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.
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I really see the importance of knowing how and what to design for our students. For that reason, setting the goals is important for a lesson. Good Job!!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah it is important to have challenging tasks in order to make students think beyond concepts and also as teachers we need to have more challenging tasks for the ones that finish earlier than others. Because sometimes they finish and they misbehave and bother others that are slower than they.
ReplyDeletePriorities at the moment of setting our goals is fundamental. Teachers have to be able to handle how difficult it is to select what we are going to teach children according to their needs and the internal and external requirements. To priorize a content from other, means that that one is not that helpful for an "X" moment of the class.
ReplyDeleteI think that goals have to be reachable for every students. Children cannot see these goals as something unreal or that they won't achieve. I think that it is necessary that students knows these goals from the begining of the course, so they are more willing to participate in everything.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you when you mention the need of designing taking the national curricula into consideration. Teachers are always designing without any parameter and as a consequence there is not any relation between what is taught and what have to be really taught.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you with the idea of challenging students to create their own knowledge. I think it's a difficult task but it will be never impossible to do.
ReplyDeleteWhen Wiggins says that the clarity in our goals will make a difference in teaching, I totally agree with that, because goals are essential when planning, and they are reflected in our classes.
ReplyDeleteParece que siempre regresamos a los estandares de nuestras instituciones educativas, y como señalas acá a veces sus espectativas parecen demasiada altas. Por eso la necesidad de centrarnos en las ideas principales y prioritizar los fundamentales y cosas esenciales.
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