"Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding"

Chapter 5, form the book called Understanding by design, is focused on the importance of essential questions in a classroom. The chapter mainly talks about Essential Questions that are fundamental in any class when we are teaching a lesson
basically because they help us to warm up the new lesson and also they can let us have open discussions where we can bring up many important ideas. As we have seen in other chapters, teachers must estimulate their students to reach understanding and not only aquiring knowledge that is why the questions that we use in a class must be the adequate ones and not choosing any question.
The chapter describe many different concepts about the importance of questions in a class, in the next paragraphs we are going to explain the three main ideas of the chapter.

Firstly, the text describes why questions are important and it is mainly because they stimulate our students´mind and provoke curiosity among students. When we formulate a good question we can make our students´go beyond the main concept and make them think abour more questions meanwhile they are finding the most suitable answer. For example, if we are asking our students about the origin of the earth, there are many questions that can bring up related with the topic and also many topics can be mentioned depending in their own believes and way of thinking.

Secondly, the text gives a completely description of why do we call those questions "Essential questions". It gives four different meanings.
-"they are important questions that recur throughout all our lives", and this means that the answer of those questions can be related with what we have been through in life, maybe sometimes it is going to depende of how has been our own experience.
-"core ideas and inquiries within a discipline", this means that the questions must be related with big topics that can go beyond what we expect and they are not only techincal answers that must be learnt by hard or something like that.
-"Questions that helps students effectively inquire and make sense"this means that this questions help students to reach understanding and let them to join ideas in order to create their own answers.
-"questions that will most engage a specific and diverse set of learners" this means that teachers need to formulate essential questions based on students´ needs and likes.

Thirdly, the text gives different tips of how we can formulate essential questions. The authores identify the importance of choosing a useful topic, which must have different sub topics and questions that are going to be useful to discuss it in class too. Teachers must never choose yes or no questions since they are only useful to observe knowledge but as we know we want to reach understanding and also teachers must be very aware of their students ´performance as critical beings.

To conclude, essential questions must be included in every lesson that we teach, because they are useful to open our students´ mind as a path to reach understanding. Teachers need to use essential questions most of the time as pre activities because they incourage our students to believe that they must be active in the class and that the teacher is just a guide.

"Backward Design"chapter 1

Chapter number 1 from the book called Understanding by design, is focused on the importance of how teachers design their process for teaching students. The chapter contains a well organized explanation of how we create a previous design of our classes, showing us concrete and real examples that teachers can apply in their own classes in order to create effective lessons where studentes are going to be able to reach clear understanding.

Backward design, as the chapter is called, is esencially what teachers must do before a lesson is started. The use of an organized design is always going to bring positive results in every sense, since students performance is going to increase and also our job as teachers is going to be easier. Most of the teachers are tired and they do not have expectatives of their students but with a previous and well organized designed, units and concepts are going to be easier and more quickly to teach because we are just going to follow our plan.

In the following paragraphs, we will analyze the three more important ideas to identify the different designing tips that we must be aware before we start teaching in a class.

Firstly, we must say that as teachers we are designers since we must organized and plan every class and also we must be aware of a long term planning. Designing can be a quite long process but in the future the results are beneficial for everyone. It is true that teachers are designers but they can not apply and follow what ever they want to, teachers must follow specific standards of the goverment and then regarding in the school you are working in. Most of the time teachers do not design their lessons so they never obtain desired results. Teachers need to know that it is important to have a clear objective to start figuring out how are we going to do it and what are we going to use in our classes. The chapter emphasize the importance of knowing what are our desired results as a base for our planning, it is impossible to start a teaching design if we do not know our purposes. A clear example of this important idea, is when a student is bored making an activity and he starts doubting about the importance of the activity and what is the real purpose if it, for this we can not have no answer, we must know what is our purpose in order to give the student the importance of that lesson and not just telling him because is going to be in the final test.

