UbDDI+B1+Chapter+7

Abstract & Synthesis
Tim Grivois

The main idea of this chapter is to introduce readers to the concept of the WHERETO Framework, and the differentiation between teaching for deep understanding and coverage-based teaching. The negative connotations attached to "coverage" teaching are a result of basic misinterpretations of learning by students and teachers alike. This chapter presents the idea that just because a certain amount of material is presented to students, that does not mean the material has become a part of their intellectual repertoire, nor has that material been mastered. The introduction of material by a teacher to students is just a beginning act, and does not constitute learning. As teachers, the standard should be [|teaching for understanding] rather than teaching to a required amount of "coverage". This chapter elaborates on the idea of using [|essential questions] in teaching; educators must be aware of the nature of the context they introduce to students, because the framework in which it is presented will be the framework students attempt to master it under. If this framework is fundamentally flawed, students will never attain adequate understanding of the material.

Judging from our responses to the chapter, it is clear that the system as it has been understood for years is indeed flawed on a fundamental level. The overwhelming response from the class is that content must be “uncovered”, and that this process must become the standard for teaching rather than the exception. The challenges we face in this process are the shattering of ingrained academic machinations that impede on progressive teaching techniques. In addition, the use of the WHERETO framework must be more widespread, and students must be encouraged to discover the answers to questions on their own. Students will always be more willing to master the material if they truly feel they have earned it.

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Courtney Burns
From this chapter I learned that the first step in developing a unit is to understand that content should be “uncovered” rather than “covered” (pg. 109). This will give student the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the information (not “skimming” or “covering it up” the information as the term “cover” cam imply (pg. 109)). Uncovering the information can be done in a number of different ways including through the use of an essential question, the six facets of understanding and the acronym WHERETO. In developing an essential question, I must be sure to make them clear and open ended, allowing all students the opportunity to “think and respond” (pg. 114). I believe that using the six facets of understanding will work great for creating activities, lessons etc. that will keep science interesting for all.

Olivia Wandelear
I was familiar with the essential questions approach in order to “uncover” content and understanding, as well as the six facets of understanding before reading this chapter, but I had scarce knowledge of the WHERETO Framework, which at Stage 3 in the design plan, calls for a comprehensive understanding of the other two Stages. I learned that the WHERETO Framework is designed to remind teachers to consider each element (what/why, hook, equip/experiences, rethink/revision, self-evaluation, tailor, and organization/order) when planning lessons. WHERETO encourages teachers to consider the perspective of the learner in order to ensure that they receive the most out of instruction. Though all of the elements of WHERETO are important to the learning process, I was drawn to “rethink, revision, and refinement” (Tomlinson and McTighe 124). A teacher should encourage students to challenge what they just learned, and to essentially challenge themselves and their own opinions. Rethinking and revisiting learning does not strip it of its value simply because it was challenged. Rather, this method encourages learners to deepen their understanding and go one step beyond comprehension. A way to incorporate this into my classroom involves students retelling a story or piece of literature from someone other than the narrator’s point of view, or considering the action and opinions of the characters if it were to take place in another time period.

Ben Villeneuve
Chapter seven of //UbD/DI// covers some misconceptions, as well as giving a few more tips about the day-to-day workings of a classroom, and helpful philosophies and techniques for educators. I particularly like the part about “essential questions,” where the authors construct a list of different subject areas and suggest examples of questions that could be considered essential to understanding. I like how open-ended these are. In my classroom, I intend to use the “Socratic seminar” model regularly, and I do enjoy a good open-ended question. They lend themselves perfectly to excellent discussions. I also like that the book suggests “playing devil’s advocate.” If students immediately agree with my point of view during a discussion, some teachers might see that as a victory. However, I would see the discussion as a failure if students hadn’t come to an understanding of both sides of an issue before coming to an educated conclusion on their own.

Dylan Stefani
Teachers all over the globe understand that there is just not enough time to teach everything that they want to or that they need to. They focus on trying to force the content standards on the students hoping that they will grasp them. A better way that this chapter advises teachers to go about covering their material is not to cover it, but to uncover it. Using essential questions to open up discussion about math, art, science, dance, and ext. can conquer the content standards of the subject. Over time, these essential questions deepen the understanding of a subject and we as teachers expect more sophisticated answers to them. This chapter finishes up with a discussion of how to pull the essential questions together using the “WHERETO” framework. Each letter uncovering an important aspect of managing a classroom.

