This chapter is oriented towards the “essential questions” as one of the most important ideas when planning. That is to say, essential questions should be incorporated in every teacher’s planning design in order to frame and direct the teaching to the desired goals.
First, essential questions in planning (and of course in the actual class) are fundamental because they provoke inquiry and more questions to be develop. In fact, the act of questioning is intrinsically related to the process of understanding as final goal in teaching and, I should say in life. Their purpose is the stimulation of critical thinking and as I said before the understanding. For instance, If students are exposed to these essential questions they will be more likely to develop better and objective judgments and they will transfer what they have learnt to other areas of their lives meaningfully.
Second, what makes a questions to be essential? They can be called essentials if they direct students to the big ideas of a content or skill. The idea is that they are essential because they are capable of leading students to face the very heart of topics in order to obtain a deeper understanding from them. As the chapter suggests, the essential is given by the vitality these questions have so to speak. It should be significant to students and they should encourage them to be engaged with the topics taught. These questions have four connotations: a) they are timeless, that is to say they are debatable as far as a person changes his viewpoints according to his experience of that particular question/analysis in life; b) they refer to the foundation and boundaries of a subject, that means they have history and have been debatable in its field; c) the essential is found if these questions help students to understand problematical ideas, they should “make sense” to students; d) finally, they are essential if they engage particular and different set of students, so these questions should catch and grasp the students’ attention.
Third, the importance of essential questions in skill areas. This idea has to do with inquiry in those areas where to manage skills is the main purpose to be achieved. These question should be asked when performance is taking place. They are really important because they are not related to content but how students have mastered skills and when and in which context they have to use those skills. Also, essential questions are related to big ideas. For example, critical thinking is a skill which students have to use when teachers ask them for the big ideas. So, in that moment when inquiring students know what skill they should use because the questions are making sense to them.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Chapter I: Backward Design. (Wiggins & McTighe , 2005)
In teaching there are many fundamental aspects that have to be thought and considered before starting giving lessons. In this chapter, Wiggins and Mctighe support the idea that “teachers are designers”. The authors meet the conception that the whole process of teaching is directed to desired goals in which teachers are the milestone for designing and creating learning experiences. At the same time, these authors provides a full conception of what they call “Backward design”. This concept is the most important one in this chapter and this is going to be developed in order to have further understanding.
The idea of having desired purposes as the first thing to think when planning a particular learning experience seems to be a new and interesting one from the point of view of “Backward Design”. That is to say that when planning is really important to have a clear visualization of what the goals are for a given class or course. But why Backward Design is best? Because of the idea that once we have this goals to be achieved clear in our planning, the teaching is going to be constructed from that goals backwards, so that the process of building this planning will be from the final and mayor goal which is understanding. So, first we focus on the desired results, then in the activities and content (skills) that will enable students to achieve those goals mentioned.
Another important idea that this chapter shows is “the twin sins of traditional design”. The first sin is called activity-oriented design, which is based on the premise that when a teacher is planning what really matters is to be focus on the activity instead of the learning the students should go through. It is been said that “activities, though fun and interesting, do not lead anywhere intellectually” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) . This kind of planning only enable students to learn by chance instead of learning by clear goals. The second sin is called “coverage” which means to teach directly from the course book going page by page trying to covering all the contents within a specific time to do so. The thing is that this type of approach on teaching does not have clear and specific goals to be achieved as part of the learning process. It just goes expecting that students learn by the activities from the book without any reason of why they should be seeing that content.
Finally, this chapter explain the three stages of backward design. They are: Identify desired results, Determine acceptable evidence and Plan learning experiences and instruction. The first one is oriented towards having a clear understanding of what the goals are going to be in a particular course. In this part we should go the national standards in order to see what are desired results in that curricula so that we can plan prioritizing the contents (skills). The second one means how we collect evidence in order to plan our classes. This one calls for validation of determined evidences in order to design units and lessons. That is to say that teachers should analyze the results from assessment procedures so that they will improve teaching by designing better classes. And finally it is the turn to plan learning experiences and instruction. We need to plan appropriate instruction for our students according to the evidence we get from the assessment procedures and from the clear goals we have established since this process started. These learning experiences are logically directed to what materials or teaching procedures we are going to use in order to students can achieve the desired goals.
Backward design seems to be fundamental for teachers who really want to stay focus on student’s learning. At the same time, it increases the awareness of how teachers should be always worried about what they can do for students’ learning instead of being only focus on the activities they would like to use as part of their teaching. In order to have the appropriate material, teachers should be able to think on what the purposes are first and then by what teaching approach and materials the goals will be achieved through.
