UbD Modules A & F

Understanding by Design (UbD) focuses on deep understanding of broad and sweeping concepts to teach as opposed to a traditional emphasis on learning and memorizing facts.  In their Guide to Creating High-Quality Units, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe present a series of modules for creating instructional units centered in UbD.  In Module A, they list eight key tenets of the process.  Three of them seemed to stick out as fundamental to the ideas expressed in the rest of the reading.  The second tenet states that, “A primary goal of UbD is developing and deepening student understanding – the ability to make meaning of learning via ‘big ideas’ and to transfer learning.”  The fourth tenet lists indicators of understanding, “…revealed when students autonomously make sense of and transfer their learning through authentic performance.”  Tenet five explains that units are best designed in a backwards fashion, working from desired results and planning the best way to attain them.  Those three emphases sum up the ideas and strategies presented in the rest of the module as the authors expound on the practices of UbD.

            The entire process is inquiry driven.  Education and learning should be inquiry driven as the desire to learn is born from the desire to answer questions and understand the unknown.  This is nothing new.  Teachers have been asking their students questions to facilitate learning new material for millennia.  Wiggins and McTighe go to great lengths to assert that “essential” questions lead to more learning and deeper understanding than superficial fact-based questions.  Their points are well-taken.  They provide useful tools and advice for educators who want to ask their students essential questions.  They give examples of essential and nonessential questions side by side so that readers can compare them and see what makes a question essential to deep and long-term understanding.  Whereas nonessential questions are fact-based and can be answered relatively easily, essential questions are open-ended, lead to discussion, debate, more inquiry, and most importantly, transferrable knowledge.  This is because well-written and carefully devised essential questions can be asked again and again.  They are not confined to a narrow topic but instead can be applied to various topics within a subject or perhaps even across subjects. 

            As a future history/social studies teacher, it is easy for me to envision using such a method in my classes.  Many history surveys actually have essential questions laid out in chapter introductions and also at the tops of pages for reference as one reads a particular section.  Many of my instructors use (a lot of) essential questions in their lectures to stimulate discussion and get students thinking deeply about material.  I look at the information presented by Wiggins and McTighe as invaluable in my future career.      

Response to Strategic Reading Chapters

Wilhelm, Baker, and Dube posit some interesting theories on teaching and learning literacy.  I find it interesting that they are speaking primarily about teaching students to read and be literate but the concepts they share are presented so as to encompass all teaching and learning across content areas.  Perhaps this is because literacy is so fundamentally important to engage in all other teaching and learning.  They say that all teaching should be based on scientific principles and focus on child development and cognitive science.  With this I could not agree more, as well as when they call for teachers to have clearly stated teaching theories that are left open to and welcome constant evaluation and adaptation based on results.    By clearly stating what it is that one wants to achieve as a teacher and the methods by which they plan to do it, evaluation of one’s performance should follow naturally and success or failure should be fairly obvious.  I find this akin to writing clearly defined and measurable teaching objectives.  If the goal or objective is met then the methods used to achieve them are clearly defined and can be used again.  If the goal or objective is not met, adjustments can be made based on what the teacher perceived to be effective and what was not.

            The authors draw on the work of theorists such as George Hillocks and Lev Vygotsky among others.  One of the better points that they make is a statement they share from Hillocks who claimed that teaching is a transitive verb; teachers teach something to someone.  It seems self-evident but is something most people probably do not consider, as I had not before reading this article.  In teacher preparation coursework the focus is on teaching something and, because we do not know exactly who we will be teaching, practices are geared toward a large and generally ambiguous student population.  A lot of effort is put into preparing to teach a diverse group of people with different learning needs but until one has a better idea of the group they will be working with they remain a nameless, faceless generalization.  The authors use Shulman’s knowledge base to explain what is required to teach, that being: knowledge of students, knowledge of subject matter, knowledge of teaching processes, management, and organization, and pedagogical content knowledge.  So clearly, teaching literacy and teaching in general must be multi-faceted and holistic and requires knowledge of the aforementioned in addition to knowledge of curriculum content.

            Another interesting point to consider is the assertion by Vygotsky and Hillocks that anything that is learned must be actively taught.  In the most literal sense this is not true.  People are capable of passive learning just by observation and trial and error alone.  It is my contention that one can learn something new every day simply by being; that the basic and fundamental acts of subsistence engender learning and the amount of new information that the human brain processes daily constitutes learning.  This does require a rich and dynamic external environment in order for new experiences and information to be taken in and processed.  A person in isolation looking at the same scenery day in and day out will learn nothing new.  Having said that, the issue then becomes a matter of quality of learning.  A person can learn something new every day by observation and passive learning.  Active learning, being taught by a professional with clear and measurable goals, is superior in scope, breadth, and usefulness of new knowledge gained.  I was pleased to read that the authors likened teaching to, “guiding students to more competent learning performances,” and to being classroom coaches because that is how I most often think about teaching.  The students are fully capable of learning on their own but it is the teacher’s job to guide them to learn proper and useful new skills and to motivate them to want to be active learners.   

