Understanding the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs)

Summary

This educational video script emphasizes the importance of understanding competencies in lesson planning for teachers. It highlights the need for aligning weekly competencies logically, ensuring congruency between learning objectives and activities, and designing assessments that match competency requirements. The script introduces the cognitive process dimensions, which guide the progressive introduction of competencies from basic to complex. It also discusses the taxonomy of learning, detailing six levels of competency that inform lesson design and assessment, aiming to foster holistic learning and lifelong skills.

Takeaways

• 📚 **Understanding Competencies**: Teachers should comprehend competencies as the foundation for lesson planning, which are lifelong skills expected for every learner.
• 🎯 **Aligning Objectives**: It's crucial to align learning objectives with competencies to ensure congruency in lesson design, activities, and assessments.
• 🔍 **Document Analysis Findings**: Common issues include illogical arrangement of competencies, mismatched objectives, and assessments that don't align with competency requirements.
• 🔄 **Progressive Learning**: Learning should be progressive, starting with basic skills and gradually moving to complex ones to prevent learning failures.
• 🏗️ **Cognitive Process Dimensions**: Teachers must consider the cognitive process dimensions when designing lessons to ensure a scaffolded approach to learning.
• 📈 **Mapping Competencies**: Mapping competencies to appropriate levels of learning and assessment helps in creating congruent and relevant learning materials and assessments.
• 🔁 **Adjusting Competency Delivery**: For an optimal learning experience, teachers may need to combine or extend competencies based on the number of weeks available for lesson delivery.
• 📊 **Taxonomy of Learning**: Utilizing a taxonomy of learning helps in defining the level of competency requirements and guides lesson developers in creating appropriate tasks.
• 📝 **Designing Assessments**: Assessments should be designed to match the level of competency, from simple recall to creating new ideas and innovations.
• 🌟 **Holistic Learning Outcomes**: The ultimate goal is to develop holistic learning experiences that lead to competent individuals capable of mastering essential life skills.

Q & A

What is the core of designing contents, activities, and assessments in teaching?

Competencies are the core of designing contents, activities, and assessments. They represent the lifelong skills expected for every learner to master.

How do competencies influence teaching and learning?

When teachers understand competencies, they can utilize them in setting smart objectives, creating meaningful activities, and designing appropriate assessments.

What are the common findings from the document analysis of developed materials?

The common findings include competencies delivered weekly not being logically arranged according to the taxonomy of learning, learning objectives not being congruent to the competencies, activities in learning activity sheets not coinciding with the objectives, and assessments not being congruent to the competency requirements.

Why is it important for teachers to understand the levels of learning and assessment?

Understanding the levels of learning and assessment helps teachers design lessons and activities that are congruent with the competency requirements, ensuring holistic and lifelong learning.

How should teachers approach the design of lessons and activities based on the competencies?

Teachers should be guided by the levels of learning and assessment, ensuring that the lessons and activities are congruent with the competency requirements and arranged from easy to difficult levels.

What is the purpose of mapping competencies within a quarter?

Mapping competencies within a quarter helps identify the appropriate levels of learning and assessment requirements for each week, ensuring that learning activity materials and assessments are congruent and relevant.

How can teachers ensure that the competencies are introduced progressively in their lessons?

Teachers can ensure progressive introduction of competencies by mapping them according to the cognitive process dimensions and arranging them from basic to complex.

What is the role of the taxonomy of learning in designing lessons?

The taxonomy of learning defines the level of competency requirements and guides teachers in designing lessons, activities, and assessments that align with the cognitive process dimensions.

Why is it crucial for teachers to classify competencies across the cognitive process dimensions?

Classifying competencies across the cognitive process dimensions helps teachers design lessons, activities, and assessments that are congruent with the specific level of competency required, leading to more effective learning outcomes.

How should teachers handle a situation where there are too many or too few competencies for a quarter?

For too many competencies, teachers can combine or merge those with common grounds. For too few, they can extend the competency delivery by expanding objectives and activities, especially for those with higher-level requirements.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Designing Lessons with Essential Competencies

This paragraph emphasizes the importance of understanding competencies as the core of lesson design, including content, activities, and assessments. It highlights that competencies are lifelong skills expected of every learner and should be integrated into smart objectives, meaningful activities, and appropriate assessments. The session aims to help teachers understand these competencies better, discuss their importance, and evaluate their practice against cognitive process dimensions. The paragraph also points out common issues found in lesson monitoring, such as illogical arrangement of competencies, misalignment between learning objectives and competencies, and inconsistencies between activities and assessments.

