Favorite All Purpose Lesson Plans

I absolutely HATE seeing kids on buses, walking through museums, taking field trips with check lists in their hand because to justify the activity the teacher had to write "behavioral objectives." This is the antidote. Elliot Eisner has described "expressive outcomes" as a complement to behavioral objectives. When you've designed a rich, heuristic activity, you probably cannot prespecify exactly what will be learned. In such instances make this written post-activity assignment. (It's the one I often use in my film class to good effect.)

"Expressive outcomes...are essentially what one ends up with, intended or not, after some form of engagement. Expressive outcomes are the consequences of curriculum activities that are intentionally planned to provide a fertile field for personal purposing and experience."

Now that you have _____________(name the activity), what is it that you find that you have learned?

P.S. These are inevitably the most interesting essays I read and frequently students tell me that they wonder why they've never been asked to do this before.

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