ThE bIg pIcTuRe

According to the author programs and courses should be conceived in terms of essential questions, enduring understanding, key performances and rubrics. I believe that the programs I have read did not include all these elements. It is very difficult to follow the approach established in this book, although it can be considered as an important way of visualizing the big picture.

The element I considered has been left behind in programs or courses is mainly “essential questions”, I assume that teacher ask themselves these kinds of questions, but they do not considered when writing down programs or courses.

What I consider important to include are the course understanding, the course skills and rubrics.

PlAnNiNg FoR lEaRnInG

      When planning or designing our lessons we as teachers tend to think many ideas or ways to accomplish the lesson objectives, after this brainstorming is important to identify if these ideas will be meaningful for learners, we need to consider learners’ needs, interests, learning styles, motivation among others.  I agree with the old Chinese proverb “I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand”.  As the author says it is important to be mindful of who the learners are and design so that they all maximally engaged and productive.

      Effectiveness should be our last goal, students engagement will show us if our planning provoke the ideal response. In the book research showed that students are most engaged when the work is hands-on, involves mysteries or problems, provides variety, offers opportunities to adapt, modify, or somehow personalize the challenge, balance cooperation and competition, self and others and built upon a real-world or meaningful challenge.

CrAftInG uNdeRstaNdiNg

What called my attention in this chapter was how “understanding” is identified. It was said that an understanding is an important interference that it refers to transferable, which involves abstract counterintuitive and easily misunderstood ideas, also is best acquired by uncovering and finally it summarizes important strategic principles in skill areas. According to the last feature of understanding,  I also believe that is essential to include strategies when dealing with skills but when this is connected with understanding it is difficult for me to put it into practice. After reading this chapter I realize that it is not a matter of teaching both as separate things, moreover we should reinforce to learners that they should understand the skill´s underlying the concepts, the importance of it, that this will help them to accomplish tasks, and to know which strategies and techniques they can use. If students are aware of this learning process and they put it into practice I believe that the results are going to be remarkable.
Although the book provide me enough information, Is it possible for students to accomplish this level of competence?  

Doorways to understanding

What kind of questions should we ask?

According to the text they should be “essential questions”. According to the author, essential questions are those which point to and highlight the big ideas, they encourage students to explore the key concepts, themes, theories, issues of the unit. These questions consider certain common characteristics and they should mean to the following: 1-. Cause genuine and relevant inquiry. 2-. Provoke deep thought, discussion and new understanding, as well as more questions. 3-. Require student to support their answers and ideas. 4-. Stimulate rethinking of big ideas. 6-. Opportunities for transfer to other subjects.

                Moreover, the chapter proposes that questions can be seen as “topical” or “overarching”, the former refers to specific topical understanding within a unit and the latter to questions which point beyond the topic content.  It is important to consider all these elements when teaching instead of only focusing on contents. According to my experience sometimes I tend to ask questions focused on knowledge instead of considering other aspects.

Know or Understand?

                 I know how to fix my car but I do not really understand how to fix it.

                               Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design, 2005, p. 35

Chapter two identifies two different but interrelated terms. People usually use “know” and “understand” as similar words but although they can be confused both suggest different ideas. While knowing deals with the facts, verifiable claims, a coherent body of ideas, understanding implies the meaning of facts, the theory beyond this, the understanding of why it is. After reading this chapter I realized how important are these terms when analyzing the objectives we propose when teaching English as a foreign language, What do we expect from our students?, Should students know or understand?. According to my point of view I should expect students to take what they learned in a lesson and be able to apply it to other situations. According to the author this is called transfer. In education, students should be able to transfer learning to many other setting using the tools given by us.

I cannot stop thinking in real life situations that represents the idea of this chapter.  My mom loves cooking and she does not need a recipe to prepare something, she understand how to do it and if anything goes wrong she understands the reason and can fix it. This is because she understands the theory that provides coherence and meaning to cooking.

      Baking without an understanding of the ingredients and how they work is like baking

      blindfold(ed)…sometimes everything works. But when it doesn´t you have to guess at

      how to change it.

                Rose Levy Berenbaum, The Cake Bible, 1988, p. 469.

TEACHERS ARE DESIGNERS

For teachers it is always a challenge to facilitate the learning of a foreign language. For this purpose, teachers consider elements such as the components that the course has, the methodology used in the course, the abilities of the teacher, the opportunities of practicing the L2, texts, flashcards, listening material, worksheets, among others.  We are always looking better ways of improving our teaching practice. I believe that methodology could give me the answers to so many questions, but I have to recognize that although I firmly consider that the objectives are most important thing, I do not apply a backward design when planning a lesson. After reading the first chapter of “Understanding by Design” I realize that it should be better for teachers to first think about students’ specific learning sought and the evidence of these learnings. Although, all the information gathered offer teachers a great explanation of how this backward design could be implemented, it should be interesting to apply it in Chile. I always say that is important when teaching to make it beneficial and practical to learners. So, I ask myself, according teachers' reality, Is it possible to implement all the stages of backward design when planning a lesson?.