DI+UbD+Chapter+7+Block+2

[|Synthesis UbD/DI C7 B2]

The seventh chapter of UbD/DI goes over how we teaching for understanding in an academically diverse classroom. The first section urges us to teach by uncovering materials. The point the book is trying to make by saying this is that we need to narrow down what we teach and go deeper into that area. The books uses the image of iceberg with just the point above water and the book says we must go beneath the surface to see what truly matters. The next part of this chapter guides us through using essential questions when we teach. The book says the guide to the content you should teach is the answers to the essential questions we ask students at the beginning of the unit. The book then gives us a range of essential questions we can ask for a wide variety of subject areas. The book then gives us six practical tips for using these essential questions. The tips are; Less is more, be sure students understand vocabulary to explore questions, in questions use kid language, post the question in classroom, help student personalize the questions, and use different strategies to deepen student thinking. The following section gives us ways to use the six facets of understanding as instructional tools. The most helpful part of this section is the chart with the different verbs that link to each of the understandings. The books then emphasizes that the ladder metaphor for learning is not an accurate one because students learn the basic by working at a high level. The next section goes into the WHERETO model of pulling everything together. The WHERERTO model is a research-based model of planning a unit. || I really like this section of book because it gives me a way to look at planning within the context of understanding by design. I firmly agree with the book that we need to go deep below the surface so that student’s gets true understanding out of our units. I also like the idea of setting out essential questions at the start of our unit because it gives students a clear road map for the unit and gives them questions they can ask themselves to see if they are going in the right direction. The WHERETO model is also a creative way to plan for what we will be teaching on a daily basis. || "To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully." -Tyron Edwards || Chapter 7 of DI/UbD is about teachers teaching a curriculum to students for understanding. In schools today, too many teachers teach for tests. It is far more important for a student to actually understand the material. This book looks at uncovering content as opposed to covering content. A teachers job is to uncover knowledge, not to cover it up and make it confusing for students. Using essential questions helps students understand better, as they have something to relate to. A lot of this chapter is about the WHERETO framework. The WHERETO framework focuses on developing a lesson plan that focuses on learning. W stands for What they will learn. H stands for how. E stands for how well equipped a student is to learn the subject. R is about encouraging learners to look back at their previous learning. E is evaluation. T is how a teacher tailors the learning for each individual learner. O is about helping students be organized in the classroom. When a student is organized, they can learn better. This chapter is very helpful as it looks at making a lesson plan to help students understand material. So many students just learn facts and figures for tests, and when the test is over, the knowledge goes away. This is not understanding. It is a teacher’s responsibility to make sure that each student properly understands the material. Using WHERETO can help a teacher set the framework for a productive lesson plan. A teacher must always keep in mind the variation in the classroom, and look at ways to reach every student. This chapter gives some great incite on how to be an organized teacher who is very focused on making sure that each student actually understands the material, and that no student goes on noticed.
 * **Names** || **Abstract** || **Reflection** ||
 * Barnes Mckell || Chapter seven talked a lot about providing essential questions in your lesson plans. Essential questions help students have an understanding of the big idea you want your students to learn. They also provide students with a learning goal that they can work towards. The book also sets up the WHERETO model which is designed to tie everything all together, or as the book refers to it as “pulling it all together.” The WHERETO model also poses the concept of planning before teaching. That concept is essential if you are trying to get across the big picture in your curriculum. || I really thought this chapter did a great job explaining essential questions as well as providing us with the WHERETO model. Not only did the chapter explain the importance of essential questions in a classroom, the chapter also provided examples of essential questions teachers can use in different classrooms. I really think it is important to inform our students of the learning goal and what better way to do so then by providing essential questions. I also liked the WHERETO model it set up a great way to pull everything together. ||
 * Brennick Christopher ||
 * Columbia Laura || Chapter seven of //Integrating// discusses the content as well as the need to ask essential questions. The introduction begins with the idea that understanding must be earned by the student. The teacher can give opportunities, but in the long run, it is up to the student to understand. They have to create a meaning for themselves. Also discussed is how many teachers feel the need to cover all the information in the textbook, but do not go into enough detail about the bigger ideas. One really good example was given using an ice berg. We can only see the tip, but there is much more beneath the surface. We need to dig deeper to help students have a deeper understanding. Another way to encourage a deeper understanding is using good essential questions that are open ended. These questions need to be asked often, and in different ways so the students can learn it in different ways. A quick reminder was given that the "Ladder" metaphor is often flawed. A great example was given. Toddlers do not master the English language before they began to speak, in the same way students should be allowed to use their skills before they master them. An example of a framework entitled the WHERETO Framework. This is simply a design in which each letter represents a type of question a teacher would ask a student to help them along in the learning process. || One of the most helpful part of this chapter was section on essential questions. This part gave many good examples on the types of questions to ask as well as pointers on how to make good questions. It is important to remember to keep the essential questions to a minimum. Less is better. That is because the questions should be open ended and encourage thinking. Many examples were given from each subject area as good essential questions. This will really help me in my teaching career. Especially since essential questions are so important. ||
