The focus of the following lesson (unit) is the novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry. My objectives are based on and are consistent with the Florida State Standards for middle grades English/Language Arts.

Below is a list of my objectives and the respective PLANE and CONSTRUCT. Immediately following is a chart illustrating the approximate percentage of time spent attempting to promote knowledge in each of the represented domains.

1. I spend the majority of my time teaching for conceptual knowledge. While many of my objectives are specific to short term goals for a particular unit or text, they are building blocks for long term knowledge. As my objectives are met, students are able to apply what they’ve learned to other learning situations. For example: Objective 2: Having read The Giver, TSWBA to identify the main idea. The short term goal is for students to display an understanding of the mentioned novel and its central theme. More broadly, students should be able to apply this knowledge to other works of literature to display an understanding of the concept "main idea," while being able to identify the main idea in other texts.

2. Time and class size are both constraints that have contributed to the distribution of my energies. Class periods are short and the content to be covered is extensive. Class sizes are large and it is difficult to find the time to work on individual strategy building or concepts that are not directly assessable.

3. My subject area, English/Language Arts lends itself to conceptual instruction. Goals and standards to be met are such that text-structure, syntactic and rhetorical knowledge become focal constructs. In my endeavor to meet State goals and standards, I concentrate mainly on conceptual knowledge.

4. I would like to concentrate more on teaching for metacognition.

5. In order to focus more on teaching for metacognition I will need to provide more opportunities for my students to become responsible for their own learning. Currently I do a fair amount of group work/ collaborative learning and would enjoy doing more.

6. To accomplish this change it would be helpful to have the support and advice from a fellow teacher who effectively employs these strategies.

7. Learners would benefit as they would develop a better awareness of their own learning processes while practicing planning, self-monitoring and evaluation and a variety of other strategic techniques. This would definitely be learning that could be carried across the curriculum!