Erika Tingley
One of the roles of teachers is to get his or her students involved in the learning and intrigued by the content. The students themselves have to want to learn the material as well as to have a desire to search out new information. The focus of this chapter was on getting students engaged in the learning process. The idea that I found most interesting was the misconception that students need to learn the basics in order to participate in abstract learning. It is pointed out that people do not learn in a straight line and that holding a person at lower levels of understanding before giving them experience with higher level thinking only hinders the individual. I have seen this concept first hand in the classroom where my mentor teacher keeps the students doing worksheets that do not pique their interest and keep them from being able to reach abstract thinking. As a future teacher, I hope that I will be able to challenge my students to reach higher levels of understanding and encourage them to grow in their ability.

Kasey
This chapter focused on teaching students “big ideas” and exploring essential questions, rather than simply reviewing facts and concepts in a straightforward, linear way. “Teachers are expected to stimulate thought, show examples and counterexamples, ask probing questions…” (Tomlinson & McTighe 109). By doing these things, teachers provide students with a framework to work from, and allow them to come to their own conclusions and understandings of the subject matter. Using essential questions can help give meaning to the subject, and make it relatable to the students, as opposed to it seeming like useless busy work. This chapter also discussed the WHERETO framework, which is an acronym that helps teachers plan their instructional strategy. The W refers to what the students are learning, why it is important, and how they will show their learning. The H is very important, referring to how the teacher will ‘hook’ or engage their students. I think this aspect will be very important to me when I am in the classroom, because I want my students to be engaged, interested, and proud of the work they do. The E refers to equipping the students with skills they need to master standards and understand the important ideas. The R focuses on revision and refinement throughout the unit, and encourages students to deepen their understanding of a topic by rethinking it and getting other perspectives. Relatedly, the E stands for self evaluation and focuses on helping students gain the skills of self reflection and evalutation. The T is about tailoring instruction to meet the needs of different interests, and academic levels of the students. I think this aspect may be the most difficult for me when I am a teacher. I find it daunting to meet the needs of so many different students, especially when the classes are large. Finally, the O stands for organization of learning experiences. This means that a teacher needs to carefully plan the sequence of learning experiences in the classroom that will best meet the goal of achieving student understanding.

Heath
By challenging existing teaching models and seeking to reveal the ideas of a lesson rather than cover them, teachers stimulate independent thinking and problem solving. The WHERETO framework combined with the stages of backward design are powerful tools which teachers can guide students to discover some or all of the essential understanding of a unit independently. I plan to use leading questions as a primary tool in my classroom. Questions like “What does that tell us?” are essential for students to apply their existing knowledge to the topic at hand and make leaps forward without being fed the information.

Timothy Grivois
Teaching for understanding means that the students are the focus. So many times I have heard teachers use the phrase “we have to cover this” or “let’s just get through this”, and that often means they are letting the context run the classroom completely, rather than letting the context assist the students in success and mastery. As a teacher my goal should be to teach students; I am not teaching the context itself. Uncovering the content means that I am displaying and applying the themes contained in the content in a useful education context. I am not making students memorize arbitrary information for no relevant reason. Instead the goal is to help students retrieve a useful skill or understanding from information and apply that to a future academic success. Meaning must be found on a personal level by the students; I cannot give information meaning by myself. Students are not merely climbing a ladder in their cognitive process. They are learning everything concurrently while attempting to create a logical structure in their minds. Because the information is flooding in at a self-regulated rate, this means it is a unique flow, and not predictable. The WHERETO principles are an example of how I can preface and understand my own curriculum structure in the context of the big picture and the mastery of students.

Kay Sue Collins
This chapter talks about how to design instruction in order to foster true understanding. One concept that really stuck out was uncovering, rather than covering content. It implies that your job is to introduce essential concepts and questions in a way that focuses on a deeper understanding that just touching on the concepts can do. The six facets were also discussed as a way to develop hooks to catch student interest. WHERETO was introduced for the first time. This integrates many concepts we have already learned. It includes making sure the students understand **w**hat they are expected to learn and do, and **w**hy they need to learn it, finding a **h**ook to catch the students’ interest, providing **e**xperiences that **e**quip them to master the standards, encouraging students to **r**ethink, **r**evise, and **r**efine their understanding, **t**ailoring the lessons to the needs of the students, and **o**rganizing the plans to maximize learning. I am really excited to learn these concepts that will make me a better teacher.