            Reading this piece also raised some concerns for me as a teacher-in-training.  The strategies presented seem like good options that promote active learning and equal participation by teacher and students.  The authors tout such practices as explicit teaching, scaffolding, and communities of practice as strategies that balance the act of teaching and learning equally between parties instead of traditional transmission of information from teacher to students, also known as direct instruction.  My concern is that so much of my chosen field of teaching, history, requires knowledge that lends itself to direct transmission or student-based study.  Cooperative teaching and learning practices such as those put forth by Wilhelm, Baker, and Dube are best used for “doing” history, such as historical analysis, research, working with sources, and writing.  In order to do historical research, students have to have some basic background information about a given period and I am not sure that can be done effectively by the kind of “communities of practice” explained in the article.

            Another concern of mine would be how to identify a student’s zone of proximal development.  Furthermore, and more consequential, how does a teacher keep coursework within students’ zones of proximal development when each student has a different zone?  Also, I am not sure of the adaptability of the inquiry square to my particular subject.  I do appreciate and agree with the notion of creating an inquiry environment to engage students in learning and that is definitely suitable to studying history.  Overall Wilhelm, Baker, and Dube present a lot of useful information in these two chapters, so much so that I am considering picking up the book.        

Interest Inventory

This is the questionnaire I would give to students:

What is your favorite part of school?

How can school be better?

Have you thought about what you would like to do after you finish school in terms of college and/or career and if so what is it?

Do you participate in any extracurricular activities associated with the school and if so what are they?

Do you have any hobbies/activities/interests in which you participate outside of school and if so what are they?

Would you rather read a book or watch a film?

Would you rather write a poem or paint/draw a picture?

Would you rather watch a play/concert or perform in a play/concert?

Which is your favorite musical genre?

Describe your perfect day:     

Literacy Profile

One of my favorite things to do is watch football.  American style football that is, not soccer.  Enjoying football requires understanding a vocabulary set pertinent to the game as well as concepts relevant to the way in which the game is played or, the rules.  The same can be said of all other sports as well but my interest is in football and that is what I shall discuss. 

            My interest in the game goes beyond a mere casual viewing of a match here or there; I watch as much football as I possibly can.  I am mainly concerned with the happenings of the National Football League, the largest and most successful American Football league, but my interest extends to college football, the Canadian Football League, high school football, or any such meeting of two athletic clubs that follows the general guidelines, rules, and procedures of an American Football game.  In years past I have taken in games of now defunct leagues such as NFL Europe and the Arena Football League.  Others have labeled my fascination with the sport an obsession.

            It is hard to say exactly how I became so deeply interested in football.  I have never played on an organized team; my “on-field” experience is limited to pick-up games in parks and backyards.  It should be noted that these experiences seldom led to any kind of success for me as I am a horribly un-athletic individual.  Still, somehow, I became fascinated with the game and performance in it at the highest level.  Through all my years of football viewing, I have developed a thorough literacy of the sport’s various aspects. 

            Anyone can watch a football game but to get the most enjoyment from the experience it helps to know the rules.  Procedures vary between leagues and organizations.  For instance, while a National Football League field measures 100 yards from one end zone to the other, a Canadian Football League field measures 110 yards from end zone to end zone.  Canadian players only have three attempts to gain ten yards before having to turn the ball over to the opposing team and they play with twelve players on each side, differing slightly from the NFL standard four attempts to gain ten yards and eleven players a side.  Minor differences also exist between collegiate and NFL play, such as requiring a receiver to possess the ball and touch two feet within the field of play to complete a reception.  Rules and procedures can be complex, are nuanced, and at times open to interpretation by game officials.  Manuals exist that describe league rules so one can become football literate through written texts, however, most football literate people become so by actively participating in the game or by vicarious viewing.  

            In addition to knowing the rules of the game, a football viewer benefits from being able to “read” the field or television screen.  Knowing player positions and where they line up on the field helps football enthusiasts and participants to be able to communicate effectively and relay information to one another.  It can also help if one is trying to decipher a team’s intentions, their scheme, or tactics employed against their opponent.  Those who are accustomed to viewing televised matches can read the screen and increasingly sophisticated graphics provide information such as the point from which the offense tries to advance the ball, the yard mark to which they must advance in order to gain a new set of attempts, the score, player statistics, the game clock, the play clock, number of time outs each team has, and more.  These can all be useful in helping new viewers to become “literate.” 

            There is also a set of vocabulary unique to football that constitutes an explicit literacy.  These terms are most likely available in a glossary but a more effective means by which to familiarize oneself with them is to participate in or survey a game.  In this way a person can better understand terms as they encounter them in the context of the game as it is played.

            Having a firm understanding of the concepts, regulations, and vocabulary of American Football, I am able to engage my friends and other football enthusiasts in conversation regarding the game.  I relish opportunities to enlighten those ignorant of football in hopes that they will become interested once they understand the game. 

            As a teacher I could have an opportunity to coach or be involved in a football team if I work at a school that fields a team.  Otherwise my interest in football could help me interact with students in a non-academic manner as many young people enjoy football.