Big Ideas from Understanding by Design Chapters 2 & 3 Recap Sec502/Fnd504.

Big Ideas from Big Ideas from Understanding by DesignUnderstanding by Design

Chapters 2 & 3 RecapChapters 2 & 3 Recap

Big Ideas from Big Ideas from Understanding by DesignUnderstanding by Design

Chapters 2 & 3 RecapChapters 2 & 3 RecapSec502/Fnd504Sec502/Fnd504

Big Ideas• How well do we

understand understanding?

• What is it we are after when we say we want students to understand this or that?

Big Ideas• An understanding is

a mental construct, anabstraction made by the human mind to make sense of many distinct pieces of knowledge.

Big Ideas

• Knowing • vs. • Understandin

g

Big Ideas

• We know …facts.

Abraham Lincoln was our 16th president.

He became president in 1860.

He led the country during the Civil War.

Big Ideas• We want students to

understand the meaning of the facts.Lincoln’s election is one of several factors that triggered the South’s secession because he was widely perceived as soft on slavery at a time when the country was involved in critical arguments over the ethics and economic benefits of slavery.

Big Ideas• We want students to

understand the meaning of the facts.Lincoln used his predecessors’ ideals and wisdom to inform his decision making regarding the South’s secession: he believed that the U.S. was to be a beacon to the world for democracy. He was determined not to allow the North to instigate the Civil War and destroy the hopes of the Founding Fathers.

Big Ideas• We want students to

understand the meaning of the facts.

Lincoln’s decisions have served as inspiration for those who followed him. The current president cites Lincoln’s suspension of civil liberties as a precedent for the Patriot Act.

Big Ideas

• We know …a body of coherent facts.

Mammals are warm-blooded.

Most mammals give live-birth. All mammals have fur or hair. Mammals are vertebrates.

Big Ideas• We want students to

understand the “theory” or rationale that connects the facts and provides them meaning.

• Since modern mammals started to appear around 220 million years ago during the Triassic period—we know because that's when fossils with those characteristics are dated—we can use fossil evidence of early mammals as evidence in a debate to point out weaknesses in the argument for creationism.

Big IdeasFacts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and

interpret the facts.

--Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Fact and Theory”

Big IdeasUnderstanding is about Transfer.

Big IdeasUnderstanding is about Transfer.

To truly understand, we must be able take what we have learned and use it in new and sometimes confusing settings.

Big IdeasUnderstanding is about Transfer.

Transfer means: You can apply what you

know.You can modify, adjust, and adapt a general idea to the particulars of a new

situation.

Big IdeasUnderstanding is about Transfer.

For example, count the number of Spanish students who know how to conjugate the verb hablar: hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablan.

Big IdeasUnderstanding is about Transfer.

Now count the number of Spanish students who can use forms of the verb hablar competently with a variety of people to talk about a variety of topics dealing with a variety of times and circumstances.

Big IdeasKnowledge and Skills, then,are necessary elements of understanding, but notsufficient in themselves.

Big IdeasKnowledge and Skills, then,are necessary elements of understanding, but notsufficient in themselves.

Understanding requires more.It requires the ability to dothe work in new

circumstancesalong with the ability to self-assess, justify and critique thedoing.

Big IdeasKnowledge and Skills, then,are necessary elements of understanding, but notsufficient in themselves.

Understanding requires more.

It requires the ability to dothe work along with the With understanding, we

become our own referees.

A really Big Idea for Language Teachers

Understanding how todevelop

communicativecompetences does notimply that the studentworks to self-assessand critique his or her speech.

A really Big Idea for Language Teachers

Understanding how todevelop communicativecompetences does imply that the studentworks to self-assessand critique his or her efforts to acquire morecomprehensible input, which,

in turn, leads to increasinglydeeper and more sophisticatedcommunicative competence.

A Really Big Idea for All Teachers

What about in yoursubject area? Do you yourself understandthe really big ideas?

Big IdeasWhat prompts

understanding?

Big IdeasWhat prompts

understanding?

Not drills alone.

Big IdeasWhat prompts

understanding?

Not drills alone.Not memorizing facts just toknow facts.

Big IdeasWhat prompts

understanding?

Not drills alone.Not memorizing facts just toknow facts.Not covering as much materialas possible in a given term.

Big IdeasWhat prompts

understanding?

Not drills alone.Not memorizing facts just toknow facts.Not covering as much materialas possible in a given term.Not giving out “A”s to students who are skilled at drills, memorizing, and spitting back information on tests, only to forget it by the next test.

Big IdeasWhat prompts

understanding?

It takes teachers committed to thinking, reflecting, and

workingtogether to come to a

consensuson reasonable evidence ofunderstanding in terms of student performance.

Big IdeasWhat else prompts

understanding?

It takes “uncoverage”.

Big IdeasWhat else prompts

understanding?

It takes “uncoverage”.

NO! NOT THAT GYPSY-ROSELEE KIND OF UNCOVERAGE!

Big IdeasWhat else prompts

understanding?

Uncoverage in the sense of:• Determining students’

potential misunderstandings, then …

• Uncovering questions, issues,assumptions and gray areas, and, finally …

* Uncovering core ideas at the heart of a subject.

Big IdeasWhat else prompts

understanding?

Uncoverage in the sense of:• Determining students’

potential misunderstandings, then …

• Uncovering questions, issues,assumptions and gray areas, and, finally …

* Uncovering core ideas at the heart of a subject.

Big IdeasWhat else prompts

understanding?