 * Coombs Kayla || This chapter is about asking and devising the essential questions that lead to understanding. It talks about the WHERETO process which is a thought process that encourages students to learn and get excited about school and learning. This process is a way to plan experience and instruction. This acronym stands for where, why, what, hook, explore, experience, rethink, rehearse, revise, refine, and evaluate, tailor, and organize. The “W” stands for where, why, and what they are going to learn, “H” stands for how to hook them to engage them in learning, “E” stands for exploring and experiencing the big ideas, “R” stands for revising and refining their work, “E” stands for evaluating their work, “T” represents tailoring learning activities to address learner needs, and “O” stands for organizing the learning experience to encourage effective learning. || I found it interesting to learn about the WHERETO model because I want my students to want to learn. If I can present this idea to them in a way that makes them excited to learn, then they can become successful learners. I was pleased to see this model introduced in this chapter because it just provides me with another way to plan lessons for my classroom in a way that ensures that students will understand the material. Models like this make classroom management easier because it makes students want to learn and teacher want to teach them and both care about the material.
 * Cummons Michael ||  ||
 * Damboise Kelley || Chapter seven recognizes how important the essential questions are in creating a lesson and teaching students the material. It is important for teachers to reveal the essential questions to the students before, during, and right before the final assessment to take away the “mystery” of what they were suppose to learn for this content. This also helps in the “uncovering” of the material. Most teachers want to cover so much information that it is impossible for them to go into dept with a certain topic because there is so much to cover. By focusing on the essential questions teachers can help students understand deeper concepts dealing with that material. This chapter also focuses on the WHERTO model of teaching. The W stands for: what students will learn, why they need to learn this material, and what evidence will show that students learned the material. The H stands for how can I as a teacher “hook” my students into learning the material, and how can I help them make connections. The E stands for how can I equip students to master the material being presented, and what learning experiences will help my students reach mastery. The R stands for how can I develop a way for my students to rethink, revise, and refine the material being presented. The second E stands for allowing students to self-evaluate their learning based upon goals that were set either by the student or teacher. The T stands for in what ways can this lesson be tailored to fit certain students learning styles so they can best grasp the material. Lastly the O stands for how can teachers organize activities, assignments, and assessments that will help students understand the concept presented to them. || This chapter has a great deal of information about how important it is to catch students attention and present material to the students using new, effective practices that work on helping the student understand and comprehend the objectives. I feel as a teacher I am going to use the WHERTO model to help me formulate my lessons so that my students have a chance to deeply understand the material. As a learner I wish that I would have had teachers that would of “hook” my attention and provided a clear explanation as to why we were learning the material, how this connected to the real world, and how it connects to other aspects of learning. I would have liked to have a teacher that really worked on tailoring the lesson towards the types of students in the class. I had one teacher in high school that continued to use the same method of teaching a certain topic. Year after year students would always talk about this dreadful lecture that was boring, uninformative, and didn’t help any other them better understand the concept. It would have been nice it this teacher were to use the WHERTO model to structure this lesson plan. ||
 * Kelley Kathleen || Chapter seven of Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design addressed how to teach for understanding in a diverse classroom. Teaching for understanding is challenging because it demands that the student be able to think for themselves, question, and apply learned material, but it also requires that the teacher stimulate the minds of students, and create effective learning while still making sure the students are succeeding. Teaching understanding uncovers important ideas that are significant to a students learning. Demonstrations of their learning include simulations, papers, debates, and products. These big ideas are formed into essential questions which are used in stage three to bring the learning to life. As future teachers, we should start thinking about how these essential questions can be used to probe the students to think deeper into the subject matter. The book suggests framing content around the answers to the essential questions. This will have a more positive effect on the students learning because it stimulates the mind. The book also references six tips for using essential questions in your teaching. The six facets of understanding may be used to engage your students into the subject matter, and help students to explore. However, we must remember that the six facts are just “conceptual tools, not ends in themselves” (page 117). The chapter concludes by discussing the WHERETO frame, which is a design used in stage three. WHERETO stands for: What/Why, Hook, Equip/Experiences, Rethink/Refine, Evaluation, Tailoring Teaching, and Organized.