Andy Shorey
In chapter seven of Ubd the authors discuss how it is important for teachers to teach for understanding of big questions as opposed to teaching facts and things that can be memorized. It talks about how you should have essential questions for every unit and build students skills so that at the end of the unit they can answer the essential questions. As a teacher you have to "uncover" the content and to do that you can use the WHERETO set up and also use the six facets of understanding. The WHERETO framework is a way to designing lessons.It helps you set up lessons by asking yourself questions and to help the student learn you should add that piece to your lesson. This framework helps students want to learn and helps the teacher realize how he or she is going to get the student to want to learn what they are going to teach them. I would defiantly like to use the WHERETO framework because it ask a lot of good questions and I think it would help plan and design a lesson.

Josh
This chapter is by far my favorite of the book yet. Simply because it is calling out the education system of how and what they are teaching. It argues that covering material is a terrible way to look at a school day and we should be teaching students so they understand what is supposed to be learned. The book also states that understanding and higher level thinking is not reserved for those students that have mastered the basic skills. This is the theory and model I want to build my classroom around. I want students to think, and know how to think. They may need a calculator to figure out 10 times 5 but if they are aware of what they need to tell the calculator to do and why I think they are far better off in terms of math and life. Understanding the material is far more important than being able to spout random facts.

Dan Horne
This chapter talks about the concept of “uncovering” material rather then the common term of “covering” material. Rather then just skimming and briefly going over materials the uncovering method seeks to instill a deeper learning experience. It does this by encouraging teachers to go deeper and ask “essential questions” so that students are required to think and gain a full understanding of the subject. I really like the essential questions because I love to discuss in my classes here are college and I believe it gives me a better learning because I can hear it from many different points of view.

Shila Cook
In this chapter, Teaching for Understanding, Tomlinson and McTighe explain that understand of the “big ideas” require students to construct meaning for them. They talk about the essential questions in teaching, as well as tips for using the essential questions in teaching. The thing that I found most interesting and most helpful was figure 7.3. The brainstorming learning activities chart showed me a different way to organize my thoughts into the six facts of understanding. This would be a great tool to use in making my lesson plans in differentiated instruction.

Caitlin Alexander
This chapter talks about the dangers of “covering” content, and how best teachers should present the content to their students. One suggestion is to present the content as an answer to some key question that the students should understand by the end of the lesson. Another is to use the six facets of understanding as a hook, to get the students interested in the material and to allow them to set their own goals for understanding (and also allowing them some independence in the classroom). This chapter also introduced the WHERETOs, which is a great way to think of how to present material to students. Personally, I like the idea of presenting the content as the answer to a question. This is because in most of my most thought provoking classes in high school, we used a format like this. We were presented the tools needed to find the answer (the readings and extra packets of information) and we then spent mass amounts of time digesting and running through the info as a group, and we debated and argued (politely and in an appropriate manner), with the teachers leading us on with questions that only lead to more debates, before we finally came to the conclusion on our own. That feeling, of figuring out the “answer” on our own was wonderful, because we felt that we had discovered (or uncovered, as the authors might like better) the material on our own, with minimal help from the teacher. If I can do this in my classroom, I think that my students will have a much better understanding of the material.

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Tyler Brookings
In chapter 7 of Ubd/DI the authors begin to touch on the material and content covered in class. There are a few ideas that the author gives us, such as, using the 6 facets of understanding as a hook, mainly just to get the students interested and help them set their. Another suggestion is to present the answer in the material and have the students discuss it. WHERETO's were also introduced and these are a great idea to get the students really thinking and on top of things. I feel that this chapter had some great ideas and I know that i will end up using some of these ideas in my classroom.

Kyle Rines
Finally, the education system is taking some flack. Being a current college student and recent former high school student, I am fully aware of what it is like to have a teacher who just preaches and lectures on an on without ever gaining actual ground in the material. Another example is that I have also had teachers who seemed chained to the curriculum, and just went through the motions every day in class; losing students one at a time. For the students to actually care, absorb the information, and actually come to class the teacher must use a many different aspects of teaching. The WHERETO'S are a good example, as well as discussion (like we have here at UMF). Both of these are good tools for teaching. "Uncover" the material instead of "covering" the material.