05:02

🎓 Scaffolding Learning through Competencies

Paragraph 2 discusses the scaffolding approach in learning, where competencies are guided by levels of learning and assessment, indicating a progressive and gradual delivery of learning. The cognitive process dimension is introduced as a framework for understanding how children absorb knowledge and skills. The paragraph stresses the importance of designing lessons and assessments that are congruent with these levels to ensure holistic and lifelong learning. It also addresses the need for teachers to classify competencies according to their cognitive process dimensions and to arrange them from easy to difficult to scaffold student learning. The process of mapping competencies within a quarter is outlined, including adjusting the number of activities and assessments to fit the number of weeks available for lesson delivery.

10:05

📈 Taxonomy of Learning and Competency Levels

The final paragraph delves into the taxonomy of learning, which defines the level of competency requirements. It outlines six levels of competencies, ranging from simple recall to creating new ideas and innovations. Each level is described in terms of what it requires from learners and how teachers should design lessons, activities, and assessments to meet those requirements. The paragraph underscores the importance of teachers' critical understanding and interpretation of competencies to design appropriate learning experiences. It concludes with a quote from Tony Robbins, suggesting that learning is a process of changing mindset and practice, which becomes a way of living.

Keywords

💡Competencies

Competencies refer to the lifelong skills expected for every learner to master, as mentioned in the script. They are the core around which lesson content, activities, and assessments are designed. In the context of the video, competencies are not standalone but are guided by a scaffolding approach, running from basic to complex skills. The script emphasizes the importance of teachers understanding these competencies to design effective learning experiences.

💡Cognitive Process Dimensions

Cognitive Process Dimensions are the levels of learning that guide the progression from basic concepts to complex products. They represent the learning patterns of a child in absorbing knowledge and skills. The script discusses how these dimensions are crucial for teachers to consider when designing lessons and assessments to ensure a progressive and gradual learning experience.

💡Learning Objectives

Learning objectives are the specific targets that learners are expected to achieve by the end of a lesson. The script points out that these objectives should be congruent with the competencies being taught. Mismatches between objectives and competencies can lead to confusion and hinder effective learning, as seen in the example where the objective requires learners to give the ending of a story, which is not aligned with the competency expectation.

💡Assessments

Assessments in the script are tools used to evaluate if the learners have mastered the competencies. They should be congruent with the competency requirements. The video highlights issues where assessments do not align with the competencies, such as when the competency requires inference of character feelings, but the assessment involves revising the story, which does not match the required skill.

💡Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a teaching approach mentioned in the script where learning is built up gradually, from simple to complex. It is used to guide the development of competencies in a logical and progressive manner, allowing learners to build upon their existing knowledge and skills.

💡Taxonomy of Learning

The Taxonomy of Learning is a framework that defines the levels of competency requirements. It is referenced in the script as a guide for teachers to classify competencies into appropriate levels and to design lessons, activities, and assessments that match these levels. The taxonomy helps in ensuring that the learning process is systematic and that each competency is addressed appropriately.

💡Levels of Learning

Levels of Learning, as discussed in the script, refer to the different stages of cognitive development that learners go through, from simple recall to creating new ideas. These levels are important for teachers to consider when designing lessons to ensure that the activities and assessments are appropriate for the learners' current stage of understanding.

💡Congruency

Congruency in the script refers to the alignment of learning objectives, activities, and assessments with the competencies being taught. It is emphasized that for effective learning, there must be a match between what is taught (competencies), the objectives set, the activities conducted, and the assessments made.

💡Learning Activity Sheets

Learning Activity Sheets are documents that outline the activities for learners to engage in during a lesson. The script mentions that these sheets should coincide with the learning objectives. If there is an inconsistency, it can lead to confusion among learners about what skills they are meant to master.

💡Progressive Delivery

Progressive Delivery is the method of introducing competencies in a logical sequence, starting with the most basic and gradually moving to more complex skills. The script stresses the importance of this approach to prevent learning failures and to ensure that learners can cope with the increasing demands of the competencies.

💡Holistic Learning

Holistic Learning is the concept of considering all aspects of a learner's development, not just academic knowledge but also skills and attitudes. The script discusses how teachers must ensure that their lesson designs, activities, and assessments are inclusive and contribute to the holistic development of learners.

Highlights

Competencies are central to lesson planning, encompassing content, activities, and assessments.

Competencies represent lifelong skills expected for every Filipino learner.

Understanding competencies allows teachers to create SMART objectives, meaningful activities, and appropriate assessments.

The session aims to communicate the essence of competencies and their importance in teaching.