Uncoverage in the sense of:• Determining students’

potential misunderstandings, then …

• Uncovering questions, issues,assumptions and gray areas, and, finally …

* Uncovering core ideas at the heart of a subject.

Big Ideas

Beware of pitfalls …

• Students don’t understand--even if they give a correct answer--if they can only give that answer when the question is phrased just so.

Big IdeasBeware of Pitfalls …

Some teachers confuse teaching with learning.

“I taught it; why don’t they ‘get’ it?”

Big IdeasBeware of Pitfalls …

Blaming all student failure on the student.

“If I cover it, and they do the homework, there is no reason for them not to succeed.”

Big IdeasBeware of Pitfalls …

Assuming that you, andWiggins and the studentshare the same meaningof success.

Big IdeasBeware of Pitfalls …

Assuming that you, andWiggins and the student share the same

meaning of evidence of success.

A not so farfetched scenario

You: success means I only failed twokids out of 110. I must be doingsomething right!

Wiggins: success is understanding.

A student: I got an A. I understand.

Another student: I got a B. I pretty much understand.

Another student: I got an F. I’ll never understand this.

What does that scenario look like in practice?

Real e-mail excerpt from a good teacher who sincerely wants her students to do well:

I gave this assignment to the studentson Tuesday.  It is due on Monday … right nowhe has a 68% in class.  He needs to have a discussion sheet for his independent noveldone for tomorrow.  I encouraged him to complete it because it will most likely raise his grade to a C-. 

What does that scenario look like in practice?

I gave this assignment to the studentson Tuesday.  It is due on Monday … right

nowhe has a 68% in class.  He needs to have a discussion sheet for his independent noveldone for tomorrow.  I encouraged him to complete it because it will most likely raise his grade to a C-.  Notice anything that reinforces stereotypes about success?

What does that scenario look like in practice?

I gave this assignment to the studentson Tuesday.  It is due on Monday … right nowhe has a 68% in class.  He needs to have a discussion sheet for his independent noveldone for tomorrow.  I encouraged him to complete it because it will most likely raise his grade to a C-. 

Big Ideas

Beware of the “Grade” Pitfall What, really, does a letter

grade reveal about a student’s potential performance in the real world? (Or even, his or her performance in another class with a different teacher?)

Big IdeasBeware of Pitfalls …

Some teachers assume that without first

thinking, reflecting, writing, reviewing, revising and perhaps collaborating with others before they administer the test or use other means to gather evidence of student understanding,

they can write assessment tools that reveal a student’s ability to transferknowledge

Big IdeasMisunderstandings areteacher-friendly toolsas well.

Big IdeasIf we pay attention to

them, they provide us withimportant feedback on ourinstruction and for furtherplanning.

Big IdeasAnother pitfall …

Assuming that all errorsare bad mistakes to beavoided, and can beavoided, on the

students’journey to competence.

Big Ideas• er·ror ( r r) n.

• A defect or insufficiency in structure or function.

• An act, an assertion, or a decision, especially one made in testing a hypothesis, that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true.

Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical DictionaryCopyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Big Ideas• An act, an assertion, or a

decision, especially one made in testing a hypothesis, that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true.

• The key phrase here is testing a hypothesis.

Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical DictionaryCopyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Big IdeasBecause a student’s

consciousor unconscious attempts to test hypotheses, are, paradoxically, evidence of knowledge and the ability to transfer inorder to misunderstand.

Big Ideas

The error many teachersoften make is assumingthat hasty and/or “buy-the-book” planning issufficient to createconditions that lead toreal, deep, long-termstudent understanding.

Big Ideas

So what can we doabout this?

The challenges seem

overwhelming!

Big IdeasWiggins suggests

youstart with small goalsand baby steps to begin training your mind to think about anew way of thinking about learning and instruction.

Big IdeasWhen planning, startwith your objectives,but, also, trypondering:

Big Ideas

What could be

easily misunderstood?Why do novices draw theconclusions that they do?

What is not obvious to novices who approach this topic?

Ponder the target topic

Big Ideas

The key to better educational results is not only to project performance outcomes first, but at, the same time, to anticipate student conceptions and misconceptions when planning instruction.

Big Ideas

One key to lower stress when you’re a teacher (and a learner) is to recognize that learner misunderstandings are inevitable, even in the best minds, in one’s journey toward understanding.

Big Ideas

Another key to lower stress when you’re a teacher (and a learner) is a bit more challenging, but very worthwhile.

Big Ideas

To engineer understanding, our performance objective is to:

1. describe what understanding looks like, and doesn’t look like.

Big Ideas

To engineer understanding, our performance objective is to:

1. describe what understanding looks like, and doesn’t look like.

2. Explain how understanding will manifest itself.

Big Ideas

To engineer understanding, our performance objective is to:

1. describe what understanding looks like, and doesn’t look like.

2. Explain how understanding will manifest itself.3. Articulate which misunderstanding might arise, and how

they might interfere with our goal.

Big Ideas

To engineer understanding, our performance objective is to:

1. describe what understanding looks like, and doesn’t look like.

2. Explain how understanding will manifest itself.3. Articulate which misunderstanding might arise, and how

they might interfere with our goal. 4. Determine evidence that we are progressing and

eradicating key impediments to future understanding.

Big Ideas

To engineer understanding, our performance objective is to:

Develop mental flexibility and understanding in our students. However …

Big Ideas

To engineer understanding, our performance objective is to:

Develop mental flexibility and understanding in our students. However … (and here’s the fun part): their mental flexibility and understanding is predicated on ours.