I had a great deal of difficulty with this chapter. It probably didn’t help that my reading of it was rather disjointed — I have two small children here at home, and I probably needed to marshal all my concentration and read it in the library or somewhere quiet. The chapter describes and summarizes the…
I have been quiet for a couple of days as I finished up the school year and did some planning for a summer course I will be teaching the end of July/beginning of August. In the meantime, Grant Wiggins commented on the UbD Wiki post and offered up a nice bit of encouragement for those…
An alternative title for this chapter of Understanding by Design might be “Everything You Thought You Knew about Teaching and Assessment is Wrong.” Perhaps that is somewhat hyperbolic, but not much. I consider myself an autodidact — perhaps not in the sense of being largely self-taught, but in the sense that I have taught myself…
Based upon some discussion about my re-reading of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design, I created a wiki for those of you who are interested in exploring this book together this summer and sharing our UbD lesson plans. As the authors say in chapter one, “Backward Design,” “In addition to using the UbD…
Chapter One of Understanding by Design is an introduction to the concept of Backward Design, which I think is best summarized in Wiggins and McTighe’s statement that “We [teachers] cannot say how to teach for understanding or which material and activities to use until we are quite clear about which specific understandings we are after…
As I read Grant Wiggins’ and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design, I have decided to share my thoughts — my reading journal, if you will, as a few readers expressed an interest in hearing my thoughts about this book. I could be misrepresenting my readers, and please tell me if I am, but I sense…
My copies of Jim Burke’s The Teacher’s Daybook, 2007-2008 and Understanding by Design, 2nd Ed. by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe arrived from Amazon today, and I’ve already begun working out my calendar in the daybook. If you haven’t used this planner before, you might want to check it out, provided that your school doesn’t…
After this week, students will take final exams. Graduation is on the 12th (we are a Jewish school, so we don’t hold events on Fridays or Saturdays in order to avoid conflicting with Shabbat). My schedule for next year is firming up, and believe it or not, I’m already looking forward to next year. I…
Back in June 2006, I returned from a week-long professional development program authored by Mel Levine known as Schools Attuned. All year I have been working on the practicum part — the application of what I learned back in June in my classroom. I think I am finished. I just sent my portfolio to my…
I had either a brain wave or a brain fart, and I’ll let you decide which. Professional development books are expensive. Sometimes our schools have good libraries, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes our schools will pay for our professional development books, sometimes they won’t. I have a modest proposal. If you have a title you would…
