The Trouble with Language

So in an effort to keep things honest, let’s not pretend that curriculum development is always easy. There has been a tremendous amount of talk on CTF about the language of learning targets. “Student will be able to… (Insert behavior verb here)”. This has become the mother of all sentence stems; perhaps this is an educator’s karma for administering too may selected response quizzes. Suffice to say that trying to identify the most appropriate verb for a learning target has nearly reduced us to tears, caused eruptions of laughter, and led to some very philosophical conversations all in the span of one meeting. Today Cat Portillo came up with a solution (using the term solution very loosely) “when in doubt slash it out”, which very well may become the CTF motto. Can’t decide between synthesize or evaluate, no problem slash it out. Mr. Webster meet synthesize/evaluate. Full disclosure, and in order to restore your faith in our ability we will not be using the slash as often as we would like, but I encourage you to insert a verbal slash into conversations whenever possible to shake things up. This CTF update was brought to you thanks to Cody/popcorn connoisseur, Cat/kitten who is all work and no play, and Rebecca/the lady with the rolling bag (which btw is very fashionable).