In “Thinking like an Assessor” (Understanding by Design) Wiggins and McTighe argue (I’m sure quite correctly, at least from my own experience) that teachers are not used to thinking like assessors; they are “far more used to thinking like an activity designer or teacher” (150). In other words, teachers “easily and unconsciously jump to Stage 3 — the design of lessons, activities, and assignments — without first asking [themselves] what performances and products [they] need to teach toward” (150). I am actually quite proud of my ability to think of creative activities and assignments, but I will also admit that they do not always really assess big ideas, and I have only ever composed one unit around essential questions (a Harlem Renaissance unit I wrote last year after Jay McTighe came to our school). I have felt a need to focus my instruction. Let’s face it; there are a lot of great teaching ideas out there, and none of us has to reinvent the wheel. What is hard is making sure our students actually create true understandings and transfer their understandings.

Wiggins and McTighe urge teachers to ask three questions in order to aid in thinking like assessors:

• “What kinds of evidence do we need to find hallmarks of our goals, including that of understanding?”
• “What specific characteristics in student responses, products, or performances should we examine to determine the extent to which the desired results were achieved?”
• “Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a student’s knowledge, skill, or understanding?” (150)

The authors suggest the use of exemplars (in addition to criteria and rubrics), and I remember the use of exemplars being a centerpiece of Jay McTighe’s presentation to our faculty. He described a teacher who had a big target on her bulletin board, and she put examples of A work, B work, C work, and so on in corresponding areas of the target (A’s in the middle). The work was done by previous students with the names removed. However, compiling exemplars takes time. If you have never done a particular assessment before, you won’t have exemplars to use. I’m not sure how you’d get around that, at least the first time students do a particular assignment. The authors also advise teachers to get in the “habit of testing their designs once assessments have been fleshed out,” and I really am not in the habit of doing that.

Thinking about some of my favorite projects, I have come realize as I read this book that they are actually pretty good ways to assess understanding and transfer those understandings through authentic, real-world tasks. For instance, I like the students to set up Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson on a date and record the results. One good thing about this assignment is that I give the students an authentic goal — to compare and contrast these two poets. They have a role — they are a matchmaking friend (one group created a film and pretended to be a matchmaking agency). I think with some tweaking, this assignment could be a very good assessment of the students’ understanding of the two poets and their work. In fact, it occurs to me I need not toss out my favorite assessment ideas or projects. I do need to look at them from a UbD framework and test them.

I like the analogy the authors use regarding seeing effective assessment as a scrapbook as opposed to a snapshot (152). I would imagine portfolios would be great UbD assignments, but furthermore, I like the fact that Wiggins and McTighe don’t throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. They don’t advocate ridding education of traditional assessments like tests and quizzes, but they do advocate use of authentic, real-world assessments that will help students transfer their understanding of material. I think sometimes educators get carried away and think they have to throw out tried and true methods in order to reform curriculum. The authors also underscore the fact that a place for drill and practice exists. For example, if a basketball player doesn’t practice free shots, he/she may not be prepared to shoot during a real situation — the game (156). Skills need to be practiced in order that students can perform in the authentic assessments. Drills, exercises, practice — whatever you call it, it has a place.

I would like my British Literature and Composition students to read a work of historical fiction set during the time period we will be studying. I think such an exercise will reinforce several goals I have — reading fiction can be entertaining and informative, but not all historical fiction is reliable. For instance, Philippa Gregory is very popular, but she habitually includes distinctly non-period dialogue in her writing. Sometimes writers embroider the truth a bit — combine historical personages into one character, change the ages of characters or perhaps their sexual orientation (Gregory did the last two in The Other Boleyn Girl). I have uploaded a draft of this project at the UbD Educators’ wiki. Please check it out, especially if you are reading UbD, and give me feedback. I am especially interested in whether or not I should use GRASPS (157-158) in order to frame the assessment. Wiggins and McTighe contend that “[n]ot every performance assessment needs to be framed by GRASPS,” and I’m not sure this one does, but I would be interested in input (158).

I really like the notion that we need to understand a student’s thought processes, not just check to see if the answer is correct. If we can see how they were thinking, we can identify areas where students’ misunderstandings are interfering with their ability to learn.

I have been reflecting a great deal over my own education as I read this book, too, and I have identified a few memorable assignments that I really felt demonstrated my understanding of the subject matter. In 6th grade we were learning about Central and South American and Caribbean countries. Each of us was assigned a country to study — we didn’t get to pick. I was assigned Venezuela, and I wasn’t initially very happy — I had never heard that Venezuela was a popular tourist destination. I was envious of my peers who were assigned places like the Bahamas. In order to show what we learned about the country, we had to create a travel brochure. It’s been so long that I can’t remember all of the elements I had to include, but I know I had to include information about climate (so travelers knew what to pack or even what time of year might be most enjoyable to visit) and exchange rates (I remember because I misunderstood exchange rates because I thought Venezuelan currency — which I still recall is called bolivars — was less valuable than U.S. dollars because travelers could exchange a dollar for quite a lot of bolivars; exchange rates are somewhat more complicated than the sheer ratio). I am almost sure I had to research hotels, food, events, and the like. Of course, this was a social studies assignment. I worked very hard on it, and I was proud of it. In fact, I recall going to the library and poring over copies of Fodor’s. I showed my brochure to everyone (it was really more of a book — I remember I had put it in one of those three-prong folders, and I even recall that it was a red folder). I showed it to my language arts teacher, who declared that now she wanted to go visit Venezuela. I was beaming, I tell you. I learned a lot about Venezuela that I still remember. I did earn an A on the project, and I am sure I was thrilled with the grade, but years later, I don’t care about the grade. I just remember my learning. As Bob the health teacher confides near the end of the chapter, “one thing that has always disturbed me is that the kids tend to focus on their grades rather than on their learning. Perhaps the way I’ve used assessments — more for grading purposes than to document learning — has contributed to their attitude” (171).