The idea of having desired purposes as the first thing to think when planning a particular learning experience seems to be a new and interesting one from the point of view of “Backward Design”. That is to say that when planning is really important to have a clear visualization of what the goals are for a given class or course. But why Backward Design is best? Because of the idea that once we have this goals to be achieved clear in our planning, the teaching is going to be constructed from that goals backwards, so that the process of building this planning will be from the final and mayor goal which is understanding. So, first we focus on the desired results, then in the activities and content (skills) that will enable students to achieve those goals mentioned.
Another important idea that this chapter shows is “the twin sins of traditional design”. The first sin is called activity-oriented design, which is based on the premise that when a teacher is planning what really matters is to be focus on the activity instead of the learning the students should go through. It is been said that “activities, though fun and interesting, do not lead anywhere intellectually” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) . This kind of planning only enable students to learn by chance instead of learning by clear goals. The second sin is called “coverage” which means to teach directly from the course book going page by page trying to covering all the contents within a specific time to do so. The thing is that this type of approach on teaching does not have clear and specific goals to be achieved as part of the learning process. It just goes expecting that students learn by the activities from the book without any reason of why they should be seeing that content.
Finally, this chapter explain the three stages of backward design. They are: Identify desired results, Determine acceptable evidence and Plan learning experiences and instruction. The first one is oriented towards having a clear understanding of what the goals are going to be in a particular course. In this part we should go the national standards in order to see what are desired results in that curricula so that we can plan prioritizing the contents (skills). The second one means how we collect evidence in order to plan our classes. This one calls for validation of determined evidences in order to design units and lessons. That is to say that teachers should analyze the results from assessment procedures so that they will improve teaching by designing better classes. And finally it is the turn to plan learning experiences and instruction. We need to plan appropriate instruction for our students according to the evidence we get from the assessment procedures and from the clear goals we have established since this process started. These learning experiences are logically directed to what materials or teaching procedures we are going to use in order to students can achieve the desired goals.
Backward design seems to be fundamental for teachers who really want to stay focus on student’s learning. At the same time, it increases the awareness of how teachers should be always worried about what they can do for students’ learning instead of being only focus on the activities they would like to use as part of their teaching. In order to have the appropriate material, teachers should be able to think on what the purposes are first and then by what teaching approach and materials the goals will be achieved through.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Chapter VIII: Criteria & Validity. (Wiggins & McTighe , 2005)
As we have been studying the book “Understanding by Design” by the authors mentioned above, we have been realizing, step by step, the different elements and key concepts that undoubtedly have become really important to our own awareness of evaluation and assessment.
In this chapter called “Criteria and Validity”, the authors discuss and give lots of tips about how we as teachers have to be aware of the importance of different types of assessment, specifically the ones which are not based just in correct or incorrect answers (objective tests), but the ones which the evaluation is guided by an appropriate criteria. This brings the question that at the moment of having evaluations based on students’ performances, in what criteria do teachers support these evaluations? This is a huge subject because is not that easy for an assessor to test and assess according to what he thinks is correct or not. The things is that in order to assess students’ understanding is central to have criteria and formulate rubrics for its further assessment. By rubrics we mean a set of instructions where an assessor relies on and supports the evaluation. At the same time, rubrics describe degrees of quality, proficiency or understanding along a continuum (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). According to the authors there exist two general types of rubrics: holistic and analytic. The holistic one is intended to evaluate a general view of a task, in opposition to the analytical one which is based on particular areas or “traits” that gives different scores in different areas.
Having these issues in mind is important to clarify something. As a matter of fact, having rubrics for assessing students’ performance become fundamental in the way that teachers should be as clear as possible at the moment to explain students the way they are going to be evaluated. This sounds common sense but one thing is to have clear rubrics based on any standard criteria to evaluate and the other is to not inform students by what rubric they will be evaluated in the future.
At the moment of having a rubric of evaluation, we need to think that it is important to have support and reliability. As we have already seen in the previous chapter the need for having fair judgment from evidences founded from the assessment, general judgment is central to the purpose of being accurate at the moment of giving marks. Rubrics are grounded by validity as well. If validity measures what is supposed to measure, rubrics depend also on the criteria of what is supposed to be focus on at the moment of judging if students did well or not in a particular area. And this brings the concept of reliability as the confidence the assessor should have in the rubrics guided by credible patterns and clear trends (2005).
Finally, it is fundamental that teachers should be really aware of all these issues at the moment of assessing and judging students’ works or performances. It becomes essential that evaluative processes take into consideration not only the theoretical part of the assessment but the interest and ongoing learning from students.
Wiggins, P., McTighe, J. Understanding by Design. Chapter VIII. 2005.
