Constructive alignment

Okay kiddo, so constructive alignment is like building something with Lego blocks. Imagine you want to build a castle, but you only have a bunch of random Lego pieces. You might be able to make something that looks sort of like a castle, but it won't be very strong or stable.

Constructive alignment is all about making sure you have the right Lego pieces to build the castle you want. That means thinking ahead and planning what you need before you start building. You might need some special pieces for the towers or the drawbridge, for example.

In the same way, constructive alignment is about planning ahead when you're teaching something. You want to make sure that all of the activities, assignments, and assessments you use in your lesson are working together to help your students learn what they need to know.

Just like with Lego, you need to start by figuring out what you want to build. In teaching, that means thinking about what you want your students to be able to do or understand by the end of the lesson. Then you can figure out what kind of activities and assessments will help them get there.

Here's an example: let's say you're teaching a lesson about weather. You want your students to be able to understand how different types of weather work, and be able to predict what kind of weather they might see on a given day. To make sure all of your activities and assessments are aligned with that goal, you might plan:

- A lecture or video that explains different types of weather and how they work
- An interactive activity where students can practice predicting the weather based on clues
- A homework assignment where students have to look at a weather map and predict what kind of weather different areas will have
- A quiz or test that asks students to identify different types of weather, explain how they work, and predict what kind of weather they might see in different situations

All of these activities are designed to work together to help your students learn about weather and develop the skills they need to predict it. That's constructive alignment — making sure everything you do in your lesson is helping your students learn what they need to know.