaching-Learning and Assessment Tasks

Need for Smooth Activity Transition

Now that you have your learning objectives in order of their importance, you can now proceed to
design the specific activities you will use to get students to understand and apply what they have learned. This
is the second phase of the lesson planning process. Well-sequenced lesson plans benefit both the teacher
and the students. According to Bilash (2009), well-organized and properly sequenced lesson plans allow for a
smother functioning classroom; classroom disruptions are minimized, the stress on the teacher is reduced and
the learning environment is optimized for the students
Some of the other benefits to be gained from effective lesson sequencing include, the following:

1. Smoother transitions: When the teacher can plan what is intended to happen during each lesson
they will be able to make the transitions between lessons as smooth as possible. This will benefit
the students, as well, since they will be better prepared to absorb new material when it is presented
in an orderly manner.
2. Facilitates scaffolding: Clear end goals and sequenced lessons allow teachers to anticipate
difficulties and problem areas. Additional supports; such as specific exercises and activities, can
be provided to assist students meet the challenge of more difficult concepts.
3. Better organization: The job of a teacher is demanding and requires good organization skills. A
teacher who sequences lessons will know in advance what will be covered in a particular
lesson. This allows the teacher to prepare photocopies, worksheets, hand-outs, etc… in advance.
4. Future planning: Sequencing lessons in advance allows teachers to predict how long they think it
will take to cover certain material, and then see how long it takes when the lessons are delivered
to the students.
5. Assessment checks: Since the unit plans and lesson plans have been prepared in advance, the
teacher will be able to identify the optimal points in the program for checking the students’
understanding of the material and also how best to structure the assessments.

Regardless of where and when learning activities that make up a high-impact learning experience take
place, they all have a set of common features: (1) They are planned; (2) They have clearly defined
session/module outcomes; (3) The focus is on what the students are doing (they are engaged in active, authentic
learning); and (4)
Students receive feedback on their learning as part of the experience (https://www.teaching-
learning.utas.edu.au/learning-activities-and-delivery-modes/planning-learning-activities).

Crucial in lesson facilitation is the questioning techniques of the teacher as well as his/her ability to
handle learners’ questions. As a proactive teacher, think about specific questions you can ask learners to check
for understanding, write them down, and then paraphrase them so that you are prepared to ask the questions
in different ways. Another important strategy that will also help you with time management is to anticipate
students’ questions. When planning your lesson, decide what kinds of questions will be productive for
discussion and what questions might sidetrack the class. Think about and decide on the balance between
covering content (accomplishing your learning objectives) and ensuring that students understand.

Lesson Initiating Activities

The first set of activities you have to plan is how to initiate or introduce/begin the lesson. Considering
the diversity of your learners, initiating activities are done to achieve varied purposes, namely:
 1. determine what the learners already know (prior knowledge) about the lesson;
2. invite learners to actively participate;
3. get learners ready to accept/be excited for instruction;
4. create a sense of anticipation for the lesson; and
5. warm and liven up the classroom; and activate prior knowledge.
To guide you in determining the initiating activities to hook your learners, consider the following
questions when planning your introduction (Fink, 2005):

 How will I check whether students know anything about the topic or have any preconceived notions
about it?
 What are some commonly held ideas (or possibly misconceptions) about this topic that students
might be familiar with or might espouse?
 What will do to introduce the topic?

As you have learned in the previous lessons, there are many strategies and techniques to introduce the
lesson. Some activities could include the following:
 Use of graphic organizers (e.g., KWL Chart, Venn diagram, flow chart)
 Reading a news story related to the lesson
 Cartoon/comic strip
 Group Games
 Picture without a caption
 Anecdote/reading a brief story
 Skit, role-playing
 Brainstorming
 Diagnostic assessment

Getting cues from Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory, you can begin any lesson by means of the
following (https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/01/03/8-ways-to-start-a-school-lesson/):
Word Smart – put an unusual word on the board for all to see (e.g. in algebra, it might be
”agnostophobia” which means ”fear of the unknown.” This could serve as an intro for studying the meaning
of ”x” as an unknown).

Number/Logic Smart – put an interesting number or statistic on the board (e.g. for Philippine
election history, put ”2022” and ask students what they think it represents [year President BBM was elected).

Picture Smart – show a funny cartoon, meme, or photograph (e.g., Peppa Pig to teach English sounds)
for learners to interpret or give comments on the message conveyed.

Music Smart – play an appropriate selection of music – (e.g. to begin the study of the story “The
Prodigal Son, ” play the song “Anak” by Freddie Aguilar).