In this chapter called “Criteria and Validity”, the authors discuss and give lots of tips about how we as teachers have to be aware of the importance of different types of assessment, specifically the ones which are not based just in correct or incorrect answers (objective tests), but the ones which the evaluation is guided by an appropriate criteria. This brings the question that at the moment of having evaluations based on students’ performances, in what criteria do teachers support these evaluations? This is a huge subject because is not that easy for an assessor to test and assess according to what he thinks is correct or not. The things is that in order to assess students’ understanding is central to have criteria and formulate rubrics for its further assessment. By rubrics we mean a set of instructions where an assessor relies on and supports the evaluation. At the same time, rubrics describe degrees of quality, proficiency or understanding along a continuum (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). According to the authors there exist two general types of rubrics: holistic and analytic. The holistic one is intended to evaluate a general view of a task, in opposition to the analytical one which is based on particular areas or “traits” that gives different scores in different areas.
Having these issues in mind is important to clarify something. As a matter of fact, having rubrics for assessing students’ performance become fundamental in the way that teachers should be as clear as possible at the moment to explain students the way they are going to be evaluated. This sounds common sense but one thing is to have clear rubrics based on any standard criteria to evaluate and the other is to not inform students by what rubric they will be evaluated in the future.
At the moment of having a rubric of evaluation, we need to think that it is important to have support and reliability. As we have already seen in the previous chapter the need for having fair judgment from evidences founded from the assessment, general judgment is central to the purpose of being accurate at the moment of giving marks. Rubrics are grounded by validity as well. If validity measures what is supposed to measure, rubrics depend also on the criteria of what is supposed to be focus on at the moment of judging if students did well or not in a particular area. And this brings the concept of reliability as the confidence the assessor should have in the rubrics guided by credible patterns and clear trends (2005).
Finally, it is fundamental that teachers should be really aware of all these issues at the moment of assessing and judging students’ works or performances. It becomes essential that evaluative processes take into consideration not only the theoretical part of the assessment but the interest and ongoing learning from students.
Wiggins, P., McTighe, J. Understanding by Design. Chapter VIII. 2005.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Chapter III: Gaining Clarity for Our Goals. (Wiggins & McTighe , 2005)
As teachers is really important to know how and what to design for our students. At the same time, this process has multiples desired goals. However they are not as easy to understand as we think they are. So, In order to gain clarity on goals, as this chapter suggests, I would like to discuss one of the main ideas exposed in this chapter. This idea has to do with the Establishment of Goals. Why is it really important to have goals as clear as possible for both teachers and students? This is the answer we should aim for on this idea.
To begin with, learning goals can be defined as “the content standards or learning outcomes that specify what students should know and be able to do in various disciplines” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). What the authors suggest here is that at the moment of design goals in a program or course, we should go the national curricula in order to have more evidence on what direction we should set these goals. Here we may have problems with the content standards because sometimes these are too big, small, and vague (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), or even they do not fit in the reality students are. And that is not our purpose if we want to have students learning meaningfully. For example, if teachers teach equations without a clear objective or an explanation of what they are intended to be taught. So, it is commonly said by students: what are we learning something that we are not going to apply in our daily life? That is why establishing goals become so important to be understood by teachers and students.
Now, how do we avoid teaching students these problems? This is answered by prioritizing content standards “identifying the big idea and core tasks within them” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The purpose of this is to have a bunch of big ideas by which students can get to the center of it. The prioritization should be done by the teacher from this “easy to follow” information given to students. This is like doing conceptual maps, and then they have to construct their knowledge analyzing and comparing the information in order to focus their understanding.
Finally, the importance of having challenging tasks to be developed because “authentic challenges involve realistic situations, where the context of the task is as faithful as possible to real-world opportunities and difficulties” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). That is to say challenges become part of the prioritization of the objectives and it allows knowledge and skills to be developed further. As always, to be challenging students become a great deal in their process of learning.
Wiggins, P., McTighe, J. Understanding by Design. Chapter III. 2005.
To begin with, learning goals can be defined as “the content standards or learning outcomes that specify what students should know and be able to do in various disciplines” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). What the authors suggest here is that at the moment of design goals in a program or course, we should go the national curricula in order to have more evidence on what direction we should set these goals. Here we may have problems with the content standards because sometimes these are too big, small, and vague (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), or even they do not fit in the reality students are. And that is not our purpose if we want to have students learning meaningfully. For example, if teachers teach equations without a clear objective or an explanation of what they are intended to be taught. So, it is commonly said by students: what are we learning something that we are not going to apply in our daily life? That is why establishing goals become so important to be understood by teachers and students.
