In the chapter called “Gaining Clarity on our Goals”, Wiggins and McTighe focus on how to solve the mistake that teachers make when planning a lesson: "aimless coverage of content, and isolated activities that that are merely engaging (at best) while disconnected from intellectual goals in the learners’ minds"(Wiggins-McTighe,56). It means that teachers are constantly designing the lesson without having learning goals clear. In order to solve this problem teachers must be aware about the concept “Backward Design”, whose role is to help teachers to design the class content and the activity in a meaningful way, both aiming to the desired results. Taking a Cooking Class, the teacher must set the objective of the lesson, for example “in this lessons students will be able to bake a cake” which is what the teacher expect students to learn.
As soon as teachers understand the importance of backward design, they will start planning the lesson by identifying and setting the objectives of the lesson for the class. Teachers must know about content standards or learning outcomes in the class lesson. “[T]hese goals specify what students should know and able to do in various disciplines”(Wiggins-McTighe,60), therefore the objectives of the content or activity the students will learn or do respectively must be conected with what students will apply in a real context. For example, the teacher mentioned in the first paragraph teachs the learners about how to bake a cake. Apart from teaching the ingredients they need and the rules of baking correctly the teacher must be aware of how important is for students to learn how to do it if they want to work as bakers in the future.
One way to organize the content we will teach to our students is basing it on a prioritizing framework in order to compare the ideas that are wanted to teach and choose which are important for students to learn. Here the important issue is “to identify knowledge that students should be familiar with”(Wiggins-McTighe, 72). For example, in the lesson about baking a cake, students are not expected to know about the first person in baking a cake in the world, but they should know about how to bake it by themselves. In order words, teacher must prioritize the important information, abilities and concepts “that have connective and transfer power, within this unit and with other units of study on related topic” (Wiggins-McTighe, 72) that are important for students’ vocational training.
Wiggins, Grant –McTighe, Jay. “Understanding by Design”. Chapter 3: Gaining Clarity on our Goals. 2005
The idea of "priorizing framework" is very interesting,however, I didn't really get the connection between this idea and your example of baking a cake, but still, do you think that teachers think about what students should be taught first or what ir more important to be taught? Based on what you have written about the relationship between the contents ans students' needs, don't you think this framework should be according to these same needs?
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, when you talk about the example of how to bake...Teachers are most worried about concepts and things learned by hard rather than how they can apply those concepts in order to get really understanding.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the first idea. It is important to highlight that teachers when try to do something different to break the routine in their classrooms. Normally, they design funny activities but out of the planning sequence, thus, forgetting the purpose of the lesson.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add to your idea of giving students the most important information, that teachers should place contents into the students reality. Actually, this should be part of the main objectives of the lesson, but teachers forget about them and students don't feel connected to the content and probably they won't pay attention to the lesson. It's a vicious circle.
ReplyDeleteSetting the objectives in the class is fundamental to clarify the purpose and what they are goign to learn. There is a big gap between expected outcomes and real results when teachers have to measure waht students really learnt. So, it is absolutely relevant to be clear about what is expected from them.
ReplyDeleteWell I like what you said about the prioritizing framework. It is important that teachers know what things are more relevant for their students to learn localizing the planning with familiar things for students and then have a meaningful learning.
ReplyDeleteWith these three main ideas of Wiggins, we can say that the author is aiming at a more consistent idea of our goals when planning and teaching, which is good because most of the teachers do not have an elaborated idea in localizing concepts with specific issues that can be happening in their daily lives.
ReplyDeleteComo has dicho, este capítulo habla de la importancia de tener muy claras nuestras metas y objetivos para nuestra planificación y después la evaluación en la sala de clases. Diría que frecuentemente nos fallamos en eso, muchas veces planificamos desde el primer día hasta que lleguemos al final, pero no sabemos exactamente qué es el final, así que ni sabemos cómo llegar. Creo también que los estandars nos dan un comienzo en clarificar los objetivos – nuestro rol como profes es ampliar esta visión desde allí.
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