Body Smart – put on a little skit for the learners (e.g. in teaching “Office Protocols, have a group of
learners role-play the miscues and missteps of an unprepared applicant during the interview.)

People Smart – to start the class, ask learners a question and then have them turn to a fellow student
and formulate a response (e.g. in a Social Studies class, where the focus is on checks and balances, ask: ”Which
of the three branches of government do you feel is the most powerful?”).
 Self Smart – begin the class by asking learners a question related to their own lives that also relates to
the topic at hand (e.g. in Mathematics class, where learners are about to begin a unit on Percent, ask them to
”relate to the class how they distribute in percent their daily school allowance).

Nature Smart – show an animal video that you can tie into the day’s lesson (e.g. in psychology class,
show a popular YouTube video of a dog dancing the salsa and ask the students: ”Do you think animals have
consciousness?”).

Lesson Development Activities

This set of activities, also called lesson proper, includes your description of each activity: what you will
do as the teacher (written under the Teacher’s Activity column in the actual Lesson Plan) and what the
students will do, as well (labeled as Learners’ Activity in the plan). The lesson development activities serve
many purposes, namely:

 Order concept presentation from known to unknown, from simple to complex, from easy to
difficult, from most recent to the past, etc.
 Present the new material to the learners by explaining and modeling,
 Present the enabling activities for learners to develop and master the desired competencies
 Use guided and independent practice for mastery to enable learners to replicate what is expected
for them to demonstrate later
 Help learners understand and master information, provide them feedback, and regularly check
for understanding

To achieve these purposes, prepare several different ways of explaining the material (real-life examples,
analogies, visuals, etc.) to catch the attention of more learners and appeal to different learning styles. As you
plan your examples and activities, estimate how much time you will spend on each. Build in time for extended
explanation or discussion, but also be prepared to move on quickly to different applications or problems, and
to identify strategies that check for understanding. These questions would help you design the learning activities
(Fink, 2005) you will use:

 What will I do to explain the topic?

 What will I do to illustrate the topic in a different way?
 How can I engage students in the topic?
 What are some relevant real-life examples, analogies, or situations that can help students
understand the topic?
 What will students need to do to help them understand the topic better?

Several lesson development activities are aplenty to the teacher like you. These include: Reading
activities, Listening activities, Speaking activities, Writing activities, Viewing activities, Power point
presentation , Lecture-demonstration , Inviting resource speakers , Field trip, Hands-on learning , Solving
real-world problems , Performances, demonstrations of skill mastery, Interview , Library research , Internet
research, and many others.

What is important in this phase of the lesson is learners receive adequate information and are able to
understand and apply it accurately when they are on their own. In concept and skills development, the lesson
development activities progress into three sub-phases:
  “I do” sub-phase – The teacher demonstrates, explains, models for the learners, also known
as input modeling.

 "We do, we do, we do" sub-phase - The practice and review period. Students and teacher
work together – also known as the guided practice.

 "You do" sub-phase — Students work independently- also known as Independent practice.

By incorporating these phases into lessons, you ensure that learners understand the lesson (because
they have observed your demonstration or heard your explanation) and that they can continue working
outside class (because they have practiced and have models to refer to).

Lesson Culminating Activities

Just like emphasizing the importance of good initiating activities to hook your learners to the lesson, it
is similarly important to plan the culminating activities well. The culminating activities have the following
purposes:
 Bring the lesson to a close (wrap up) - what did they learn; what can they accomplish now
 Elicit the conclusions, generalizations, and summaries of lessons learned
 Check for understanding and ties up loose ends
 Correct misunderstanding
 Engage the learners to the day-to-day (authentic) application of the competencies learned
(Transferring ideas to new situations)
 Link lesson ideas to a conceptual framework and/or previously learned knowledge

You could end class with a restatement of the intended learning outcomes. Decide on a way to close
the activities. Ask these questions:

o Will students reflect on what they have learned?

o Will they turn in their work or complete it as homework?
o Have you clearly defined expectations for their homework assignment (if applicable)?
o Does the homework assignment extend or complete the intended learning outcome?

