Doorways to Understanding

Every time we are about to introduce a new topic or idea to our students, we expect them to relate the hints given with some issue of their lives, to think beyond what is being asked and open their minds. In chapter 5 of Understanding by design, Wiggins and Mc Tighe introduce the topic of the Essential Questions deeply. These questions, as it was stated before, are to introduce a new topic, and help them to understand what is going to be taught better. The idea is that they were able to carry out the process of transferring information so that they can make progress of their different skills.

If we talk about the main characteristics that make these questions “essential”, we can realize that, first of all, these questions have to be directed to them, their interests, their needs, issues and topics of their own real lives; these have to be timeless as well, they should not have an answer, they have to be totally open for students to think and therefore develop their cognitive skills. This means that each student may answer that question in a different way, depending on their life experience. As we have already learned from Wiggins and Mc Tighe, is that every topic to be taught has to have a purspose, a purpose where students are suppossed to develop their skills or at least, some of them; and this has to be included in those questions.

The authors point out two different kind os Essentials Questions, the ones related to specific topics and the other group of questions which is about more general topics. They say that it is necessary to mix up these two kinds of questions because they can give different kind of information and details which, undoubtedly, will enrich the topic introduction.The importance of these essential questions is that we are doing very important things without letting learners know. We are making them be the protagonists of the lesson and what is more, we are collecting information about themselves, which is absolutely much useful, in order to start teaching a lesson meaningfully. By getting all that information, we are able to head the planning in a specific way. These questions have to be catching and suitable for them. They have to feel encouraged to keep thinking about the question at home, so that they can make conncetions base don their own experiences.

As far as my own teaching experience has taught me, studets always feel encouraged to learn English, they really like it if the teacher provides the conditions to do it so, in a second language classroom, these questions can be really helpful in all levels. It does not matter if the concepts in a language are not specific but very general since in English or in any language, we are teaching skills such as productive and recpetive for them to communicate, not contents like in the other school subjects.

Backward Design

Teaching is not about giving students contents for them to learn only, but to plan the way how those contents will be delivered, and go on a follow up during the process of assessment in order to check if the expected outcomes are being fulfilled, as well. For teachers all these is pure art since they have to determine, from the very begining what they want to get from their students, therefore to design the way so thst they can achieve those goals. In chapter 1 of Understandiong by Design, Wiggins and Mc Tighe present “Backward Design” which is a useful technique based on an appropriate teaching in relation to the desired learnings. This means teaching with a purpose.

The success in Backward Desing is the planning based on priorities, which are: needs, students’ interests, class size, diversity in all terms, etc. Only if teachers have considered those factors, they can determine the expected outcomes. Backward Design is not about planning isolated lessons with unconnected activities, but a neverending chain that includes the previous tasks that students have done before, what we want and expect our students to learn, etc, everything goes by hand. The author say: “...the challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow”, that means that we, as teachers, have to visualize the class panorama (their behaviour, reactions, and what I want them to learn) first, and then I will take the “how to do it” step. Let’s remember that students are the protagonists of their learning process, this is why teachers have to provide the propper contents, methods and activities for them to succeed.

Backward Design also critizes the traditional method that teachers take when teaching, named by the authors: “The twin sins of traditional design”. If we start thinking about the way how teachers proceed when planning, we are going to agree that two are the main elements that they always consider what the authors call: an “activity-oriented curricula” which is only based on the activities and not about the learning, it seems that if students complete those activities, they are making proress, however, they do not provide any evidence of learning. The other element is “coverage”, which refers to go through a text book or a topic page by page with no purpose at all. Since most students are not passive people, they may ask questions like: What’s the point? What is the big idea here? or To what does this relate? Students feel and know when topics are unconnected and when they are definetely not learning.

There are three main stages in Backward Design. The first one is: “Identify desired results”, which is what we want students to learn, what it is appealing to their needs and reality and what is required to be taught by the ministry or the school education program. The second is “Determine acceptable evidence”. The unit or course should let us (teachers) collect good enough evidence in order to fulfill those desired learning and therefore making important desicions, and finally, the third one is “Plan learning experiences and instruction”, which pretends to equip students with all what they need in order to have an experience of learning, something meaningful that they remember and find it useful.