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not naive enough to think I will abolish “grade grubbing.” I think a lot of students are wired that way because of all the pressures from parents and college requirements to earn a certain grade. And let’s face it, I always liked getting A’s, too. I was a bit fixated on it in college because I wanted to graduate magna cum laude (which I managed to do). However, to be fair, I only had one college assignment that was anything like the assessments Wiggins and McTighe describe. In my Shakespeare class, our professor asked us to create a staging of one scene in one of the plays. I can’t remember if she let us pick or if we were assigned a play, but mine was Macbeth. I created drawings of costumes, sets, descriptions of blocking and the like. I’m not an artist. I also remember learning a lot about the play because I had to think about it so hard from the standpoint of a director and producer. I also remember earning an A on that project, but I still recall the baffling comment the professor wrote — the only comment she wrote — on the front page: “You certainly are no coward.” I don’t know what she meant, and I never asked (partly because I was afraid I’d put some rather strange ideas out there).

One particular element I really liked about this chapter was the discussion of self-knowledge. The authors describe two assessments on p. 167 and p. 169 that I’d like to implement. One is a sort of portfolio review. The other is a great way to see how well students understood the big idea of the class and what they are still having trouble with.

I just figured out I’m over halfway through the book. In fact, I’ve read 52.6% of the book. I’m trying to read at least a chapter each day so that I can implement UbD in my summer unit plans, which I need to start working on soon. The reflection is really helping me internalize what I read, but I admit it’s probably slowing me down somewhat. I estimate it’s taken me about an hour to write each of these chapter reflections. But it’s worth the time to really “understand” it.

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, UbD, Understanding by Design, assessment, curriculum, education[/tags]

As I read “Crafting Understandings” in Understanding by Design, I was struck by the same realization as the health teacher Bob, whom Wiggins and McTighe use as an illustration throughout the book: “Boy, this is difficult, but I already see the benefits of getting sharper on what, specifically, my students need to come away understanding” (145).

This chapter begins by asking the reader to compare examples of understandings to nonexamples and determine what generalizations we can make about understanding(127). In other words, how do we distinguish between examples and nonexamples? These are my observations, made before I read and determined what the authors might say about the chart (127):

1. The understandings are statements, complete sentences, whereas the nonexamples were generally phrases.
2. The understandings were not general or vague.
3. The understandings explain how something works or show relationships.
4. The understandings can be tested or tried out, like scientific hypotheses.

When I resumed reading, I realized I didn’t notice the way each understanding is acquired.

It is unlikely that learners will immediately and completely understand the meaning of the statement simply by hearing it or reading it. They will need to inquire, to think about and work with it. In other words, the understanding will need to be uncovered, because it is abstract and not immediately obvious. (127)

That is, I couldn’t articulate this idea. I think I was on to something when I noticed the understandings were not general or vague, but I didn’t quite nail the reason why.

One thought that recurred to me over and over as I read this chapter is the notion that much of science education has understanding right. We formulate hypotheses, test those hypotheses, and come to an understanding about why something is the way it is.

Understanding requires that students emulate what practitioners do when they generate new understandings; namely, they consider, propose, test, question, criticize, and verify. (129)

I like the fact that whenever possible, Wiggins and McTighe try to use examples from a variety of disciplines. The challenge in creating so many examples must have been great, but as reader, I really appreciate it because it helps me see how to apply what I’m learning as I read to my own discipline.

Reading this book has also helped me hold a lens to my own teaching practices, and I realize I am fairly guilty of coverage. I have been confused by why my students don’t know something I know I taught, and it didn’t occur to me to really think about how I taught it. As the authors state, “When our teaching merely covers content without subjecting it to inquiry, we may well be perpetrating the very misunderstanding and amnesia we decry” (132).

A question that occurred to me as I read, also, was what are you supposed to do if you discover your state (or national, district, school, etc.) standards are inadequate for producing true understanding? You’re definitely going to need to make sure your students meet standards; in fact, some teachers have to turn in lesson plans with objectives correlated to standards. As I read, I discovered that Georgia standards are OK, but don’t really encourage some of the understandings I would like to see students have about literature and writing. In fact, most problematic is this standard:

The student reads a minimum of 25 grade-level appropriate books or book equivalents (approximately 1,000,000 words) per year from a variety of subject disciplines. The student reads both informational and fictional texts in a variety of genres and modes of discourse, including technical texts related to various subject areas.

I applaud Georgia for wanting students to read more, but what are they supposed to understand as a result? That reading can be informative and fun? That reading can help you become a better writer because you are exposed to models of good writing? Neither understanding is listed anywhere in the standard. I wish that the standards were framed in terms of essential questions, as example standards from Virginia and Michigan provided in the text were framed (134). To be fair, when I double-checked the standards, I found that a newer, more helpful version exists than the one I printed out for my use about two years ago, but I still see the critical idea of understanding missing in some of the standards. I think too many of them are like the Civil War example given by Wiggins and McTighe: “I want students to understand the causes of the Civil War” (135). In fact, to satisfy my curiosity, I looked up the Social Studies standard in U.S. History to see what the standards require students to learn about the Civil War:

The student will identify key events, issues, and individuals relating to the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War.

• Explain the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the failure of popular sovereignty, Dred Scott case, and John Brown’s Raid.
• Describe President Lincoln’s efforts to preserve the Union as seen in his second inaugural address and the Gettysburg speech and in his use of emergency powers, such as his decision to suspend habeas corpus.
• Describe the roles of Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson, William T. Sherman, and Jefferson Davis.
• Explain the importance of Fort Sumter, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the Battle for Atlanta.
• Describe the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Explain the importance of the growing economic disparity between the North and the South through an examination of population, functioning railroads, and industrial output.