As suggested by seasoned educators, you can end the lesson in a number of ways, namely:

 State the main points yourself (“Today we talked about…”). You can ask a learner to help
you summarize them, or you can even ask all learners to write down on a piece of paper
what they think were the main points of the lesson (see the Exit Ticket in every lesson in this
module).
 Review the learners’ answers to gauge their understanding of the topic and then explain
anything unclear the following class.
 Organizing and summarizing activities
 Consolidating and Internalizing key information using graphic organizers
 Application activities/assignments
 Creative and expressive activities
 Portfolio assessment
 Formative assessment
 Summative assessment
Determining Appropriate Assessment Tasks
The third phase in planning a lesson is the selection of appropriate assessment tools to determine
the level of achievement learners have acquired after the teaching-learning experiences. After the act of
facilitation, you must ensure that learners have met the intended learning outcomes.
Approaches to measuring learning outcomes. There are two main approaches to testing learners’
learning: summative and formative (https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/assessment-
evaluation/measuring-student-learning)..
1. Summative assessments - tests, quizzes, and other graded course activities (e.g., portfolios, stage
performances, reaction papers, term papers, creative outputs) that are used to measure student
performance. They are cumulative and often reveal what students have learned at the end of a
unit or the end of a course. Within a course, the summative assessment includes a system for
calculating individual student grades.

2. Formative assessment - any means by which students receive input and guiding feedback on
their relative performance to help them improve. It can be provided face-to-face during class
hours, in written comments on assignments, through rubrics, and through emails. Usually non-
graded, formative assessments can be used to measure student learning on a daily, ongoing basis.
These assessments reveal how and what students are learning during the course and often
inform next steps in teaching and learning. Rather than asking students if they understand or
have any questions, you can be more systematic and intentional by asking students at the end of
the class period to write the most important points or the most confusing aspect of the lecture on
index cards. Collecting and reviewing the responses provides insight into what themes students
have retained and what your next teaching steps might be. Providing feedback on these themes to
students gives them insight into their own learning. (The closure segment of the lessons in this
module also reveals this kind of information.)

In addition, it is helpful to review course assignments and assessments by asking the following
questions:

 What are the students supposed to get out of each assessment?

 How are the assessments aligned with learning outcomes?
 What is its intrinsic value in terms of: Knowledge acquired, Skill development, Values clarification,
and Performance attainment?
 How are homework and problem sets related to exams?
 How are the exams related to each other?
 What other forms of assessment (besides exams) can be used as indicators of student learning?
 If writing assignments are used, are there enough of them for students to develop the requisite skills
embedded in them?
 How is feedback on student work provided to help students improve?
 Are the assessments structured in a way to help students assess their own work and progress?
 Does the assignment provide evidence of an outcome that was communicated? Is the evidence direct
or indirect?
 Aligning lesson components. One responsibility as assessor of student learning is to make sure
that the assessment tools are aligned with your learning objectives and instructional strategies. Constructive
alignment is “a design for teaching in which what it is intended students should learn and how they should
express their learning is clearly stated before teaching takes place. Teaching is then designed to engage students
in learning activities that optimize their chances of achieving those outcomes, and assessment tasks are
designed to enable clear judgments as to how well those outcomes have been attained" (Biggs, 2014), It involves
 Thoughtfully determining intentions for what students should learn and how they will demonstrate
their achievement of these intended learning outcomes, and clearly communicating these to
students;
 Designing teaching and learning activities so that students are optimally engaged in achieving these
learning outcomes; and
 Creating assessments that will allow students to demonstrate their attainment of the learning
outcomes and allow instructors to discern how well these outcomes have been achieved.

If assessments are misaligned with learning objectives or instructional strategies, it can undermine both
student motivation and learning. If you set as objective that learners should be able to apply analytical skills, but
your assessment tool measures only factual recall, the learners are frustrated because they are not tested of what
they learned. If the skill taught was to compare and contrast dicot and monocot plants, the test should be asking
students to make a comparison, but if they are asked to enumerate samples of these plants, the learners do not practice
what they learned.

To illustrate constructive alignment between learning objectives and assessment strategies, this table
presents examples of the kinds of activities that can be used to assess different types of learning objectives.

Type of learning
Examples of appropriate assessments
objective
Recall Objective test items such as fill-in-the-blank, matching, labeling, or multiple-choice
Recognize questions that require students to:
Identify recall or recognize terms, facts, and concepts
Interpret Activities such as papers, exams, problem sets, class discussions, or concept maps that
Exemplify require students to:
Classify summarize readings, films, or speeches
Summarize compare and contrast two or more theories, events, or processes
Infer classify or categorize cases, elements, or events using established criteria
Compare paraphrase documents or speeches
Explain find or identify examples or illustrations of a concept or principle
Activities such as problem sets, performances, labs, prototyping, or simulations that
Apply
require students to:
Execute
use procedures to solve or complete familiar or unfamiliar tasks
Implement
determine which procedure(s) are most appropriate for a given task
Activities such as case studies, critiques, labs, papers, projects, debates, or concept
Analyze
maps that require students to:
Differentiate
discriminate or select relevant and irrelevant parts
Organize
determine how elements function together
Attribute
determine bias, values, or underlying intent in presented material
Evaluate Activities such as journals, diaries, critiques, problem sets, product reviews, or studies
Check that require students to:
Critique test, monitor, judge, or critique readings, performances, or products against established
Assess criteria or standards
Create
Generate Activities such as research projects, musical compositions, performances, essays,
Plan business plans, website designs, or set designs that require students to:
Produce make, build, design or generate something new
Design

