Chapter 9 Planning for learning

As we read in some  chapters before, teachers  or the designers must make the goals clear to the students.  “That means completely demystifying  the big ideas, the essential questions, the desired performances, and the evaluative criteria  constituting the sought-for achievement. It requires instructors to provide a rationale for the desired learnings—to identify what is most important (and what is not) and why it is worth learning.” (p 198)

According to the authors there are two points which are essential  when  a plan is designed: 1  Desired results and 2 Performance . In that sense the challenge is related to learning more than  teaching. But what is a good plan?. Each teacher would think about  his/her own. The most important thing that a teacher has to consider , is obviously effectiveness (reached by students) related to their competence and production.  So teachers  should help students become clear about and mindful of the expected performances.

The authors refers to Whereto which is an important tool when it is planning. It considers different steps that we have to take in mind in order to help our students to get  the goals.

Chapter 6 Crafting Understandings

We start our process of teaching year by year with the same situation: Students  do not remember the most they  should  from  the year before... so   the question is what  is happening with the teaching – learning process? To give some answer to this question Wiggins and McTighe define  understanding  as follows.

1. An understanding is an important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, stated in a specific and useful generalization;
2. An understanding refers to transferable, big ideas having enduring value beyond a specific topic;
3. An understanding involves abstract, counter-intuitive, and easily misunderstood ideas;
4. An understanding is best acquired by "uncovering" and "doing" the subject (i.e., using the ideas in realistic settings and with real-world problems;
5. An understanding summarizes important strategic principles in skills area.

According to  those points defined above we can understand, in my opinion,  that Understanding is a long- term  process which attempts to clarify priorities through  essential questions and big ideas to challenge our students  to develop  understanding.

Therefore,  work  this issue with our students  requires to establish  which is more worthy for them. The complex topics which should be filtered  in order to teach  meaningiful contents.

We  should carefully consider who our learners are and whether what we call a fact or an understanding really is so to them. The challenge is to help learners be more open-minded  to understand the process  that they are living.   

“When Students are able to understand the purposes why ,what for  to learn, and so on, we as teachers can say that our work is made.” I think.