In reading over this standard, I was struck by the fact that it doesn’t ask that students necessarily engage in inquiry about the “significant and interrelated causes of the Civil War — the morality of slavery, fundamentally different views about the role of the federal government, dissimilarities of regional economies, and a clash of cultures” (135). Much of the standard’s requirements seem to ask that students regurgitate a series of agreed upon answers, when the truth is that we are still in some disagreement about the causes of the war. Perhaps the writers of the Georgia standards could have used Wiggins and McTighe’s prompt for framing understandings: “Students should understand that…” Instead, “Students will identify…” seems to indicate that students simply need to plug in the correct responses instead of really understand why, for example, people in the two regions disagreed about so many fundamental issues or why certain battles were critical in the outcome of the war, or even why figures like Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee rose to such prominence and importance. I would like to think plenty of Georgia teachers do, in fact, lead their students to these understandings, but it would be nice to see the standards framed in such a ways to help teacher see what students should understand.

Wiggins and McTighe provide a graphic organizer on p. 137 that will help teachers ferret out essential questions and understandings. I decided to try using it to frame some essential questions and understandings for a study of the epic poem Beowulf. I have to agree with Bob — it was hard. I had to really think about what was important, why we should bother studying this piece, and what students should “get out of it.” I would love for you to look at the Beowulf Filter wiki page I created at UbD Educators’ wiki. Only members of the wiki can create pages, but anyone can comment by clicking the tab that says “Discussion,” so please look over the filter and tell me what you think.

Ultimately one of the problems in planning is that some of us, myself included, have sometimes considered the plans or assessments as the end result rather than a means to a result. No wonder students ask us why we’re doing something or what the point is. If we haven’t figured out a way to articulate that yes, there is a point, and a very good one, we run the risk of sending the message that there is no point or that we don’t know what the point is, either.

I feel like Bob:

Having lots of knowledge doesn’t mean you can use what you know. I recall last year when two of my better students, who aced all my quizzes and tests in the nutrition unit could not analyze their family’s menu planning and shopping to come up with a more nutritious plan. (I also noticed that they ate mostly junk food at lunch.) I’m beginning to realize that my original understanding goals for the unit [on nutrition] are not adequate. I merely identified an area of concern — good nutrition — and thought that the state standards sufficiently explained what I was after. But the content standards for nutrition do not specify the particular understandings that my students are supposed to acquire. They merely state that they should understand the elements of good nutrition. So I need to be more specific: What ideas about nutrition should they come to understand and take away from the unit? (144-145)

Bob’s comments made me think once again of the student I mentioned in my post on chapter 2. She resembles Bob’s students who seem to get the material, but obviously don’t because they are unable to apply it. What I need to do next year is craft assessments that show this. Students should not be making A’s and B’s if they really don’t understand the big ideas or even topical ideas. We reward students who fish for and memorize the “right” answers. What I have been doing, I think, is telling students what I understand, and some of them have simply memorized my understanding without really coming to understand themselves.

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, UbD, Understanding by Design, curriculum, essential questions, understanding, assessment, education[/tags]

As I read the chapter “Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding” in Understanding by Design, I realized that many educators I know have an erroneous understanding of what essential questions are and how to use them.  For instance, I can remember the middle school principal I worked with encouraging me to post essential questions on my board.  I didn’t know what they were, and he explained them as what you want the students to get out of the lesson, that is the objectives, posed in question form.  So my initial forays into composing essential questions looked something like “How do we use semicolons?”  Where is the opportunity for intense inquiry in that?

Wiggins and McTighe define essential questions as “questions that are not answerable with finality in a brief sentence… Their aim is to stimulate thought, to provoke inquiry, and to spark more questions — including thoughtful student questions — not just pat answers” (106).  In order to think in terms of questions, “[i]nstead of thinking of content as something to be covered, consider knowledge and skill as the means of addressing questions central to understanding key issues in your subject” (107).  The value of framing a course or unit in terms of essential questions is invaluable:

The most vital discipline-bound questions open up thinking and possibilities for everyone — novices and experts alike.  They signal that inquiry and open-mindedness are central to expertise, that we must always be learners…  [Essential questions] are those that encourage, hint at, even demand transfer beyond the particular topic in which we first encounter them.  They should therefore recur over the years to promote conceptual connections and curriculum coherence. (108)

The key misunderstandings my former principal had regarding essential questions (which became my own after he imparted them to me) are as follows:

• Essential questions are simply lesson objectives reworded in an interrogative format.
• Essential questions are posted on the board and changed each day to reflect the goals of the lesson.
• Essential questions will be answered that day (week, unit, year, etc.).

However, according to Wiggins and McTighe, essential questions actually have one or more of the following meanings:

• Essential questions are “important questions that recur throughout all our lives.”  They are “broad in scope and timeless by nature.”
• Essential questions  refer to “core ideas and inquiries within a discipline.”  They “point to the core of big ideas in a subject and to the frontiers of technical knowledge.  They are historically important and alive in the field.”
• Essential questions help “students effectively inquire and make sense of important but complicated ideas, knowledge, and know-how — a bridge to findings that experts may believe are settled but learners do not yet grasp or see as valuable.”
• Essential questions “will most engage a specific and diverse set of learners.”  They “hook and hold the attention of your students.” (108-109)

The first meaning really resonated with me.  All of us have some line of inquiry, some essential questions, that we haven’t answered yet.  For example, one of mine might be “What teaching methods and practices will most engage my students and enable them to leave my class, as our school’s mission statement promises, a ‘knowledgeable, thinking, responsible, Jewish adult’?”  In posing essential questions of this type, we teach our student that “education is not just about learning ‘the answer’ but about learning how to learn” (108).  In our culture, we often nail politicians for “waffling” when they change their minds about something.  If we were really teaching our students how to think, as adults they might realize that “we are likely to change our minds in response to reflection and experience concerning such questions as we go through life, and changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial” (108).

In framing essential questions, we must first as what our intent is.  If we don’t know “why we pose it, how we intend students to tackle it, and what we expect for learning activities and assessments,” we don’t really know really know what we want (110).