So far, I have realized that Backward Design is what definitely may help teacher to create experiences of learning with the students, which must be their goal. Their planning should be specific and concrete, making them participate and checking all what is happening in the classroom in terms of learning in order to collect evidence for the assessment process. Every student who is not following the lesson, bothering others and disrupting everybody is mainly because the plan has failed, this is why, teachers should be more careful and smart at the moment of designing; that is the moment of sharing information, of asking for help when needed and of thinking of making the most out of what students will be able to do in the language classroom.

Criteria and Validity

As teachers, our main goal is to make students learn. A teching learning process is nothing without assessment, it means that we need to get evidence along the process of how the students are performing, at the end of this, an evaluation should be given in order to have results of the level of understanding that students have of the contents. But at the moment of an evaluation, how can we determine the specific points that we want our students to succeed in, therefore to make a judgement of the performance in each one of these? This is what is called criteria. Then, since we need to know in what level of understanding our students are, it is necessary an instrument for measuring this and tell how proficient students are in each one of the evaluated points; this instrument is called rubric. In chapter 8, Wiggins invites us, as teachers, to find out the importance of criteria and rubrics, and also the role that validity has to play within these two concepts.

Why do teachers need criteria for? We already agreed on the idea that in order to make an evaluative instrument valid, we have to select what we want our students to be proficient in from the contents they learned. This is what criteria are about, to categorise the main points that are important for students to succeed in. Since teachers want quality in students’ tasks, good criteria should not focus on superficial and quantity aspects (Wiggins, p 173). Depth in content, good writing style, backed up and “right through” information are issues that they should consider in order to find out the understanding of every student. However, do teachers know what to include as criteria? This is the role that rubrics play; these also distinguish the quality of performance by the score given. Teachers tend to evaluate through analytic rubrics (Wiggins, p173) which divides the performance into different categories which tell how proficient the student is in each one of them by the given score.

Depending on the effectiveness of the criteria and the rubric, we can tell about how valid the evaluative instrument, it means that validity also determines the criteria to be considered -for example- to make a paper valid, the teacher will not foccus on what font, format, or how many drawings the student used to illustrate the paper, but in other kinds of parameters. Besides from the processes of assessment and evaluation we can get enough and propper evidence based on the kind of task the student had to fulfill. Nonetheless, there is another issue to be considered, which are the conditions in which the test was taken and the consequences that they can leave (Wiggins, p 188) For example, a boy can be given a test the same day he told that his mother had an accident, obviously his performance in the test is really bad due to the emotional stress that he is suffering from that day, however, if the test was taken in totally normal conditions, the performance, would be much better and the results as well.

As future teachers, we should consider all these factors in order not to waste an evaluative process. The criteria have to meet the level of understanding that the student will be able to reach. We have to be very careful on what students will be able to learn and understand from the contents studdied, therefore to make important decisions about the continuity of the course.

Thoughts on: Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

The main objective for teachers is to make students learn, however, there are many goals involved in that process. Since in the first chapter of Understanding by Design its authors, Wiggins and Mc Tighe, invited us to reflect and deal with issues such as understanding and knowledge, now, chapter 3 “Gaining Clarity on our Goals”, invites us, as future teachers, to respond to Essential Questions in order to plan the learning process and make it more meaningful with fundamental elements such as Established Goals, Understandings, Knowledge and Skills. It is extremely necessary for any teacher to set the main objectives and communicate the students what they are going to learn. This is the only way to avoid, as the authors state, the twin sins: aimless coverage of content and isolated activities which may be hardly engaged with the goals that learners have in mind.

