Chapter 6: Crafting Understandings

Teachers must be aware about the process of learning, in order to help student to understand the knowledge that it is desired. As teacher we have to explain content from the very basic, and increase complexity once students have reached the previous structures, and have integrated them, we can move to the next content. In this way we can go further in student’s knowledge. In addition, teachers always have to respect the previous knowledge that students have, and take it as a base or source to start building knowledge.

Chapter 5: Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding

I think it is essential that teachers make questions that let students think beyond what the curriculum, or course books say, and to make those kind of questions always depends on teachers, they have the power to bring students into a more complex understanding about the world in which we live, thus, in the future they can intervene and make a difference.

chapter 4: The Six Facets of Understanding

Understanding is not a simple thought; actually, it is a very complex process that humans have to pass through to achieve the understanding of something. Wiggins talks about six facets of understanding. I personally agree with this idea of the complexity of understanding, because I think it is a process of complete self-consciousness about what is being learned. In addition, the stages of application and perspective were the most important for me; since they imply the capacity to make the knowledge part of the person, so that he/she can apply it to their life, and also He/she can discuss it, compare it, and criticize it, when the knowledge it is part of a discussion where there may be people with different points of view. 

Chapter 3: Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

What I think is valuable of chapter 3 the way in that Wiggins talks about the importance of the goal behind the activity and the lesson plan. To my mind, there’s no other way to understand the aim of education which is to be in a total level of self-consciousness about what are we doing, obviously always taking into account student’s needs. So, what for? What is the purpose? Am I developing a knowledge that will remain? Is it useful for students? These are the questions that we should ask ourselves when we plan a lesson. During my ELAB experiences I have realized that students need to know why they do certain activities, and also these activities have to make sense for the, in order to motivate them to participate actively. If we all knew what is our positions in the space were we work, and knew the goals we have to accomplish and what are our tools to do it, I think everybody would work committed, since we would feel part of the team, and we would work as a such.

Chapter 2, Understanding, Understanding

This Chapter for me was very interesting because it talks about a problem that, to my mind, educational system has. The dilemma is that schools are more focused on provide students with contents and knowledge; nonetheless, institutions are not aware of make a connection between different facts, and as a result we have students with lots of knowledge spread in their minds, but with little capacity to relate them; thus, understand the information. As teacher, my purpose is to reach understanding on students, and what I teach them make sense for them, in a way they can apply what they learnt, and create new things from it, “going beyond the information given”.

Chapter 1,Backward Design

First of all, I have to say that I like the book, it is very interesting and it has pretty clear ideas, which are excellent by the way. Most of the time people think that going backward is bad, but sometimes is helpful going backwards when you have to rethink and analyze past situations in order to do it better next time; in this way, the backward design proposed by Wiggins and Mctighe, it is a good strategy for teachers to improve their teaching practices and planning. Teachers have to understand that they are designers, creators of spaces of learning. The planning of the teacher must be carefully design, since we are working with the understanding of people, and we cannot be random about it. For this reason, teachers have to be very clear about what are the purposes of their design. For teachers the aim is to reach student learning, and according to the desired result, teachers have to plan the activities and the materials that are going to be used in the class. In addition, with the backwards design strategy, teachers become investigators of their own teaching practice, having to pass through an internal self-questioning process, about what is the purpose of our teaching with students, which skills we want them to develop, what do we want them to learn, the importance of the topic we are teaching, etc. Moreover, teachers have to evaluate the results of the activities in student, “do student learn or change? Why yes, why not?” and according to the collected evidence teachers have to plan their classes again, now with solid bases of what help students to learn and what doesn’t work. I think if every teacher use the backwards design education would improve and progress in an unexpected way.

Feedback to these clases

This course has been very varied; since, we have many differents activities, such as this blog, and the song days... to name but two.