In the absence of well-designed and deliberate inquiry as a follow-up to our asking the question, even essential-sounding questions end up merely rhetorical.  Conversely, questions that sound rather mundane in isolation might become increasingly paradoxical, and the design makes clear that digging deeper is mandatory. (111)

Wiggins and McTighe argue against using a certain format for framing essential questions, and they note that many times we think of fairly straightforward “yes/no, either/or, and who/what/when questions” as inappropriate for deeper inquiry (111).  But what about “Is The Catcher in the Rye a comedy or a tragedy?” (111).  On the surface, it’s question with a one-word answer, but if we think about it, we realize that the novel has elements of both, and asking such a question can probe students’ understanding of the novel as well as the ideas of comedy and tragedy in literature and, indeed, even in life.

Essential questions may be framed as either “overarching questions” that are “valuable for framing courses and programs of study… around the truly big ideas” and “topical questions” that “lead to specific topical understandings within a unit” (114).  Wiggins and McTighe suggest created “related sets” of overarching and topical questions (114).  For  example, the overarching question “How do authors use different story elements to establish mood?” can be paired with “How does John Updike use setting to establish mood?” and “How does Ernest Hemingway use language to establish a mood?” (115).

In addition, essential questions should be few in number — “two to five per unit” (121).  The authors argue against composing too many questions, as “prioritiz[ing] content” enables students to “focus on a few key questions” (121).

The authors have a great list of tips for using essential questions on p. 121, but one idea jumped out in me.  “Help students to personalize the questions.  Have them share examples, personal stories, and hunches.  Encourage them to bring in clippings and artifacts to help make the questions come alive” (121).  I have, at points in the past, asked for volunteers to contribute to a Grammar Wall of Shame — a section of wall in my classroom devoted to grammar, usage, and mechanical errors we found in print.  Some students liked the idea so much that they were constantly on the lookout for mistakes.  They brought in signs their peers had posted, articles in the newspaper, and even photocopied textbook and novel pages.  I could fill a wall with Philippa Gregory’s comma splices alone!  It occurred to me as I read that I could somehow frame this activity into the kind of essential question described.  A Grammar Wall would enable students to bring in their own examples, and thus personalize and share examples, of their own brushes with poor grammar, which might lead to a topical understanding of why good grammar is important (and not just so cheeky English teachers and student will refrain from mocking you).

This chapter ends with a bang in terms of thought provoking ideas.  “Our students need a curriculum that treats them more like potential performers than sideline observers” (122).  Students describe school or classes as something to get through.  No wonder!  They  aren’t really often asked to participate in it, to use what they know or think about what they’re learning beyond regurgitating for a test!  I want my class to be a class that students will say is challenging and makes them think about things in new ways.  One quibble I have always had with RateMyTeachers.com and the similar RateMyProfessors.com is that one of their criteria for a good teacher is an easy class.  In what way do we learn anything, and therefore by extension can we say a teacher is good if we are only after an easy class, which really means an easy A?  Is that all we care about?  That grade?  Well, yes, it can be.  We have all been frustrated, I’m sure, at one time or another by hearing “Is this going to be on the test? Is this what you want?  How long does the paper have to be?” (122).  What we need to do, then, is step back and see whether we have created a class based on “an unending stream of leading questions” (122).

We sometimes send students the message that getting through the content is more important than their own questions.  We have trained students that not to know something and be curious about it is risky:

The learners’ own questions often do not seem important to them.  ‘I know this sounds stupid…’ is often the preface to a wonderful question.  Why the self-deprecation?  It is not merely developmental or a function of shyness.  An unending dose of straightforward coverage and the sense that school is about ‘right answers’ can easily make it seem as if the experts do not have questions, only the foolish and ignorant do. (122)

This passage made me recall a question I asked in my Descriptive Astronomy class.  I was so embarrassed by my lack of understanding about this issue that I waited to ask the question after class, and I prefaced it with the “This might be a stupid question” caveat.  My professor assured me that it definitely wasn’t, which emboldened me a bit.  You see, when you look up in the sky, all you see are stars.  It didn’t occur to me that the stars you see — all of them — are all in the Milky Way galaxy.  I had failed somewhere along the line to understand that stars are all located inside galaxies, unless, as Dr. Magnani explained, galaxies collide and a star gets knocked out of the galaxy.  All of a sudden the universe seemed both a whole lot smaller — these stars were all my neighbors — and a whole lot larger — these stars I could see were just my neighbors; a seemingly infinite reach beyond lay other galaxies and stars I couldn’t even see.  Obviously it really blew my mind if I am still thinking about it over 15 years later!  Is it any wonder I thought that with ideas like that to occupy me, maybe I should change my major?  That’s what I want to do with kids.  I want them to be so intrigued by their learning that they think it’s worthwhile and interesting even after they leave my class, even years later.

To constantly put before learners a curriculum framed by essential questions is to leave a lasting impression about not only the nature of knowledge but also the importance and power of their intellectual freedom. (123)

Essential questions “keep us focused on inquiry as opposed to just answers” (124).

At the very end of the chapter, the authors return to Bob the health teacher, who is designing a unit on diet.  His observations were mine, so I’ll leave you with them:

As I reflect on my own education, I can’t recall ever being in a course in which the content was explicitly framed around important, thought-provoking questions.  Some of my teachers and professors asked thought-provoking questions during class, but these unit (and essential) questions are different.  I see how they might provide a focus for all the work and knowledge mastery, if done right.  I now feel a bit cheated because I’m beginning to realize the power of these overarching questions for pointing to the bigger ideas within a subject or topic. (125)

The thought that struck me as I finished the chapter is that students learn in spite of school too often, and not because of school.

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, UbD, Understanding by Design, essential questions, curriculum, assessment, education[/tags]

Of all the chapters of Understanding by Design I’ve read up to this point, I found this one to be the most engaging. If you are familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy, much of what is presented in this chapter will not be new, but reading it made me realize that I have come further than I really thought I had in implementing solid, authentic assessments for my students.