Now, how do we avoid teaching students these problems? This is answered by prioritizing content standards “identifying the big idea and core tasks within them” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The purpose of this is to have a bunch of big ideas by which students can get to the center of it. The prioritization should be done by the teacher from this “easy to follow” information given to students. This is like doing conceptual maps, and then they have to construct their knowledge analyzing and comparing the information in order to focus their understanding.
Finally, the importance of having challenging tasks to be developed because “authentic challenges involve realistic situations, where the context of the task is as faithful as possible to real-world opportunities and difficulties” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). That is to say challenges become part of the prioritization of the objectives and it allows knowledge and skills to be developed further. As always, to be challenging students become a great deal in their process of learning.
Wiggins, P., McTighe, J. Understanding by Design. Chapter III. 2005.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Understanding by Design
In order to make a critical discussion of the chapter 2 “Understanding Understanding” from the Book “Understanding by Design” by Wiggins & Mctighe, we have to look at 3 different but connected ideas that the chapter gives us.
First, we have to look and examine the concept of understanding. The discussion starts, paradoxically, on the lack of understanding of this concept. According to the authors this concept is frequently misunderstood or confounded with the idea of Knowledge. This misinterpretations, which are made by teachers and people regarding to the area of Education, have undesirable consequences when assessment appears. That is to say that at the moment of testing is important to know if this process has a connection with the content knowledge or skills that should be tested (Validity). So, the assessment a teacher does is going to depend on the understanding he or she has from the concepts of Understanding and Knowledge.
Now, it is important to define these two concepts. From Understanding, what we obtain is the abstraction, the mental process that human minds do in order to “get the idea”, to understand and give meaning and sense to different and connected parts of knowledge. At the same time, Understanding has to do with knowing something and being capable of use that knowledge so that he or she is able to use that information for certain things.
On the other hand, Knowledge is defined by the facts and information we obtain from a subject or experience.
Second, we have another idea exposed by the authors which is Transferability. I personally agree on the idea that this concept gives clear description of how understanding and knowledge work. Transferability acts as one of the main mental abilities at the moment of solving a “X” Problem from daily life. That is to say, if students are learning by content knowledge and are capable of understand it and able to use that knowledge to any other different situation, here we have that the idea of transferability takes place as a normal mental operation. And I think this ability is the expected outcome from any subject or study. I remember the question “why do we have to learn math?” and this concept and ability shows us how we act and operate from our inner mental processes, most of the time without knowing it.
Third, the idea of students' misunderstanding as a way of learning. Why? Because although students have learnt something wrongly, teachers have the opportunity to fix that wrong ability. This idea also connects with transferability because you have to do that kind of operation using knowledge and processing it by transfer in order to do misunderstanding. So, in that case it is the teacher’s chance to go to that wrong operation and rebuilt it.
First, we have to look and examine the concept of understanding. The discussion starts, paradoxically, on the lack of understanding of this concept. According to the authors this concept is frequently misunderstood or confounded with the idea of Knowledge. This misinterpretations, which are made by teachers and people regarding to the area of Education, have undesirable consequences when assessment appears. That is to say that at the moment of testing is important to know if this process has a connection with the content knowledge or skills that should be tested (Validity). So, the assessment a teacher does is going to depend on the understanding he or she has from the concepts of Understanding and Knowledge.
Now, it is important to define these two concepts. From Understanding, what we obtain is the abstraction, the mental process that human minds do in order to “get the idea”, to understand and give meaning and sense to different and connected parts of knowledge. At the same time, Understanding has to do with knowing something and being capable of use that knowledge so that he or she is able to use that information for certain things.
On the other hand, Knowledge is defined by the facts and information we obtain from a subject or experience.
Second, we have another idea exposed by the authors which is Transferability. I personally agree on the idea that this concept gives clear description of how understanding and knowledge work. Transferability acts as one of the main mental abilities at the moment of solving a “X” Problem from daily life. That is to say, if students are learning by content knowledge and are capable of understand it and able to use that knowledge to any other different situation, here we have that the idea of transferability takes place as a normal mental operation. And I think this ability is the expected outcome from any subject or study. I remember the question “why do we have to learn math?” and this concept and ability shows us how we act and operate from our inner mental processes, most of the time without knowing it.
Third, the idea of students' misunderstanding as a way of learning. Why? Because although students have learnt something wrongly, teachers have the opportunity to fix that wrong ability. This idea also connects with transferability because you have to do that kind of operation using knowledge and processing it by transfer in order to do misunderstanding. So, in that case it is the teacher’s chance to go to that wrong operation and rebuilt it.
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