Assignments. The last part of the planning of your lesson is the giving of assignments. Standard
dictionaries define assignment as “a task or piece of work that you are given to do, especially as part of your
studies. Specifically, school assignment is a school task performed by a student requiring considerable effort
to satisfy the teacher. Creating assignments is a major part of overall lesson design, and every project you assign
should clearly align with your learning objectives for the lesson in general.

Assignments are given as follow-up activities to practice the skill taught to develop mastery. Other
assignments provide learners to apply their competencies. Some authentic and alternative forms of assignments
are team projects that simulate ones carried out in real-world settings; product development tied to professional
settings; writing of many types required in related fields, exhibits/performances, case study analyses on real-
world problems, debates, and presentations to simulated or real-world target audiences.

Some assignments are given to prepare the learners for the next lesson. Learners are asked to read
materials, watch a video, or prepare materials needed for the next day’s activity.

Good homework assignments are characterized as providing clear instructions for students; that can
be completed successfully; are not too long; can be completed within a flexible time frame; using information
and materials that are readily available.

When developing the communications about each assignment for the students, include the
AMPS (Walvrood & Anderson, 2005), The acronym means -
A = Who is the audience for the "project?"
M = What is the main point and purpose of the assignment?
P = What patterns and procedures are required?
S = What are the standards and criteria that will be used to evaluate the "project?"

In giving assignments, follow these guidelines to ensure the learners are motivated
(https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/wac/tips-for-writing-an-assignment-and-teaching-it-to-students/):

 Be clear about your pedagogical goals and design assignments to meet those goals.
 Put the assignment in writing, making sure to explain…
 Discuss the assignment in class.
 Model successful sample papers.
 Provide opportunities for students to approach writing as a process.
 When evaluating their work, respond to student writers constructively to promote learning.

Activity 1. In 100 words, discuss the importance of each segment of the teaching-learning activities to the
whole act of facilitating learning. Include in your answer how the transition should be made and why.
Activity 2. In your own words, explain the principle of constructive alignment. Then relate its relevance
to the selection of assessments and possibly extend, at times, to giving assignments.
Activity 3. Go over the Curriculum Guide in your subject specialization and get two learning competencies.
Then, identify the teaching-learning activities and the assessment tasks. Write your answer in the matrix
below:

Learning Competencies Teaching-Learning Activities Assessment Tasks

Objective 1 Initiating

Developmental

Culminating

QUIZ

Set A
Directions: Determine if the teacher's behavior (Column C) falls under
A. Initiating B. Development C. Culminating D. Assessment E. Assignment
In your answer sheet, write the letter of your choice in Column A, Then evaluate if each teacher's behavior
conforms with the principles and guidelines in designing the teaching-learning activities and assessment tasks,
including assignments. In Column B, put a Checkmark (/) before the statement if it conforms; an X mark if
it does NOT.

Activity
Classification Conformity Teacher Behavior
1. Displaying sample outputs of achieving students.
2. Showing a photo of an unknown animal from Africa.
3. Engaging learners in individual practice before group
practice.
4. Asking learners about concepts learned in the recent past
lesson.
5. Giving learners authentic tasks to prove they learned the
lesson.
 6. Telling learners that they need to bring the materials the
next day.
7. Throwing difficult questions to all learners to check if they
are following the lesson discussion.
8. Writing on the board keywords/terms
9. Giving essay test items to Grade 3 learners
10. Communicating non-verbally as feedback to learners’
explanations.

Set B
Directions: Using the choices below, determine the appropriate test for the objective set by the teacher in the
lessons. Write your answer on your answer sheet.
A. Objective Tests B. Essay Test C. Performance Test

1. Dissect a frog to identify the internal organs.

2. Discuss using at least two arguments the effect of global warming on people’s health.
3. Recognize the currency of the different countries of the world.
4. Determine the veracity or soundness of individual statements.
5. Execute a dance step gracefully.