Understanding by Design and Essential Questions

            Understanding by Design relies on what Wiggins and McTighe call “backward design”. Teachers using this strategy traditionally start curriculum planning with activities and textbooks instead of identifying classroom learning goals and planning towards that goal. In backward design, the teacher starts with classroom outcomes and then plans the curriculum, choosing activities and materials that help determine student ability and foster student learning. “Teaching for understanding” is another central premise of Understanding by Design. Teachers should tell students about big ideas and essential questions, performance requirements, and evaluative criteria at the beginning of the unit or course. Students should be able to describe the goals (big ideas and essential questions) and performance requirements of the unit or course. While I was reading this article, I noticed how many great examples were used and how helpful they were in understanding the topic even better. Also, the examples of poor strategies and curricula were very useful. They gave a good visual of things to avoid when in the classroom, and helped to compare them with more effective strategies and to understand what makes certain methods effective and others not so effective.

            Essential questions are extremely important, as they reflect the big ideas and understanding goals of the unit. To me, an essential question is when a teacher opens a whole new world to the students. It leads to a higher order of thinking by pulling out content knowledge, connecting the knowledge to the topic at hand and seeing how one can improve. This is the best way to get students to understand what they are studying and learning, and how they can apply it and use it. I thought the article was very clear and informative. It outlined “big ideas” and how to use them effectively, examples of essential questions, specific understandings, and how to distinguish between essential questions and more common nonessential questions. Another thing that was highlighted was great essential questions from each subject, which I found to be very helpful in understanding how to go about writing and using them in our specific content area. The section on framing understanding was also very helpful. It taught us that understandings are the specific insights, inferences, or conclusions about the big idea you want your students to leave with. And because they can be gained only through “guided inference” whereby the learner is helped to make, recognize, or verify a conclusion, they are thus not “teachable” facts. I found this piece of information to be slightly surprising and very helpful at the same time, as it gives us a better understanding ourselves on how students actually come to understand and comprehend what they are learning and doing. Overall, I found both articles to be informative and certainly a great tool and resource for teachers and future teachers and educators. 

Strategic Reading: Wilhelm

            I thought this excerpt was very informative and helpful. It reminds us that the best teaching practice is grounded in theory, and the more we can understand the theories on which our practices are based, the more effective we will be at implementing them in our classrooms in ways that benefit our students. In chapter 1, Maxine Green introduces the term “wide awake” teaching and learning. This refers to the importance of teachers forming a conscious understanding of their teaching purposes and processes, and students developing an understanding of “what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are or could be doing it” (5). I like this term a lot, as it represents the need for teachers to constantly test and observe their theories and see how they affect student learning. This will help teachers to examine and modify their instruction and make sure it is as effective as possible.

            Informed by Vygotsky's and Hillocks's assertion that what is learned must be actively taught, the authors offer a model not of teacher-centered or student-centered but of learning-centered instructional practice. This process begins with the teacher first modeling a new strategy in the context of its use and how to use it, then the teacher engages in the task with the students helping out. The students then take over the task of using the strategy with the teacher helping as needed. Lastly, the student independently uses the strategy and the teacher watches (11). This instructional process allows teachers to focus on what the students are learning as opposed to what the teacher actually did (which is what teachers have traditionally focused on). This allows the responsibility for learning to shift from the teacher to the students. I believe that learning-centered models should be used far more often, as they are highly effective in getting students to think critically. Also, it increases students’ motivation for learning.

            It seems clear that applying Vygotskian learning theory is the best way to meet the goals of more learning-centered instruction. The ultimate goal is for students to develop a wide repertoire of reading strategies that they can independently deploy in a wide variety of situations with a wide variety of texts, and to be able to use these strategies to participate and contribute in their communities and cultures (30). I thought that the authors did a great job of outlining the best strategies and processes to accomplish this goal, upon many other goals. Overall, I found the reading to be refreshing and extremely useful. Many of the strategies and situations discussed were completely new to me, and it is always helpful to learn about different theories and practices and how they can be used to benefit your students, and yourself.