One of the main points is that students have to be active participants in their own learning process and how it will be. Since they are not the ones who plan this, teachers have to be aware that the five components are the key for their cognitive development. Teachers as well as students should be aware of the importance of them and how they are going to be carried out, so that the learning outcomes can be fulfilled by the end of the period. Learning outcomes are part of what is called long term objectives, which let the teachers to have a perpective or an overview of how this process is going to finish in terms of expected results, but at the same time (within these), many short term aims may exist, so we can have all together. This is where the Essential Questions take place. These are not expected to be answered, but the idea of them is to develop in students skills like: discussion, reflection, problem solving, research and debate.
For instance, if a teacher is teaching 8th graders about food, will it be meaningful for them to learn about isolated vocabulary items? The answer is maybe, but only for the time they are acquiring those, however, they would be really menaingful for them by the time they are able to discuss about a healthy life, and illnesses such as overweightness and anorexia. Therefore, if students are able to apply those concepts in a discussion, then we are talking about Understanding. As the authours point out: “Understandings are the constructivist results of attemps by the student to make senseof the work and lessons, using inquiri, performance and reflection” (Wiggins and Mc Tighe)

In order to continue with the idea of involving students in the way their study plan should be like, I will bring the point of Unpacking standards, which means to analyse in detail and make it easier for learners to understand it, so that they can get the “big ideas and core tasks contained within”(Wiggins and Mc Tighe). For all students, these standarts are usually a confusing, complex and abstract idea. If this whole abjective was separated into more clear and down-to-earth passages for students, in order to make the aims closer to their everyday life, it would be easier and more motivating for them because they are going to have claer in mind what they are going to learn. So, from them an on, verbs such as; compare, name, analyse, interpret, identify, etc; will start appearing, which mey represent different objectives. This is what Unpacking standards mean, so they are able to find the big ides and the core tasks. Another reason why Unpacking standard is so useful, is that since teachers are always running out of time to get all the set objectives done, this would let them to determine which ones deserve more to be taught than others, which are more important than others, that will certainly mean meaningful learning. As the authors say: “Teachers can never cover all of the facts and skills on a given topic, given time restrictions and content overload. However, they can focus on a smaller set of big ideas and core tasks in the discipline by framing work around essential questions and appropriate performance assessment”(Wiggins and Mc Tighe).

To finish, I insist on the idea to make students acquire their study plan from the beginning, by all means. They know better than us (as teachers) what they want to be taught and in what way. Teachers are not authorities anymore. There should be communication and dialogue between both parts. What it is important, is that the teacher must have the class objectives as well as the expected outcomes are well set, and are based on the learner’s reality.

"Understanding by Design" 3 main thoughts.

It is known that the Learning Process does not only take place in the classroom, but anywhere in any time. Within this process, there are concepts which are related to the success in this, two of these are: understanding and knowledge. The text “Understanding by Design” written by Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe makes us, as future teachers, be aware of the meaning of the concept understanding, which is one of the most revealing which, certainly, does not leave the Teaching Process aside, and how it differs from knowledge in all terms.
The main important difference between understanding and knowledge is that a person knows, or aquires knowledge as if their brains were a “black box” that needs to be filled in with informarion. This information stays there once it apperared, without being modifyied by thinking skills.
On the contrary, understanding is the answer for many questions about this information as soon as it is possessed, which is called in the book, “to grasper the meaning of a thing”. For example: “I can fix a car” means: “I know HOW TO fix a car” because I know what happened to it, the causes, the use the car is given, how it works, what could be done instead, the consequences, etc. As J. Dewey (1993) says: “to understand is all what makes meaning to the learner”. This means that it is possible to explain the information, and that it is not possible to analyse something that is supposed to know. Understanding is to have the know how of something and its objectives are: to think further the original piece of information, think, find out the hidden meaning and figure out pros and cons.
Since understanding is about making connections and relating events, there is another concept that the authors make reference to, which is transfer. This is about how those connections are made, thus, the student is leaded to give examples, ideas, etc. If understanding and therefore transfer occur, the person is able to analyse an issue or a thought throughly. Since the main objective for teachers is to make students learn, they should make them memorize concepts but also teach them how to work with them.
Finally, the text highlights on the importance that teachers should know how to teach, and develop strategies in order to help them to know how to think on their own, how to make the knowledge they have an issue or maybe a problem that they have to solve being helped by the concepts they should know by heart and the cognitive skills as well.