Plan - Reflections on How Adults Use This EFF Skill

"Erasmus counted items again and again, comparing what was left against his lists. All his work and planning, and still he'd miscalculated. Already the candles were almost finished, as was the lamp oil. The coal was low enough that they had to ration it and could no longer keep the cabin so comfortably warm.
    Dr. Boerhaave joined Erasmus in the storehouse one dark morning when he was counting the tinned soups for the third time. 'This isn't your fault,' he said. Erasmus shook his head. 'Then whose fault is it? If I'd planned better...'
    'Blame Commander Voorhees,' Dr. Boerhaave said. 'If he'd told us from the beginning we were going to winter up here...how could you know what to plan for, if he didn't tell you?'" ⁸
-Andrea Barrett

Insights From Field Research:
Using the Standard to Guide Teaching and Learning

Michele Miller and Debbie Stowers
Canton City Schools ABLE, Canton, OH
ABE and GED students; Work-Based Project.
Teacher data from the second round of field review, conducted 1998-1999.
(Adapted from Equipped for the Future Content Standards, p. 38.)

"This process required us to really break down everything we knew about planning into small pieces. This enabled us to help the students through the process better."

Describe what you know about the level of performance of your students.

• Most students, when they enter the program, have not had experience setting goals or their goals are very vague such as, "I would like to have a good job." A few students can set a goal but it isn't reachable or realistic. At the time we started this class project, all students had some experience talking about goals and setting at least one goal in the area of a skill they would like to work on in class. About half of the students in this class are able to identify a goal for a project and determine if it is feasible.
• Very few of the students in this class are able to organize activities or arrange activities in order of importance to accomplish a goal. In other activities the tendency is to just jump into a project without thinking about ordering tasks or what the end product should be like.
• None of the students in this class are able to establish benchmarks for monitoring a plan. Students would have difficulty understanding the vocabulary for this component.
• About half of the students in this class are able to carry out a plan. Maybe half of those would be able to make reasonable adjustments in a plan if there were problems. The students don't usually have the life experiences or self-confidence to make adjustments when there are roadblocks encountered. Very few are able to accurately document what has been done to carry out a plan.
• Very few of the students in this class are able to use benchmarks to reflect on and evaluate a plan. The vocabulary would be a stumbling block. Unless we are guiding the activity the students would not think to analyze by breaking it down and looking at parts. The tendency for most is to evaluate by generalizing and saying, "This was a good activity," or, "I liked this."

Did using the components in planning and assessing learning change the process of planning, teaching, and evaluation? How?
Yes, it caused us to look more closely at the skill of planning and break it down into parts or steps. It certainly made the planning and teaching of this skill more concrete with specific planning tasks to be done. We incorporated some vocabulary words we probably would not have presented had we not used the components. Using the components caused us to revisit the plan throughout the project to evaluate if we were meeting our benchmarks or if we needed to make adjustments.

What are your general reflections on what you've been doing with EFF for this unit of study?
Using EFF in the work-based activity part of our program has allowed the students to feel like they are really learning something useful and gives those hours more of an academic feel which the students want. It is a wonderful framework for allowing us to integrate the ABLE work with the work-based activity.