Tomlinson, C. A. & McTighe, J. (2006). //Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design//. Corwin Press: ASCD: Alexandria, VA. || Overall, I thought that this chapter was really interesting to read because it gave some different and unique ways of using your original essential questions in your classroom to further challenge the students. It was really informational and will be something I use when I review my units. The book also gave some insight into stage three of the backwards design which was nice because we will be starting in very soon. I also enjoyed how there was a detailed description of the WHERETO framework. Since it is something that we will be using in the near future, it was nice to have it broken down with a segment about each letter. || This chapter was very helpful in explaining to me how opening a unit should happen. I understand that one of my essential jobs is to be though provoking, and that rattling off information that students try to memorize as apposed to reflect on is not conducive to this task. The most valid piece of information that I have taken away from this chapter is that I need to be able to keep the interest of my students, and insure that they are engaged in what I am teaching. The WHERETO acronym is a good source for the though process that it takes to help students be active, and therefore interested in their own learning. One of the basic ideas that I will take away from this chapter is that coming to understand an idea requires active intellectual engagement from the learner, and from this stance it gives us educators the duty of engaging our students, but it helps us justify ourselves if some very apathetic students refuse to learn what we have to offer. The first idea that this chapter proposes is that students must be held accountable for their own education. The chapter says that understanding must be earned while facts can be memorized, skills must be practiced. This chapter stresses essential questions and tells teachers to require explanation and justification for their answers. The chapter tells us that teachers are asked to go in depth to engage students and make meaning of the content that we are teaching. As teachers the chapter asks us to begin a unit with a question, as apposed to stating a fact. This essential question is put into place to help provoke actual thinking from our students. This chapter gives us a list of many essential questions that can be asked through out many of the educational disciplines. On top of all of this, the essential questions cause students to help us teachers evaluate their initial understanding of a unit. The students will answer our questions and tell us what they know, or at least think they know about what we are teaching. The chapter states that this will allow us to know and target the misconceptions that we need to alleviate before the unit is over. This chapter also tells us of the WHERETO framework and gives specific examples of what each letter in the acronym stands for.
 * Knowles Christina || Chapter seven covers the problem all teachers face; all teachers feel it is impossible to teach all the content in their subject in such a short period of time. It says that not only are big ideas of a unit important, but so are the underlying ideas. The chapter also covers the six facets. The chapter gave an easy to use diagram th at we can apply when creating a lesson. We also read about the WHERETO method. This method allows us to hook our students and give them the information they will need in the lesson. || I really like the diagram for the six facets because it helped me relate the facets more to a lesson plan. I also really like the WHERETO method because it is another method I can use when creating a lesson. I like having a lot of options when creating a lesson plan because I can pick out the best way to organize it. ||
 * Mourkas Margaret || Chapter 7 is titled Teaching for Understading. It talked a lot about essential questions and how to use them in the classroom. Presenting the students with the essential question or questions for the unit with help them understand what they are going to be learning about in the next unit. One of the biggest complaints in the education world is that there is too much material for the amount of time given to teach. Chapter seven talks about how to avoid that frustration and just teach what the students really need to know. This chapter also explains the WHERETO model. It emphasizes that “planning precedes teaching” page 120. This model reminds teachers that planning is an essential part to teaching the students effectively. || This chapter had a lot of new material in it but it was new material that really built on some old information. For instance the WHERETO model really embraces everything we have learned thus far in class and teaches us how to use it. This chapter talked a lot about the six facets and how to twist them up a bit to individualize a project for a student. This chapter really taught us how to use our essential questions to our advantage. For example, present the class with the essential question at the beginning of the unit. This was the students know what they are going to learn before they even begin learning. I think this is a great idea because it might help focus some students on the unit because now they know what to look for. ||