Near the very beginning of the chapter, Wiggins and McTighe define the act of understanding as being able to “teach it, use it, prove it, connect it, explain it, defend it, [and] read between the lines” (82). How many times have we said as teachers that we didn’t really understand something until we had to teach it? I know I felt that way about grammar. And in fact, this understanding has helped me to improve my writing. Knowing how language works and how to arrange it effectively has enabled me to be a better communicator. The six facets of understanding instantly reminded me of higher order thinking skills on Bloom’s Taxonomy: Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The six facets of understanding are the ability to explain, to interpret, to apply, to have perspective, to empathize, and to have self-knowledge. Wiggins and McTighe argue that “[i]n teaching for transfer, complete and mature understanding ideally involves the full development of all six kinds of understanding” (85).

One thing I like about this chapter is that the authors give two solid examples of each facet of understanding as well as a “misunderstanding” linked to each facet.

The first facet, the ability to explain, enables a student to understand “how things work, what they imply, where they connect, and why they happened” (86). In order to help students develop the ability to explain, they must “be given assignments and assessments that require them to explain what they know and give good reasons in support of it before we can conclude that they understand what was taught” (87). We should create assessments that ask for students “to reveal their understanding by using such verbs as support, justify, generalize, predict, verify, prove, and substantiate” (87). However, we must also be careful to “[u]se assessments (e.g. performance tasks, projects, prompts, and tests) that ask students to provide an explanation on their own, not simply recall; to link specific facts with larger ideas and justify the connections; to show their work, not just give an answer and to support their conclusions” (88).

In terms of my particular discipline, I think I found the ability to interpret to be the facet of understanding I currently incorporate most fully into my assessments. Wiggins and McTighe assert that “[a] good story both enlightens and engages; it helps us remember and connect” (89). They mention the use of parables in teaching, and of course, I thought immediately of Jesus as a teacher — his use of parables is, of course, well known, and widely considered to be a good way to impart complex messages in ways that his students understood. Literature teaches us much about the human condition, and through the study of our literature, we can learn more about ourselves.

Stories help us make sense of our lives and the lives around us, whether in history, literature, or art. The deepest, most transcendent meanings are found, of course, in the stories, parables, and myths that anchor all religions. A story is no a diversion; the best stories make our lives more understandable and focused. (89)

To illustrate the way in which interpretation can express complex ideas and lead to new understanding, the authors cite, for example, how Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech “crystallized the many complex ideas and feelings behind the civil rights movement” through the use of “words and imagery” (89). What we ask students to do when we ask them to interpret is to “make sense of, show the significance of, decode, and make a story meaningful” (90). Interpretation can be uncomfortable because it allows for various viewpoints. In order to help students interpret, we must craft assessments that “ask them to interpret inherently ambiguous matters — far different than typical ‘right answer’ testing” (92).

In asking students to apply, we are asking them to be able to “use knowledge” (93). Students demonstrate application knowledge by “using it, adapting it, and customizing it” (93). The authors quote Bloom:

Synthesis is what is frequently expected of the mature worker, and the sooner the students are given opportunities to make synthesis on their own, the sooner they will feel that the world of school has something to contribute to them and to the life they will live in the wider society. (93)

In reading this quote, I was reminded of the lyrics for Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome”:

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

I think too many of our students walk out of high school feeling as if they haven’t learned much they can really use. In teaching students to connect, synthesize, and apply, we need to create assessments that are “as close as possible to the situation in which a scholar, artist, engineer, or other professional attacks such problems” (94). One of the things I like about a number of webquests I’ve seen is that they do indeed ask students to apply what they learn by putting them in the seats of the experts solving certain problems. In fact, the nutrition unit referred to earlier in the book asks students to create a menu for camp and convince a camp director to adopt it. I think this is a great example of application and probably very much like the job of a real dietician.

When Jay McTighe came and spoke at our school, he underscored the use of rubrics and models. In fact, it was McTighe who introduced me to the excellent rubrics at Greece Central School District’s rubrics, which I admire very much. I do, however, think students have trouble interpreting these rubrics and applying them to their own work, which is why I will be giving copies of the rubrics at the beginning of the year, then writing comments directed at the student’s writing on each composition as opposed to stapling the rubric to the top.

I think perhaps educators incorporate the teaching of perspective least often. Can you ever remember being encouraged to think of a text’s or a teacher’s assertions as a matter of perspective? I know you didn’t dare try that with my Medieval Literature professor. He was right. Period. Do you give off that particular vibe? I would like to think I am careful not to do that. I do preface what I say about some topics with clear indicators that it is my opinion they’re about to hear, and not an unquestioned fact. Perspective, then, “involves weighing different plausible explanations and interpretations” (97). We need to ask our students to look at things from different points of view. I think one way in which my particular school does a great job teaching perspective is through our grade level trips and through our religious classes. Our religious classes teach various points of view. It is part of the rabbinic tradition to question, much more so than the Christian tradition, so in that way, our religion classes encourage debate and divergent thinking. In fact, our school is unique in that we accept Jews of all backgrounds: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist.

Just as we should be asking students to think about ideas from other perspectives more often, one way I think our schools do encourage students to understand is through empathy. I think many disciplines encourage students to “walk in another’s shoes,” and to “try to understand another person, people, or culture” (98). Sometimes in order to do this, we have to question our own ideas. I noted in the margins of this section of the chapter that it seems to me that studying history, or for that matter, literature from other time periods, it is critical that we try to look at things from the perspective of people living in that time. Only through empathy can we understand why, for example, chivalry was so important, or why the Crusades were fought, or any number of other events and ideas that formed thinking in the past. I think a great many of the lesson ideas for teaching Shakespeare at the Folger Library are exceptional at helping students empathize with the characters through examination of the times in which they lived. It also occurred to me that the lesson involving the Thoreau panel that my students participated in last year was probably really good for helping them understand through empathy.

