From Goal Setting to the Effect – workshop with Luiza Wójtowicz-Waga

I’ve been learning Spanish for a while now and it’s been a great time, save for a time when my profesora was replaced by a native. The new profesora was a really nice lady, I guess, and a teacher with an impressive potential for development; the thing was, however, we had no proper coursebook and relied on her materials… and I had no idea what was going on in the class, what new skills I developed, what things I was supposed to learn. I tried talking to her DoS, but soon I got frustrated and eventually I quit.

This “traumatic” experience made me an advocate for a clear specification of the lesson goal and, naturally, sharing it with students. So when Luiza, who’s a highly experienced trainer and a very inspiring woman, invited me to her workshop on goal setting, I was on cloud nine.

Goal setting a’la holiday planning

Goal setting is pretty much like going on holidays, explains Luiza. First, you choose your destination and then you plan your journey and pack your luggage.

The most important aspect of a goal, though, is its relevance. Guided by Luiza we worked hard trying to make our goals SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and time-bound) and then making them appropriate for our students’ needs (depending on their age, type of classes etc.). To make this task more challenging, we worked on sign-posting methodology – addressing the goal not only at the beginning and the end of the lesson, but keeping it visible throughout all activities.

Do I even need this?

The most difficult activity was, as always, defining the goal and making it relevant both from students’ perspective and from teacher’s viewpoint. “Do I really need this?” was the question we imagine our students ask, and we planned our goals accordingly.

“Student learns how to describe a photo” doesn’t really sound exciting for any student, but we can add a little bit of magic by paraphrasing it into “student can describe a crime scene basing on a photo”. The activity will be pretty much the same, but suddenly the goal sounds more useful – and that’s why students’ brains will accept the unavoidable necessity of acquiring knowledge with ease.

Hopefully. 

Sugar, spice and everything nice

I’m not going to reveal all the secrets I’ve learnt – but we discussed Test-Teach-Test approach, an amazing activity-planner idea by Ewa Torebko (I’m going to share it soon, because this particular idea deserves a separate note, it’s sooo awesome), von Restorff effect and John Hattie’s ideas.

Things I’ve learnt? How important the last exercise is, how easily you can manage the whole goal-setting process and how important summary of the classes is.

If you ever have the chance to attend this workshop – do not hesitate, simply put your name on the list and prepare for a great time: six hours of learning, fun and meeting new, friendly and inspiring people.

Just be sure to take the next day off work, your mind will be buzzing!