Week+2

Discussion: I don’t think that the terms "really understand", "internalizing knowledge", and "grasping the core or essence" all mean the same thing, but I do believe these terms are relative to how the teacher is presenting the material to be understood. For example, if all the teacher is trying to do is show students a process for, say, solving an equation, the students may really understand the mechanics and be able to solve an equation; however, if the student is given a word problem and asked to set it up and solve it, the students may not be able to perform the task. If the teacher designs the lesson with the goal of problem-solving in mind, then shouldn’t every example be a word problem that can be solved more than one way? Students can still "internalize" a taught process and still not know exactly why they are doing it—they just know to do it a certain way. I think what teachers ultimately want is for students to learn the correct skills to solve an equation, but to also be able to explain how they arrived at their answer, why they set it up the way they did, and how to determine if their answer is "reasonable". So many of my students get caught up in the process of doing something that they don’t even check their answers for reasonableness.

My definition of understanding is similar to those of the authors—"insight into essentials, purpose, audience, strategy, and tactics" (Wiggins & McTighe, 2000). Students must be able to determine from a situation which facts to use and when!! When a student does not "understand", he will have no clue as to even which tactic or strategy to use. He must be directly told to "use the Pythagorean Theorem to solve the following problem". In other words, there is no transferability—"the capacity to take what we know and use it creatively, flexibly, fluently, in different setting or problems, on our own" (Wiggins & McTighe, 2000). Many times throughout the readings for this week the authors emphasized over and over again the importance of teaching students how to transfer what skills they have learned into a true understanding or application to a novel situation. Our students cannot do this!!! I think the main reason they aren’t able to do it is because we have not //taught// them how to do this. Teachers are so overwhelmed with teaching each TEK that they fail to see the "big idea". It’s time consuming and difficult to transform the curriculum into the types of lessons the authors are describing—isn’t it easier and quicker to just give the students notes over the information and tell them to go learn and practice what we have taught them(a.k.a "coverage")?? Of course it is!! This is to the detriment of the entire system. When I look at the mathematics curriculum for the state of Texas, we teach many of the same concepts over and over from year to year. How much time is wasted going over the same concepts because we are teaching them independently instead of designing curriculum that teaches true "understanding"? Concepts are "inert" and easily forgotten from year to year—which is why we have to spend so much time reviewing and reteaching. As far as assessments, I assess students in exactly the way the authors tell us **not** to—this, I know, must change. I do usually put a bonus or at least 1-2 questions on an assessment which involves application, but I usually give explicit directions on what to do. I must change the way I teach in order to assess them differently, as well.

I learned a lot from the first three chapters of this book and am looking forward to learning a design process which will enable me to better teach and assess my students.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2000). //Understanding by Design.// Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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