Wiggins Chapter 12

UbD as Curriculum Framework

I appreciate that this chapter, or book rather, includes many examples of essential questions and lesson plan templates demonstrating the backwards design. Although, I would have liked to have seen more examples of questions and planning related to language teaching. Of course we are able to get the big picture through seeing examples in other disciplines, but it would have been more interesting and meaningful to have seen it from a language teaching perspective.

A new point this chapter brings up is the process of framing the curriculum around assessments. I like this idea, but I think we can find both pros and cons with this method. A positive aspect is that it makes the teachers feel more responsible for the learning and have more accountability. It makes them see the big picture. A negative aspect is that if the test, or assessment, does not provide critical thinking and asks closed questions, for example, the teacher will only focus on that and nothing else.

As always, the big idea is not to build the curriculum around the content, but rather the learning. With that, we will (or should) have a great curriculum.

Wiggins Chapter Nine

Planning for Learning

In this chapter, we move into stage three of the design process. We are not just thinking about we want but what the learners will need. As also mentioned in previous chapters, this stage is focused very much on feedback and on the "learnings," not the "teachings." The teachings are only part of the learning activities. I like the fact that they highlight feedback in this chapter, since in my opinion, it is vitally important. The authors claim, "Given the likelihood that learners will misunderstand key ideas and make performance errors...the design must make sure that teachers as well as learners get the feedback they need to rethink, revise, and refine" (192). Therefore, it is not just the students that need feedback, but the teachers as well.

Another main idea of this chapter is that the best plans are both engaging and effective. The authors describe a good activity to find out when work in the classroom is considered engaging and effective. The activity consists of two groups, and each group lists what activities they consider to be either engaging or effective. They then sort their results in a Venn diagram to see what activities overlap. I think this activity could really be useful, and it is totally doable.

Finally, the rest of the chapter describes each letter of the acronym "WHERETO." This acronym does not tell us how to construct the design, as we already learned in previous chapters. Rather, it tells us how to check the elements of our designs and basically make sure they are headed in the right direction. I am sure this is beneficial, but thinking realistically, it seems very time-consuming to go through each letter after creating each and every lesson. I suppose one will have to test it out to see the true results and whether or not it is worth it in the end.

Wiggins Chapter Six

Crafting Understandings

This chapter takes an in-depth look at ¨understandings¨- such as what they are, how they are acquired and their common misconceptions. Five distinct features of understandings are given, and what seems to be emphasized is that ¨an understanding refers to transferable, big ideas,¨ like the big ideas we learned about in previous chapters. This means that an understanding is not just a simply-stated fact or truism. To acheive understanding, one must ask questions about the facts or information already known and collected and connect and apply them to other situations. There is a clear distinction between getting a fact and getting an understanding, and the authors assert, ¨An understanding makes a claim using facts¨ (132).

I find that this chapter relates to the previous chapter in many ways. In Chapter Five, we learned how questions that only ask for recall of material are almost never essential questions. In Chapter Six, we notice that through those non-essential questions, our students will not gain understanding, even if their answers are correct. A good, essential question will require the student to uncover the answer. It should take time and thought if understanding is truly the goal.

Wiggins Chapter Five

This chapter discusses the essential questions that we should use, or ask, to really dive-in to the topics we discuss in the classroom and connect them to our big ideas or goals of a unit, for example. In a (literally) perpetual set of example “essential questions,” the authors demonstrate how these questions can elicit “deep and transferable understanding” (106) of the material. What makes this idea stick is when the authors compare what they consider  “essential questions” with questions that we are used to seeing in text books or workbooks that check for only exact, one-answer responses. I am sure that every teacher has used the classic comprehension questions and has felt like they had a successful lesson after students were able to answer the questions correctly. But, what does the fact that they could answer the questions really tell us? We learn through this chapter that we can have our students think more, be more critical, and develop even more ideas if we begin to concentrate more on essential questions rather than the former.

I find it useful when the authors distinguish between overarching and topical questions. These two types of questions both are essential questions and should not be wrongfully categorized as good and bad or useful and not useful. It is the combination of overarching and topical questions that create the best units. The only difference is that topical questions lead to “specific topical understandings within a unit,” and overarching questions “point beyond the topic content toward broader, transferable understandings…” (114). This explains very clearly how the combination of the two can be very successful in the classroom. The authors also make a good point when they mention students’ self-depreciating attitude towards asking questions in the classroom. I can say from experience that students always say, “I know this sounds stupid…” before asking a question because they feel as if the teacher is expecting only one right answer. If we begin to implement this “essential question” design in the classroom, not only will our students gain a deeper understanding of the material, but will gain the confidence to be more inquisitive and critical as well.

Wiggins Chapter Three

Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

In Chapter Three, long-term goals in planning are highlighted. The authors claim, “With no long-term goals, there is no perspective—hence no check on the teacher habit of merely teaching to short-term, content-related objectives” (58). I completely agree with this statement and unfortunately can relate. I had a semester in which I was studying and working so much that I didn’t have sufficient time to fully design a curriculum for each of my private adult classes. Although the classes went smoothly, and I at least felt that the students learned, I had no real list of priorities at the end of the course to say, “Yes, these objectives were achieved.” Now, I always have a full idea of the entire course before the first class and make everything explicit for the students so that they have a clear idea as well.

The chapter also describes the standards phenomenon and mentions the fact that we would need about nine more school years to cover all the benchmarks we are supposed to (61). I feel it is true that there is a lot of content to cover, and it is impossible to do so, but I also feel that we must concentrate on what we can do with these standards and not take it so literally. We learn that in these cases, what we can do is make a graphic organizer consisting of three ovals to clarify what content we are going to focus on in our lessons.

The ovals in the graphic organizer that I mentioned are labeled as “Big Ideas and Core Tasks,” “Important to know and do,” and “Worth being familiar with.” This organizer is very useful, because it cuts down the overload of material that a teacher is supposed to cover. If we really do not have enough time to cover the material, this chart will at least let us teach the most important material in the time allowed. To be honest, I feel like a lot of time is spent complaining about the standards situation rather than working with it and not letting it affect our classes and lessons. With the tips given in Chapter Three, we can definitely plan our courses better.

Wiggins Chapter One

Chapter 1 deals with how to design a lesson, unit, course, etc. We learn that the best method to design a course is a backwards method. That is, we should first consider the desired results before planning anything else. It seems that we most often in EFL teaching choose a book that we want to cover and plan our lessons and activities from there. Wiggins explains that using that method may not be the most effective. He states, "too many teachers focus on the teaching and not the learning" (15). We tend to lose sight of the results we are aiming to achieve in our students and focus more on our own teaching. If the results are what we're aiming towards, using the backwards design will keep us more concerned with students' learning, which in the end is what really matters.

This method is very similar to how some Chicago Public Schools create their lesson plans. Each school has a different format, but from what I've seen, many lesson plans begin first with "What will students understand from this lesson?" which corresponds to what Wiggins describes in Chapter 1. This can be very time consuming, but now I understand why most schools use this format. The author also makes a good point in Chapter 1 when explaining the error of activity-oriented design being “hands-on without being minds-on” (16). I can admit that I have felt satisfied with a lesson if the students enjoyed it. Now I am thinking about whether or not that lesson, although fun, really did a good job in achieving the intellectual purpose of the lesson.

I really like this method of designing a course. I believe it really makes us as teachers focus on our students' learning and make sure they're actually taking something away from our classes. I think it will take some practice at first, to really get the hang of it, but will be worthwhile in the long run.