Chapter 6; Crafting Understanding

In chapter 6, Wiggins highlights some of the ways in which we can distinguish understandings, for example: interference and learning. To achieve this, students are meant to being able of doing proposals, of questioning and criticize everything, but also verify their results.

We understand again the difference between knowledge and understanding, and what is the benefit of both in their different aspects. It is in our hands to help our students to achieve understanding.

The way we can do this, is through planning. When we plan, we should not let our objectives to disappear in meaningless activities. Instead we should plan our desired results by putting a frame to the understanding we are aiming at. It is better if we know where we are heading by understanding it, instead of letting things happen not aware of if it really happens or not.

Chapter 5: Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding

Questions are the most important thing in life. Through questions, human have discovered the world and the universe, and also themselves.

When we teach, to encourage question making is essential. The skills that question making develops is critical thinking. As teachers of English, we should not teach how to read or how to write, or speak. We should teach to question everything, to question every little thing and our students would come up with answers that would fortify  their perspective of the world.

An inquiry-based learning is beneficial to both students and teachers, for students develop their thinking through their answers, and the teacher learns from his students.

In this chapter, Wiggins talks about the essential questions. It is in fact really easy to ask questions which answers are simple, but as teachers the trick in here relies on the kind of questions you make to your students. Do these questions make them think? Or do these questions just leave them in the same place where they started? The trick is to ask questions that can lead your students somewhere. Hence, their learning and understanding could become fruitful.

Chapter 4: The Six Facets of Understanding

In Chapter 4. Wiggins explains that there are six facets to follow when we teach, in order to make learning as fruitful as possible.

The author in this chapter suggests that there is a difference between understanding and knowledge, and that this distinction is paramount to education. Understanding has several meanings, and it cannot be classified as an achievement. Instead, it is more accurately to say that understanding is but the sum of achievements, and it is perceptible through transference. However, someone is able to show their understanding when they are able to teach, proof, explain, infer, and so on.

Therefore, the author states that we could divide the process of understanding into six facets that if we have them clear, then a richer understanding would be boosted.

The facets are:

1.Explanation: basically, this facet is concerned with the ability to understand through question what they at first did not know. Inquiry-based learning would be a perfect example for this.

2. Interpretation: The students can narrate stories, tell something about them or events, or can use analogies, express their understanding through pictures and so on. Basically, production.

3. Application: the learner is able to apply his understanding with no further problems in several contexts and through different ways.

4. Have Perspective: To be able to see the big picture of things, to show ones' own perspective and to understand others' critically.

5. Empathy: to empathize with others, or to be able to relate to others' experiences.

6. Self-knowledge: to show awareness of what is unknown for us, to have clear our limits and to reflect on them

Chapter 3: Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

        Goals are the most important part of the process of learning. Moreover, it is a process that is not solely done by the teachers, but also by the students. If we want our students to gain understanding in their learning process, then we must include their needs in order to develop it. That is one role of the teachers: to clarify and help students to understand how the course is working for their benefit, and how the goals expected help them in their learning. 

        Teachers tend to make the twin sins Wiggins talks about, every day in every school. On the one hand, the sin of aimless coverage content, to drill in subjects that are meaningless and do not go anywhere. The learning becomes a mechanical process of merely memorization, and there is no purpose in the topics discussed or the content.

        On the other hand, the isolated activities some teachers are used to do. Watching videos with no further objectives, reading texts with no thinking afterwards, or the creation of dialogues and their memorization with the solely goal of expose them to the class. There is no learning comming from any of these situations. There is only boredoom and time wasted.  

Chapter 2: Understanding, Understanding...

This chapter can be simplify through the quote "Understanding is about going beyond the information given".

Understanding is at the core of educational expectations. It is the very essence and foundation in which learning holds on. It is the final objective of teaching and its raison d'etre. So, the challenge is to achieve understanding.

Teachers are responsible for the process of learning in students and their achievements as well as their failures. However, how can teachers know when there is understanding? What do teachers comprehend by understanding? These are some of the questions that might explain some of the current failures of our traditional educational system. Most teachers think that understanding is the sum of grades in a book at the end of the year, determined by the covered units of textbooks. This is of course a tremendous mistake that jeopardizes students learning, motivations, and thinking.

There is a misunderstanding of concepts, therefore learning becomes fruitless.
If you ask me, there is no learning without understanding. Those are two concepts that should always hold hands, because once you understand something, then the next step will be to show your understanding, thus creating learning. And if that learning is continuous, then more understanding should take place.

Nonetheless, this is not something that should solely be assumed. To merely assume it, would be to destroy our own tittle of "teachers".

Wiggins states: We cannot cover concepts and expect them thereby to be understood; we have to uncover their value – the facts that concepts are the result of inquiry and argument.

That is the key! If we want learning and understanding to happen, then the teacher should encourage students to THINK about things they are exposed to. If there is a new concept to teach, the teacher should guide towards the inquiry-based understanding, and let students to shed lights on meaning in their own way. Consequently, students would become learners, and transform knowledge into understanding and beyond. Hence, the role of the teacher in here is to guide students to build their path on learning, and challenging them to go beyond the concepts themselves.

To develop thinking is the key to understanding. Thus, a well thought   process that serves the achievement of understanding and thinking is in the hands of well prepared teachers. Lousy teachers make lousy students.

At least, this is why I understand.

Chapter 1: Backward design

Our current educational system is so awfully grounded that I could understand perfectly what the author meant by the sarcastic sentence: "Throw some content and activities against the wall and hope some of it sticks". This analogy evidences so graphically what happens in schools and in the minds of teachers, that the immediate response one thinks of is almost that the author proposal for planning is a gift from heaven and the most coherent and fruitful basis we all knew but never really understood.

This is why the very question that invades my mind is why did not we have this kind of readings before. The proposal of having the focus on learning instead of teaching changes entirely the perspective from where we contemplate our career, since we are surrounded by teachers who never ever consider learning but just assume it happens at some point of the superficial covered units at school. Therefore, we always knew that something was wrong, but never truly understand what exactly that was, and once we had the power inside the classroom we could not solve the puzzle together. That is what happens in a system where everything is built upon the same principles, and there seems to be no way out of it.

This is why I consider that the three stages of backward design Wiggins proposes us, are so enlightening to our future or current practices. I strongly believe that the rest of the book will have powerful influence in my paradigm for education, for backward design not only challenges you to change the way you plan your classes, but also helps you to think assessment differently in order to foster your students' learning. That is in fact the goal: to learn and to be able to produce learning continuously.

Interview ~

Sorry, I couldn't interview someone of the class, but it should work, I hope u.u