Secondly, the chapter shows three different stages that are very useful to follow when designing our lessons. First, as we identify in the first paragraph, teachers must identify desired results in order to know what students should know and what are they going to be able to learn. At the beginning of the term, there are many lessons that teachers want to teach in order to reach what the school expects but we must choose by highlighting priorities and responding to students needs. Then, we must collect and select evidence to identify the desired understanding because that is what we are mainly looking for. To show evidence we must identify how many quizzes or evaluations are we going to test in order to judge students´ performance. It is very important that students are aware of this decisions because they are also part of the class and it is good that they know the rules from the beginning. The third and last stage implies the learning plan, which is focused on the sequence of each class that is going to help us to reach effective understanding. It is important to say that textbooks are not the main resource in the class, it is a support but it is not the only one. This last concept is very useful for teachers since after each class we can go back to our backward design and identify what do I have to do for the next class, letting teachers far away from improvising.

Thirdly, we must put emphasis in the importance of the three stages to design work and it lies in the fact that they are a necessary reference for our classes and that it accessible for us every time as we wish. When we are teaching wemust be guided for a rubric where we can follow the expects to accomplish our real purpose, reach understanding. Also is useful in the way that this kind of rubric can be shared with other teachers in order to critique the rubric or in other cases to share it in order to help a colegue with his rubric. In every sense we analyze design work we are going to conclude that is necessary and fumdamental that every teacher design their own rubric to be an effective teacher.

“Criteria and Validity”

Chapter 8 is focused in the importance of Validity and Criteria in every assessment in order to identify students´ learning. Every performance task that a teacher tests, must be valid to show evidence that students have achieved understanding if not our teaching process is not going to be effective. In this chapter we will analyze through three different main ideas, the concepts of Criteria and Validity related with rubrics and the importance of reliability in every assessment.

Every teacher has his or her own criteria to assess and to make a judgment of an evaluation. As teachers when we establish our criteria to evaluate, we are making a judgment of what we want our students to answer and respond in their assessment, therefore to reach quality in students´ performance. It is fundamental that students are well informed about each teachers´ criteria to evaluate to succeed, because each one is going to evaluate according to their own criteria and most of the time students must adequate to each teachers´ requirements. For example, a research project can be graded with a high mark because of having many information, numerous quotes of authors that support the ideas but maybe the information is not well organized or even well analyzed. Teachers tend to believe that a good paper involves a lot of information but thinking on this they are only getting away from their real objective, looking for understanding.

What we obtain with criteria is what we call rubrics. They are the guide that helps teacher to score the assessment according with their own criteria. Rubrics are needed when we are evaluating not a yes or no answers, is when we assess about the quality of a performance (subjective assessment). Rubrics are useful for students when they have to write a paper or other kind of assessments because it is a guide for them to point what the teacher wants in the evaluation. This rubric must be clearly explained and well organized so it can merely show evidence that what is asked for is valid and can make judgment of an accurate understanding.

As we have being studying, validity is everything in assessment. If a test is not valid, it is does not prove us that our teaching has been effective or either if our students have learnt. It is so common that teachers after designing an evaluation material, they realized that it was not what they were looking for or sometimes it does not show a real understanding. Tests must show evidence that it is measuring what we really want to evaluate, that is why rubrics are so important and fundamental when we are evaluating. Because they are a guide that helps us to think about what are we really waiting for our students to perform. For example, in an English class, the teacher proposes the class to have a different way of evaluating. At first the teacher wanted to test a comprehension reading in order to assess understanding and comprehension until she thought that her idea was an interesting proposal. She told them to join in groups of 6 and make a role play of the story instead of having a comprehension test. The teacher and the students are very motivated and interested in the new project but the teacher is not showing evidence that their students are able to comprehend a story in English. Maybe a role play is a fun activity where students can practice there English and at the same time it foments group work but they are not being tested of what they are supposed to.

To conclude, teachers must have clear there own criteria to evaluate in order to create rubrics to have a well organized evaluating process. Many validity problems relies in rubrics because they are not well formed or even they does no fit with what teachers really expect.

Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

As teachers, before starting any teaching process, we have to be able to set clear goals to be accomplished. We have to know clearly what is what we really want our students to learn and mainly understand. Which are our understanding desires and how we will manage to create skills and how to develop strong knowledge and understanding in the classroom. In this chapter, we will learn how to set our goals for the learning process and how we can accomplish them, through the Ubd doctrine.

