Reflection (2nd part)

Reflection chapter 6: Crafting Understanding.

I will start this reflection with the word “understanding”, and this word is priority in our lessons. Why it is so difficult to link content standards and essential understanding. This chapter compares examples of understanding to nonexamples, but how to make the difference between these concepts. Do we really know what understanding is? What is a big idea? What is the importance of understanding in our goals? How to focus is meaningful learning?

One of the problems we teachers face in planning is that some of us have sometimes considered the plans or assessments as the end result. How to generate new understanding in our students?  How do we apply these big ideas? Sometimes our students ask themselves why I am learning this; they seem not to see a point. The idea of, our students are aware of their own learning process, go deeper into the meaningful learning is target in our lessons. As the authors said understanding refers to transferable, big ideas having enduring value beyond a specific topic, must be developed inductively, and constructed by learners.

As it is mentioned in Chapter 2, understanding involves the grasp of big ideas, as reflected in thoughtful and effective transfer. Understanding requires more, it asks our students consider, propose, test, question, criticize and verify. After this, we ask ourselves how we should act.

This chapter mentions two kinds of understanding: topical and overarching. Topical one is specific and overarching understanding are broader and offer a possible bridge to other units and courses.
This book helped me to understand my own practice, also made me to understand my students and their own needs.

From my point of view, there is no special way of integrating big ideas, but there is something that is clear. It is to consider the desired results to develop with our classmates, having a clear assessment plan, clear goals, and assessment evidence.



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