Common findings from document analysis include logical arrangement issues in weekly competencies delivery.

Learning objectives are often not congruent with the competencies, leading to mismatched expectations.

Activities in learning materials do not always align with the objectives, causing confusion for learners.

Assessments frequently do not match the competency requirements, affecting the learning outcomes.

Competencies are guided by both levels of learning and levels of assessment, indicating a scaffolding approach.

Designing lessons and activities must be congruent with the levels of learning and assessment.

Teachers must classify competencies across the six cognitive process dimensions for effective lesson planning.

Mapping competencies involves identifying the cognitive process dimensions required for each.

The number of weeks and competencies must be considered to ensure congruency in lesson delivery.

For an excess of competencies, combining or merging them is necessary to fit the lesson delivery schedule.

Teachers must be careful in selecting competencies for expansion to ensure meaningful learning outcomes.

The taxonomy of learning defines the level of competency requirements and guides lesson planning.

Competency levels range from simple recall to creating new ideas, influencing the design of lessons and assessments.

Understanding competencies enables teachers to design appropriate lessons and assessments for holistic learning.

Learning is a process of changing mindset and practices, ultimately becoming a way of life.

Transcripts

[Music]

for teachers to design a good lesson

they must understand that competencies

are the core of designing contents

activities and assessments the

competencies represent the lifelong

skills

expected for every filipino learner to

master

and become a way of life when teachers

understand the competencies

they will be able to utilize these

competencies into smart objectives

meaningful activities and appropriate

assessment

let us all learn today in understanding

the most essential learning competencies

you may subscribe for more sessions and

learning

for this session were expected that we

can communicate very well

the very essence of the competencies

that we can discuss the importance of

the most essential learning competencies

in teaching learning delivery

we can explain the relevance of

cognitive process dimensions to the

different learning competencies

and we can evaluate our own practice

in assessing congruency of competencies

to expected cognitive process dimensions

during the first round of monitoring

this year

these are the common findings from the

series of document analysis from the

developed materials

first competencies delivered weekly are

not arranged logically according to the

taxonomy of learning

there are competencies in the first few

weeks that started with difficult

activities

and outputs and eventually ended a

quarter

with the most basic skill requirement

for the example it started with compare

and contrast

which is already analysis part and it

ended with identify

which is basically remembering

second learning objectives are not

congruent to the competencies

some lessons have goals which are far

from the targets of the competencies

in this example learners are only

required to give the ending of the story

but the objectives require learners to

find the ending of the story

and to ingest personal feelings about

the story which

are far beyond the competency

expectation

[Music]

and that makes it a problem because

there is now a mismatch

between the competency and the

objectives

and eventually a mismatch to the

activities and assessment

the third one is that activities in the

learning activity sheets did not

coincide with the objectives

in this example the objective requires

the learner to give the ending of the

story being read

but the activity was just giving a

one-line situationer

and not a story the inconsistency of the

objectives and activities will lead

confusion to learners

as to what skills will be mastered since

this competency requires the development

of reading comprehension and critical

analysis

the activity itself did not satisfy the

objective

and the competency

fourth on the list is assessments

are not congruent to the competency

requirements

in most cases our assessment did not

coincide the competency or skill

requirements

in this finding the competency requires

the learner to infer

feelings of the characters in the

dialogue

the assessment expected to allow the

learners to master

making inference on the emotions of

characters

as this is one of the most difficult

skills in language

subjects the activity did not coincide

with the competency requirement because

it allowed the students to revise the

fable

and change the character revising and

changing the character of the story

is not congruent to the competency which

is

inferring the feeling of characters

based on the dialogues

heard

[Music]

so what is now the problem

is it the understanding of the most

essential learning competencies

or is it the utilization of the most

essential learning competencies

[Music]

our most essential learning competencies

are guided by both levels of learning

and levels of assessment meaning

the competencies are not standalone

statements

but it is guided by a scaffolding

approach that runs from basic concepts

to complex products this also means

that when we design our lessons and

activities

we have to be guided by levels of

learning and when we design our

assessment

we have to be guided by the levels of

assessment

[Music]

