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.