Finally, students should come to be able to understand themselves, to exhibit self-knowledge. I highlighted a passage that really spoke to me with regards to how we speak about educating students:

Is the brain really like a computer? Are children really like natural objects or phenomena to be treated as equal variables and “isolated,” so that a standardized test can be modeled on the procedures of scientific experiments? To talk of education as “delivery of instructional services” (an economic metaphor and a more modern variant of the older factory model) or as entailing “behavioral objectives” (language rooted in Skinnerian animal training) is to use metaphors, and not necessarily helpful ones. (101)

This passage sums up something I have felt but been unable to articulate about some of the metaphors we use to describe what we do and the purpose behind standardized testing. Wiggins and McTighe argue that we like to categorize, but in so doing, sometimes we “keep verifying our favored and unexamined models, theories, analogies, and viewpoints” (101). “Thinking in either-or terms is a common example of such a natural habit that we see rampant in education reform and one that Dewey viewed as the curse of immature thought” (101). I see this one a great deal in the debate between phonics and whole language — one can and should use phonics within the context of teaching whole language. Similarly, direct instruction and constructivism can both be implemented in classrooms to great effect. I have seen so much acrimony regarding constructivism in the edublogosphere that I was even somewhat nervous about putting that sentence out there. Wiggins and McTighe refer once again to the Expert Blind Spot. The implications of the facets of understanding “help us avoid the Expert Blind Spot at work when we fall victim to the thinking that says, ‘Because I understand it, I will tell you my understanding and render teaching and learning more efficient'” (103). Is it just easier, then, to lecture instead of allowing students to create meaning “via artful design and effective coaching by the teacher”? (103-104). I wonder if we sometimes just don’t trust our students to learn if we don’t “tell” them. In so doing, perhaps we are robbing them of truly understanding.

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, UbD, Understanding by Design, assessment, education, curriculum, understanding, constructivism[/tags]

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 terms “Established Goals, Understandings, Essential Questions, Knowledge, and Skills” (56).

The first passage that really spoke to me discussed “Established Goals”:

[T]he greatest defect in teacher lesson plans and syllabi, when looked at en masse, is that the key intellectual priorities — deep understandings of transferable big ideas, and competence at core performance tasks — are falling through the cracks of lessons, units, and courses devoted to developing thousands of discrete elements of knowledge and skill, unprioritized and unconnected. That is why content standards exist (regardless of the quality of specific standards): to prioritize our work, to keep our eyes on the prize, and to avoid the intellectual sterility and incoherence that comes from defining our aims as hundreds of apparently equal, discrete objectives to be “taught” and tested out of context. (58)

I made a major mistake in one of my early job interviews. I had not yet graduated (I needed to complete a cross-cultural class and a 20th century literature class during the summer to finish up, but I was done with English Education courses), and I was invited for an interview at a Middle Georgia school. The principal asked me how I planned to ensure that the QCC objectives (the old standards used to guide Georgia educators before standards were revised some years ago) were met. With all the arrogance of youth, I proceeded to explain that the objectives were broad — any number of tasks might suitably ensure objectives had been met; therefore, my approach would be to plan lessons and go through the QCC objectives to see which ones applied. True story. D’oh! I can’t believe how dumb that sounds now that I look back on it. I knew right after I said it that he was no longer interested in hiring me. Well, truth be told, I wasn’t too interested in the job either, but I went to the interview hoping for an offer in case I couldn’t get my first choice. I don’t think most educators would be so ballsy as to say outright that this is how they ensure they meet standards, but I wonder if it isn’t a common practice. What I basically communicated to that principal is that I didn’t think standards were as important as my pet lesson ideas, and that I could figure out how to twist and finagle the standards to fit my plans rather than use the standards to design my plans.

Wiggins and McTighe point out that when they were “writing the first edition of Understanding by Design, the standards movement was still so new [they] hardly mentioned it in the book” (60). The first edition was published in 1998. The standards movement is often traced to the 1983 report A Nation at Risk (Overview of the Standards Movement). The movement might be said to have reached a head with the passage of NCLB. It might be that the authors recognize the passage of NCLB as the moment when the standards movement became serious in terms of real repercussions for failing schools. I like the description of standards provided by Education Week (via Overview of the Standards Movement).

• Academic standards describe what students should know and be able to do in the core academic subjects at each grade level.
• Content standards describe basic agreement about the body of education knowledge that all students should know.
• Performance standards describe what level of performance is good enough for students to be described as advanced, proficient, below basic, or by some other performance level.

Wiggins and McTighe discuss several problems with standards:

• The “Overload Problem”: Simply too many content standards exist, and we do not have the time available to learn them.
• The “Goldilocks Problem”: Standards are too big or too small.
• The “Nebulous Problem”: Standards are so nebulous that “teachers will interpret [them] in different ways, thus defeating one of the intentions of the standards movement — clear, consistent, and coherent educational goals” (61-62).

As I am most familiar with Georgia’s standards, I feel most qualified to comment upon them. In my opinion, our state standards are fair. I think they are doable in terms of the time we have, and I think they are neither too broad nor too narrow. I do, however, think perhaps some of them are nebulous enough that teachers might interpret them as they please. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t have said what I said at that job interview ten years ago. True, our standards have been revised since then, but I still think they are somewhat nebulous. Of course, to be fair, this also presents the teacher with the freedom to approach the subject in a variety of ways and still meet state standards. As a teacher in a private school, I am not beholden to Georgia’s standards per se, but I do find them useful in planning my lessons and making sure I stay on track.