these levels of learning and levels of

assessment

are also known as cognitive process

dimension

this dimension represents the learning

patterns of the child in absorbing the

knowledge and skills

through scaffold activities of learning

concepts to ideas

and products psychologically

this represents that delivery of

learning must be progressive

and gradual the abrupt introduction of

the competency

will eventually contribute to learning

failures

thus competencies must be introduced

from ec

to average and difficult level to allow

every learner to cope up with the

competency demands

teachers must put premium on

considerations of these levels of

learning and levels of assessment

specifically in designing learning

activity materials

both levels of learning and assessment

must be congruent

to ensure that learning is holistic and

lifelong

when teachers fail to classify what

levels are required by every competency

then learning activity materials

produced

and assessment designs are not inclusive

and eventually

learning outcomes are sacrificed the

critical part here

is that teachers must be very careful

in understanding the requirements of the

competencies

before designing the lesson

in understanding the learning

competencies teachers must get to know

what is the level of ah competency

they must be very careful in classifying

every competency

across the six cognitive process

dimensions

and when teachers already know the

specific level

they can now design lessons activities

and assessment

congruent to the competency requirement

teachers as well might consider the

placement of competencies

from easy average to difficult level

this arrangement will allow students to

scaffold their learning

across the levels of difficulty

[Music]

so in order to classify the competencies

into appropriate levels

we need to map first the set of

competencies within the quarter

this is through identifying what

cognitive process dimensions

or level of learning each competency

requires

by simply using this pattern we can

identify

appropriate competencies levels of

learning

and assessment requirement in a

particular week

it will be delivered and part of it also

is we can identify what forms of

summative assessment can be given in a

particular competency in a certain way

and by this mapping we can assure that

from the competencies in identified

the learning activity materials and

assessment

are congruent and relevant

when mapping the competencies we need to

consider the number of weeks

over the number of competencies since

the third quarter has eight weeks

seven weeks will be provided with

learning activity shifts

and the eighth week will be allotted for

major assessment activities

[Music]

for competencies which are too many in a

quarter

we need to combine or merge specifically

these competencies with common grounds

to satisfy

the number of weeks for lesson delivery

and for competencies which are too

limited

lesson developers may extend the

competency delivery

by expanding the objectives and number

of activities

specifically for competencies having

higher level requirements

teachers must be careful in looking at

the competencies to be considered for

expansion

there is no need to create some

competencies

we only need objectives

and activities to be stretched in a week

or combined weeks

in mapping the competencies teachers

must be guided with a taxonomy of

learning

the taxonomy of learning defines the

level of

competency requirements

[Music]

these are some sort of review on the

levels of assessment and levels of

understanding referring to our most

essential learning competencies

when the competency requires only a

simple recall

then it is level one this means

that we don't need complicated lessons

activities and assessments

because the competency requirement only

allows learners

to develop the memory and retention of

the lesson

level 2 is when the competency requires

learners to demonstrate their

understanding of the lessons

the lesson developer will focus now on

how learners discuss

and explain the concepts presented

during

the lesson the teacher will design

activities and assessment that will

allow the learners to discuss

and explain the concepts they learned

[Music]

level three is when the competency

requires learners to have application of

learning to practical situations

when the competency requires application

teachers must design

activities and assessment that will

manifest application of learners

about his takeaways from what he

understood

from the lesson may be conceptual or

realistic the application may include

how rules

methods concepts principles and theories

can be applied in a similar situation in

life

level 4 is when the competency requires

learners to break information into parts

and explore these parts to become whole

again

the teachers as lesson developers must

consider

how they will provide activities and

output requirements that could

measure critical thinking this level of

competency

allows the learners to analyze the

pieces of information

and form conclusions based on the

evidences gathered

and analyzed

level 5 is when the competency requires

learners to

evaluate through reflection critics

and judgment the activities and

assessment to be designed by teachers as

competency requirements

must focus on how learners will justify

a course of decision or actions based

from the concepts

perspectives and ideas presented

the lesson must allow them to weigh in

their judgment

and their outputs must show competence

in managing decisions

because that is what the competency

requires them to master

[Music]

and lastly is level six

when the competency requires learners to

create new ideas

new products and new innovations from a

certain point of view

reflected from the different

perspectives of the lesson

teachers must carefully look into

performance-based tasks and

outputs because this competency level

requires them to create something new

out from their learning more so

teachers must refer to the list of verbs

suggested by the taxonomy of learning

but must be careful in interpreting the

whole competency

rather than just relying to the verbs

and what the verbs tell

lesson developers must be critical in

understanding

interpreting and deciding the level of

competency

since there are competencies that use

verbs classified in the lower level

but the competency requirement as a

whole is higher

when we understand the competencies and

how it works

teachers can easily design appropriate

lessons

create meaningful opportunities for

learners to do the tasks

and provide appropriate assessment that

will develop holistically

to become competent individuals

learning is always a process of changing

the mindset and the practices that

becomes the way of living

tony robbins believed that if you do

what you've always done you'll get what

you've always gotten

you