 * O'Neil Christopher || Chapter seven discusses understanding essential questions, content and the WHERETO model. A lot of times teachers will refer to teaching their content as “covering” the content. This conveys the wrong idea about teaching. Cover could mean to hide something, which is not what you would do in teaching. It could also mean to “skim the surface” which could be used in teaching. However, to skim the surface, teachers would have to spend less time on material, thus not teaching the students the full information that they should know. Teachers must use essential question in teaching such as open-ended questions. Open-ended questions provide a starting point for exploring a much more complex idea than a question that goes straight to the finish line. Teachers may also use the WHERETO model to help in instructional planning in Stage 3 of the backward design model. || This chapter was very useful to me because it showed me how important essential questions are. I have had many teachers in the past ask questions that have very simple answers and are set up in such a way that you cannot elaborate on them. I have also had teachers that ask questions that set you up for a much longer and in depth discussion about the topic. These types of questions helped me learn about the topic much more than the straight forward questions did. Open-ended questions make you think more about the original question and the different out comes of your answer. There is always another twist to an answer you have to an open-ended question. The more in depth you get, the more you begin to learn and understand about the question that was asked. ||
 * Richardson Cassandra || Chapter seven played on the understanding that teachers are around for the purpose of encouraging deep thought, inquistiveness, and provide explanations when needed. To do so, the students need to understand and comprehend the subject matter. The chapter talks a lot about ‘covering material,’ where a certain amount of information needs to change hands in order to have been productive. This way of thinking is outdated; methods of more effective teaching have been developed in the form of essential questioning. The essential questions allow for teachers to focus students’ thoughts on the big ideas, and then delve deeper to the details underneath. The WHERETO frame of mind is introduced at this point; the ‘w’ standing for the typical ‘who, what, why’; ‘h’ standing for ‘hook,’ as in how to get students genuinely interested and engaged from the beginning; ‘e’ for ‘equip and experiences,’ so though the knowledge is passing from teacher to student the student is given a practical application for the knowledge; ‘r’ for ‘rethink’ and ‘revise,’ to go over material; ‘e’ for ‘evaluation,’ as the way to measure knowledge gained; ‘t’ for ‘tailor,’ as in how to make the material accessible for each and every student; and lastly, ‘o’ for ‘organized.’ || The WHERETO frame scared me when I first saw it in the chapter. I felt a little more at ease when I saw that it had been broken down by the letter for further dissection. Covering versus uncovering material seems to be one of the many ‘education buzzwords’ these days, and I feel like in order to be a successful teacher this idea of making sure that the big ideas are revealed in an appealing manner needs to be a top priority. ||
 * Trundy Monique || In chapter seven Tomlinson and McTighe discuss the importance of “uncovering the content,” to students. It is important to refer to your essential questions through out a unit and to make sure that the questions you ask make it possible for students to explore instead of offering a right and/or wrong answer. Tomlinson and McTighe also discuss the six facets: explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy and self-knowledge and the WHERETO framework. || It was nice to see a chapter that I could relate to what I have been doing in class. It is nice to cover something like the six facets in class then to see them in my reading. Having prior experience with what I’m reading about makes it easier for me to understand. It’s also nice to see importance being put on student understanding of material, instead of the old theory of covering as much as possible as fast as possible. ||
 * Webb Christopher || Chapter seven of this book discussed student understanding and constructing meaning. It talks about how facts can be memorized but true understanding needs to be developed by the student in order to apply the material. There is a great analogy on page 110 of big ideas being an iceberg and the tip is just the basics, we as teachers need to make students dive in to get the full picture of what is there. It talks alter about how the 6 Facets of Understanding can be used to present materials to students in various ways. This chapter also talks about how the “ladder” view of cognition is wrong, that is that, students need to grasp basic ideas before they can conceptualize. This chapter also introduces us to the WHERETO acronym which is used when creating lessons. || I though this chapter was great because it was actually one of the easier chapters to read in this book so far. It was filled with a lot of great examples and analogies to relate what it was discussing to the classroom and applying it. The iceberg analogy really stood out for me because it really made sense and made it easy to understand the concept. I was also one of those people who believed that students did need to grasp the basics before applying them but after reading this chapter I have doubts about whether that is right or not (I’m still not totally convinced). I also liked the idea of using essential questions at the beginning of lessons to target misconceptions and see what students already know, it seemed like a great way to begin a lesson and get the students thinking. ||
 * West Simon ||  ||