I liked the authors’ discussion of “big ideas”:

The big ideas connect the dots for the learner by establishing learning priorities. As a teacher friend of ours observed, they serve as “conceptual Velcro” — they help the facts and skills stick together and stick in our minds… A big idea may be thought of as a linchpin. (66)

The authors quote Bruner (1960):

For any subject taught in primary school, we might ask [is it] worth an adult’s knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult. A negative or ambiguous answer means the material is cluttering up the curriculum. (66)

This is a good point and can be hard with material we’re passionate about; therefore, I wonder what was meant by “primary school.” K-12? Or just what we usually think of as elementary school — K-5 or 6? Or even just early elementary — K-2 or 3? I think as we move up into secondary school, content becomes more specialized and is likely taught by a content specialist. Therefore, can all of it necessarily be “worth an adult’s knowing” and would “having known it as a child [make] a person a better adult”? One could argue that it depends on what that adult wants to do or be in life, I suppose. I know a lot of middle and high school teachers have been told at some point that something they thought was critical was somehow not going to be important in life.

Wiggins and McTighe go on to discuss the difference between “big ideas” and “basics.” “Big ideas are at the ‘core’ of the subject; they need to be uncovered; we have to dig deep until we get to the core,” while basic ideas are the framework or foundation (67). I like the authors’ statement that “we need a ‘preponderance of evidence’ in order to ‘convict’ a student of meeting stated goals” (69). In other words, we must make sure students have mastered content standards through a wide variety of measurements before we can say they are definitely guilty of “understanding” content.

In terms of “finding big ideas,” the authors suggested two tips in particular that I think will be useful: “look carefully at state standards” and “circle key recurring nouns in standards documents to highlight big ideas and the recurring verbs to identify core tasks” (73-74). The authors remind us again that we are experts as teachers, and the “Expert Blind Spot” can prevent us from making big ideas obvious to students. We need to think like students in order to help them grasp big ideas and truly understand the content.

On pp. 79-80, the authors share a rubric for self-assessment and peer review of “any assessments purporting to involve true application with authentic challenges.” I believe this rubric might be helpful to participants at the UbD Educators’ wiki, so I provided a rubric page. For example, I think the Pythagorean theorem problem described on p. 42 and in this post might be considered a 3 on the authors’ rubric. It looked unfamiliar to the students taking the test, but did give students “clues or cues” that “suggest[ed] the approach or content called for” (79). “The main challenge for the learner is to figure out what kind of problem this is, from the information given. Having realized what the task demands, the learner should be able to follow known procedures to solve it” (79).

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, UbD, Understanding by Design, curriculum, assessment, education[/tags]

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 a lot.  I have taught myself a number of things, from CSS and HTML to Arthurian legend and how to cross-stitch.  I think that sometimes I am frustrated when I encounter students who cannot teach themselves.  I think I expect them to be able to transfer information more easily when I haven’t really given them the tools to do so.  A math problem mentioned in the book asks students to identify how many buses, each of which seats 36, would be needed to transport 1,128 people (2).  Of course, the route one should take to answer this question is to divide the number of people by 36.  According to Wiggins and McTighe, “Almost one-third of the the eighth-graders [taking the NAEP mathematics assessment] gave the following answer: ’31 remainder 12′” (2).  You and I can do our best face-palm imitations of Homer Simpson, but the fact remains that 1,128 divided by 36 does result in 31 remainder 12.  What the students didn’t understand is that those twelve leftover people would need a whole extra bus; therefore, they should have given the answer 32.  Just to show how stubborn I am, I had to work the math problem before I took the authors on faith.

Wiggins and McTighe discuss Benjamin Bloom’s influence on assessment through his Taxonomy.  As the authors point out, “As Bloom put it, understanding is the ability to marshal skills and facts wisely and appropriately, through effective application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation” (39).  To elaborate, “[d]oing something correctly, therefore, is not, by itself, evidence of understanding.  It might have been an accident or done by rote” (39).

What the authors argue we must enable students to do is to “transfer” information:

Knowledge and skill, then, are necessary elements of understanding, but not sufficient in themselves.  Understanding requires more: the ability to thoughtfully and actively “do” the work with discernment, as well as the ability to self-assess, justify, and critique such “doings.”  Transfer involves figuring out which knowledge and skill matters here and often adapting what we know to address the challenge at hand. (41)

On pages 42-43, Wiggins and McTighe examine the failure of students to transfer mathematical knowledge to solve problems.  I learned something new about myself as I read these two pages.  I have told myself for years that I am not a good math student.  I had to work very hard to earn B’s when I had good teacher who could explain mathematical concepts.  On the other hand, if I had a teacher that just couldn’t explain it in a way that I could understand, I might earn C’s.  My A in College Algebra didn’t convince me otherwise.  I told myself that I earned a good grade because my high school Trig/Pre-Calculus teacher was so good.  When we ventured into Calculus at the end of the course, I failed the quiz that week.  However, in working the following problem, I discovered that I had actually done something that “two-thirds of the tested students” who took the New York State Regents Exam couldn’t do.  I could transfer my understanding of a mathematical formula to a new situation.  Try this problem:

To get from his high school to his home, Jamal travels 5.0 miles east and then 4.0 miles north.  When Sheila goes to her home from the same high school, she travels 8.0 miles east and 2.0 miles south.  What is the measure of the shortest distance, to the nearest tenth of a mile, between Jamal’s home and Sheila’s home?

Once you’ve worked it out or given up, join me and read on.

I was so excited because I immediately saw this problem in terms of triangles.  I am pretty good at reading maps, and I visualized the routes Jamal and Sheila took.  After that, I realized I could probably use the Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem because the triangles formed were right triangles.  As I read further, I discovered I was correct.  The students who missed this question were not able to transfer a²+b²=c² to a real-life application, though they probably memorized the formula and correctly answered questions just like this one, only formed in such as way that they could clearly see the Pythagorean theorem was necessary to solve the problem.  I guess I’m not such a bad math student after all.  And by the way, the answer is 6.7 miles.  Um… right?  Tranfer?  Yes.  Confidence?  Not yet.

