A Change in Thinking

A little background...
I am in my 21st year of teaching middle school math.
I started teaching using a traditional approach and simply following the textbook (full body shudder)
I then was trained in MiC and this opened a whole new world for not only my students, but for me as well.
Discovering the math!  In real world situations!
Wow.
Even before our state standards evolved into the Common Core standards,
I was already creating my own curriculum.
Finding good problems became my quest.
Developing lessons that provided my students with opportunities to make their own sense of the mathematics seemed like the only right thing to do.
Math is more than a recipe of formulas and how-to's.
Math is making connections, finding patterns, and developing a number sense critical for solving problems.

This evolution of my math classroom found me another opportunity this last year...
Writing curriculum for students on the east coast.
While this opportunity has pushed me in ways that require an article all on its own,
What I am learning from this experience is filtering back into my own little world,
within my four walls,
and ultimately affecting my students.

Which brings me to this blog post.
It's a little thing really.
But it jumped out at me and so I thought I better record this thought.
While writing my lesson plans for next week,
I noticed instead of focusing on the activity that the students would do each day in our next unit of study,
I found myself writing out the learning targets first.
Now, I had been told about how important the learning targets are.
I had even read a book about them!
But until my experience of writing an actual curriculum,
I had not been applying this in my lesson plans and my teaching.
My mind automatically just went to what are my goals (please note this is not the change...I always knew what my goals were but I was looking at them through the lens of activities and what the students would be doing.)
Back to the targets...
This time, I found myself outlining the targets, knowing I could fill in the activities later.
While there are many activities that can get me to my final destination,
The learning target is just that...my final destination.
What do I want the kids to know by the end of the lesson?

This is a little change really.
So subtle that I can barely track the course it took to get me here,
But for some reason I have a feeling this slight change could make a big impact for my students.