Teaching For Understanding
GUIDELINES
Generative Topics;
What makes a topic worth teaching?
-central to a subject area or discipline
-familiar to students and other subjects
-engaging to students and teachers
-accessible to students via multiple ways of thinking & resources
Understanding Goals;
Unit sized goals that are embedded throughout the school year
Performances of Understanding;
During the school year, students need to be engaging in activities that develop and demonstrate their understanding.
Ongoing Assessment;
feedback learning criteria and reflection opportunities should be offered throughout the course of instruction.
This can be helpful when...
assessment criteria is made available to the public
feedback is provided on a regular bases
students and teachers have enough opportunity to reflect on students' understanding
central to a subject area or discipline
engaging to students and teachers
accessible to students via multiple ways of thinking & resources
familiar to students and other subjects
DEFINITION;
"understanding is a matter of being able to do a variety of thought-demanding things with a topic—like explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalizing, applying, analogizing, and representing the topic in a new way"
THREE MAIN REASONS
The Nature of the Modern World that Today's Students will Enter
"education today must help students go beyond learning facts in order to develop deeper understandings of the world around them and the diverse global society in which they live."
children need to know how to find, sort, evaluate and apply information to new situations
Knowledge Explosion
education needs to shift from teaching for the test, to teaching in order to prepare learners to understand ideas and processes that they can use in many situations
Research on Learning
our work as educators needs to be guided based on current research findings and understandings.
When someone TRULY understands, they can...
apply
demonstrate perspective
interpret
display empathy
explain
have self-knowledge
How do we Teach For Understanding?
engage learners in meaning-making
teach and assess for transfer
INCORPORATING TFU INTO MY FUTURE CLASSROOM
focus the learning on big ideas and central questions -- this helps students make connections to other topics or things in their lives.
keep up to date on research so i know how to best help my students
providing students with hands-on experiences makes the learning more engaging and meaningful
provide students with examples on how the information they are learning can transfer to different subjects
ask questions throughout the whole lesson, not just during the "test"