And how many times have I complained that students are fixated on grades and don’t really care what they have learned?  I suppose I have trouble practicing what I preach.  I saw my math grades as an indicator that I didn’t understand.  The problem, then, was not that I didn’t understand, but that the assessments provided by my instructors didn’t always enable me to prove that I understood.  I really don’t want to do this to my own students.

Wiggins and McTighe define “an understanding,” the noun, as “the successful result of trying to understand — the resultant grasp of an unobvious idea, and inference that makes meaning of many discrete (and perhaps seemingly insignificant) elements of knowledge” (43).  As teachers we generally choose our subject matter, if we are subject specialists as is commonly the case with secondary teachers, based upon our expertise.  I consider myself a good reader and writer, and I liked my junior and senior English teacher a great deal.  She inspired me to further my English education in college.  It was touch and go, as I was actually a better student of French than English.  I considered teaching foreign language, but one reason I decided not to is that in order to be a more attractive candidate, I would probably have to be able to teach more than one foreign language, and I was only ever interested in French (at least when I was younger, that is).  As we learn, we forget that we didn’t always know this stuff, and we gradually become experts.  Wiggins and McTighe warn against this “expert blind spot” (44).  You might be suffering from this blind spot, as I do, if you’ve ever said something like this:

Teachers do not optimize performance, even on external tests, by covering everything superficially.  Students end up forgetting or misunderstanding far more than is necessary, so that reteaching is needed throughout the school experience.  (How often have you said to your students, “My goodness, didn’t they teach you that in grade X?”). (45)

What do we get as a result?  “Students in general can do low-level tasks but are universally weak in higher-order work that requires transfer” (45).  As the authors argue, “We [make] it far more difficult for students to learn the ‘same’ things in more sophisticated and fluent ways later.  They will be completely puzzled by and often resistant to the need to rethink earlier knowledge” (45).  I know I have noticed this phenomenon in my own students, especially with regards to grammar.  Our school has rigorous grammar instruction in the 9th grade. If students do not learn the basics of grammar before they enter the 9th grade, I have found they are often resistant to learning it.  They don’t feel comfortable with the material, and they feel frustrated about being behind.  They also don’t often make use of teacher office hours or our Learning Center in order to catch up, but those few students who do invariably “get it” at last.  I know that my writing has improved over the last few years as I have been teaching this grammar curriculum.  I really think about all of the parts of language and how to put them together to get my ideas across with clarity.  It isn’t that I didn’t think about it before, but I really feel more grounded and sure of myself as a writer.  But just like my students, I was resistant toward rethinking “earlier knowledge.”  I have had to question my own beliefs regarding grammar instruction (and, to be fair, those of my previous teachers, professors, and my supervising teacher from my student teaching days).

As Wiggins and McTighe further explore understanding, they note “Children cannot be said to understand their own answer, even though it is correct, if they can only answer a question phrased just so” (48).  In so doing, students show not that they understand a concept, but that they can regurgitate a fact, solution, answer, etc., for a test.  Inevitably, this lack of transfer will result in the students’ forgetting the concept.  It’s not that they forgot it, but that they never really understood it at all.  Determining whether a student understands demands “crafting assessments to evoke transferability: finding out if students can take their learning and use it wisely, flexibly, and creatively” (48).  In other words, we should be “assessing for students’ capacity to use their knowledge thoughtfully and to apply it effectively in diverse settings — that is, to do the subject” (48).  A common pitfall in education is that we “attribute understanding when we see correct and intelligent-sounding answers on our own tests” (49).  I had a student who could memorize like no one’s business.  She memorized vocabulary for quizzes and made excellent grades, but I can’t recall seeing her use those new words in her writing, and later she might even ask me what the term meant if I casually used it in class.  She hated it when I changed my vocabulary instruction this year and adopted vocabulary cards.  I noticed an uptick in transfer of new vocabulary this year.  If I used a term in class, students might even point out that it was a vocabulary term.  Some of them even made a concerted effort to incorporate their new vocabulary words into their writing.  But this student did neither — she still didn’t know the terms later, and she still didn’t use them in her writing.  In addition, she seems to have to have information presented in exactly the same way each time, or she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.  In other words, I think this student’s problem is an inability to transfer.  I don’t think it’s entirely up to her — I needed to figure out a way to facilitate that transfer.  However, I figured out ways to get other students to transfer, so it wasn’t entirely me.  She insists that she is just a poor test-taker.  After reading this chapter, I think I have a better idea of what’s wrong.  She never understood the material in the first place, but she compensates so well with her excellent memory that she still manages to earn good grades.  Placement or tracking can be difficult for students like this girl because as teachers, we know something is off.  We know these students don’t “get it” like they should, but at the same time, they can earn grades that would seem to justify a higher placement.  What we need to do as teachers, then, is create authentic assessments that enable us to justify the grades we give.  I cannot justify the high grades this student received in my class; I know she doesn’t have the understanding that some of her peers had who didn’t earn grades as high as hers.

Wiggins and McTighe conclude the chapter with a discussion of misunderstanding, which “is not ignorance,” but “the mapping of a working idea in a plausible but incorrect way in a new situation” (51).  The authors point out, “Paradoxically, you have to have knowledge and the ability to transfer in order to misunderstand things” (51).

Thus evidence of misunderstanding is incredibly valuable to teachers, not a mere mistake to be corrected.  It signifies an attempted and plausible but unsuccessful transfer.  The challenge is to reward the try without reinforcing the mistake or dampening future transfer attempts.  In fact, many teachers not only fail to see the value in the feedback of student misunderstanding, they are somewhat threatened or irritated by it.  A teacher who loses patience with students who don’t “get” the lesson is, ironically, failing to understand — the Expert Blind Spot again… Take time to ponder: Hmmm, what is not obvious to the novices here?  What am I taking for granted that is easily misunderstood?  Why did they draw the conclusion they did? (51)

Work Cited: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd Edition.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2005.

[tags]UbD, Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, understanding, curriculum, assessment, education[/tags]