Task Setting: Adopt, Adapt or Create?
When it comes to planning and resourcing lessons you have three broad options:
Adopt
Adapt
Create
I'd have loved to have shoehorned another ad- word in there, but 'create' is the one.
Adopt
These days there are a plethora of great lesson resources available to teachers. Some of them are even free. Sometimes it's just a case of using one of them. However, the writers of those resources don't know your class, your school and your needs, so however hard they try, they might not have made the perfect resource for you.
Adapt
Yep, there are great resources but sometimes they just don't quite fit what your pupils need. Take bits of them, copy and paste, use your snipping tool. Too many questions? Just borrow the first five. The writer of the resource may not know your class, but you do, and at your hands their resource can be turned into just the ticket.
Create
Make your own. Obviously this can be time consuming so the challenge is to really make sure that you're meeting the brief and not overcomplicating things. However, you're the one who knows your class best, so you have a good chance of designing the perfect task.
Making the choice for the children
When preparing lessons we have the important choice to make: will we adopt, adapt or create?
There are many other things to consider, and we will consider some of them later in this blog post, but for this particular decision, there is one factor to consider above all others:
Is it the right resource?
Whether you're adopting something, adapting something or creating something, it's got to be the right thing.
How will you know if it's right? The following are non-negotiable:
It must:
Help the children learn the objective of the lesson.
Link perfectly to what you plan to explain and model.
Cause children to think hard.
Stay focused on the objective of the lesson.
Be sequential, keeping children learning more as they engage with the task.
Making the right choice for you
However, there is a second factor to consider when deciding whether to adopt, adapt or create: TIME.
Sometimes you can spend more time scouring the Internet for the perfect resource than you would if you created it yourself. Sometimes adapting something is pointless when the perfect thing is just a Google away. Sometimes minutes of searching will get you just the same results as hours of painstaking task creation.
Perhaps AI will help you bridge the three? When you use AI, it essentially scours existing lesson resources for you, adapts them to your needs, creating something new, albeit based on what has gone before.
This one's about being wise and not giving into the sunk cost fallacy.
If you haven't turned something up in a couple of minutes, perhaps task creation is the way to go. If you find yourself spending far too long making something, perhaps you need to re-evaluate and go with something pre-made, even if it isn't quite as showy.
A balancing act
There's a great deal to think about when it comes to setting the right tasks, but be clever about it: don't reinvent the wheel and don't spend too long trying to find a needle in a haystack. Choose the way that's going to get what you need as fast as possible without skimping on quality. Think first of exactly what you need and then work out whether you need to adopt, adapt or create.
Engage critically
Whichever route you take, be critical. Have a good day the task. Does it really do what you need it to do? Are there parts that would be too difficult? Does it distract from your objective? There are lots of questions you could ask yourself in order to make sure you haven't simply picked the first thing that comes along for the sake of saving time.
Ultimately you need to end up with the right task, not the one that was quickest to come by, no matter how tempting it is to shut the laptop and do something other than lesson planning.
If you'd like some bespoke help with developing teaching, here's your 3-step development plan:
Drop me an email
Have a phone call with me to talk about your school
We'll work together to empower you and your staff to enhance teaching and to enrich your pupils' lives
.png)
.png)
Comentários