This week's assigned readings and assignments started out rough, but ended strong. In some education book somewhere, the idea was put forward that any new program must have an acronym. The challenge is that as we keep adding new programs to education, our acronyms are getting longer and longer. That is the case with WHERETO from Understanding by Design. I felt like I was reading a foreign language as I read through chapter 9, I got confused with concepts and differentiating which concept falls under which category, and then resorted to playing the role of the indifferent student. At the heart of the entire UbD program, it is to focus on having the end goals established first and keeping everything about the lessons and unit focused on those end goals. I appreciate and support that idea completely. The details, the repetitiveness, and overlap of the various steps is probably OK for some, it is not for me
Chapter 10 and the process of designing lesson outlines, while not thrilling, at least were productive. Formative Assessments have been a big thing for the past several years. It is also something that I feel that I and most other teachers are doing regularly, we just didn't call them formative assessments. Anyways, the idea to check for understanding and have continuous formal and informal checks on how our students are doing is a great idea. I also loved the idea of using the textbook as a resource, but not a syllabus. So far, my government classes have used the textbook for concepts in chapter 22, 23, 2, 3, and 12. There are certainly good things in some of the chapters that have been skipped, but I feel there are other resources that help my students better. So I guess I do relate to a chapter that validates what I am already doing, and don't relate or want to relate to a chapter that doesn't match what I am doing!
Chapter 10 and the process of designing lesson outlines, while not thrilling, at least were productive. Formative Assessments have been a big thing for the past several years. It is also something that I feel that I and most other teachers are doing regularly, we just didn't call them formative assessments. Anyways, the idea to check for understanding and have continuous formal and informal checks on how our students are doing is a great idea. I also loved the idea of using the textbook as a resource, but not a syllabus. So far, my government classes have used the textbook for concepts in chapter 22, 23, 2, 3, and 12. There are certainly good things in some of the chapters that have been skipped, but I feel there are other resources that help my students better. So I guess I do relate to a chapter that validates what I am already doing, and don't relate or want to relate to a chapter that doesn't match what I am doing!