One of the mains ideas this model shows, is that we can’t plan our lessons before knowing what we want our students to learn and understand by the end of it. We have to set long term aims, and through these create short long terms aims, getting all together. We can’t look for short term aims to be achieved individually, they have to be part of the final goals we want to accomplish with our teaching. As in common life, everything needs to have long terms objectives, what is what we want to achieve at the end of any project, idea, etc.
Let’s suppose a vocabulary lesson, before starting to prepare it, we have to be clear in what we want our students to learn at the end of the lesson. The teachers says;“Today we’ll be learning about classroom instructions” Surely you’ll expect your students to be able to know and learn each concept. But really you’ll expect your students to really understand when teachers apply those concepts in every class. So your class has to be planned for this to happen, preparing it in the search of accomplishing your objectives. So what you first have to plan is your long term aim, before getting anything started and then focus in the main ideas.

Secondly, this chapter also makes us realize that standards or learning outcomes need to be unpacked, and we need to difference the big ideas and core tasks, to create a better understanding in our students. Mostly of the time, these standards are overloaded and there’s not enough time to teach and learn every aspect of it. Sometimes standards are too big, too global, and they’re too difficult to measure, and it’s hard to difference what are the most important aspects to develop. Not as small standards which are easily measurable, but generally misses the big ideas and we run the risk of sending a wrong message to our students, encouraging them to memorize concepts instead of really creating understanding. Also sometimes, this standards are too vague, too abstract, so surely each teacher will interpret it in a different way, which differs one of the main intentions that this standards have, clarity, consistency and coherent goals. That’s why we have to be able to “unpack” these standards, and identify the big idea and the core tasks. The problem is that as teachers we take too much time trying to teach every content of the program instead of making it according with reality. “Yet educators have been slow to translate these requirements into more familiar program and course objectives, to the detriment of student performance” (Wiggins) It’s hard to cover every fact and skill of the standards, so that’s why we have to be able to difference what it’s really important and what isn’t. We need to focus certain groups of ideas in order to create essential questions to be responded, and assess our students in a valid way. We can’t expect them to learn something we haven’t set as a priority. We have to teach through experience and practice, applying the contents with real life issues to reach understanding. For example, if we’re practicing a reading comprehension, it must be about something that is connected to their reality, so they can be more related with the lesson and at the same they it is going to be easier to understanding and have an efficient learning.

Last but no least, as teachers we have to be able to get into our students minds. Ideas we may find powerful and meaningful, might be confusing or irrelevant for students. We may expect that our learners to see these ideas clearly, but most times these ideas are abstractions, and the challenge for us, is to bring this abstractions to real life. One of the best examples is to use a lot of visual aids, videos and photographs. We need that our students learn these ideas, asking and re-asking about them, and at the end making them meaningful for them. For example, we must let students know that English is crucial for people these days, that is why we must incentivate them to learn the language through different activities to acquire English as a second language, as song lyrics, videos and games that are actually in English.

As teachers we must be prepared to plan a class from the beginning to the end focusing in everything what implies to accomplish our main purposes and concrete our final goal; reach understanding.

"Understanding" by Design

The text “Understanding” by Design, written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, tries to make us aware of the significance of Understanding and the big difference that this concept has in relation with knowledge. After we read the text there are three main ideas that help us to comprehend the importance of “Understanding.”

*Firstly, the text wants to show that teachers are not really conscious of what really understanding means. They tend to confuse understanding with knowledge making a big damage in students learning. Teachers need to know what understanding means in order to make it as their main objective. Usually in class, teachers have a tendency to make students learn their lessons by hard, making them repeat and repeat all the time. As a consequence students learn the different theories, rules and concepts but most of the time they are not able to apply them. Teachers must identify what the word “Understanding” means in turn to plan their lessons in an effectively way to obtain an authentic understanding.

*Secondly, the text tries to clarify the differences between Understanding and Knowledge, making us aware that both concepts are very different but also they are related. Knowledge is what we can explain us as the main concepts of a specific topic and understanding involves the relation among those concepts in order to apply them in another context and going beyond. The relation that connects Understanding and knowledge falls on the fact that we must know some concepts previously to have a further effective understanding.

*Thirdly, the text tries to explain us all the information above in order to be conscious that there are a lot of test that do not measure understanding, that they just assess knowledge and in same cases not even that. It is easy to identify this issue when we know that teachers teach in an inappropriate way, they just want to teach the main objectives and the compulsory lessons. They think that if her or his students are able to answer some specific concepts they already understood the lesson but they don’t take the time to assess a real understanding.