Response to Modulo A and F (UbD)

            While reading these chapters, Understanding by Design was the main topic. This is the idea of teaching not just skills to students, but overall concepts. This is because “understanding is revealed when students autonomously make sense of and transfer their learning through authentic performance” (1). Students must be able to relate the content that they are learning to something previously learned so that they can transfer that knowledge to what they are now learning. The concepts must be applicable in many situations. This will help them recall the information later on in the school year whether it is on a test or maybe the NECAPs.

            As stated previously, it is vital that we teach students a concept rather than just a skill. This is going to be difficult to those teachers who are already set on their ways of teaching a section and then testing their students on it. What many teachers don’t realize is that “this approach leads to surprisingly poor test results, because students do not recognize prior learning in unfamiliar-looking test questions” (2).  Teaching overall concepts instead of skills will increase the students’ depth of knowledge. They will then be better off when taking standardized tests that aren’t offered right after they have learned the concept.

            When teaching using the Understanding by Design approach, most success has been found when teachers use the Backward Design approach to planning a lesson. This is when teachers start their plans with determining what they want their students to gain from learning this content. Once that is determined, the teacher must decide how they will determine if their students have understood what has been taught. For example, how the students will be tested on the subject matter. Last, the teacher decides how they will teach the concepts to his or her students so that these results will be evident. This design makes sense to me because it allows you to know what you expect of your students before you begin teaching them as the authors put it, “our job is to prioritize, make interesting and useful, and ‘uncover’ the content, not merely ‘cover’ it” (7). This is a very simple idea that makes the most sense. Why would you want to teach your students useless information?

            Understanding by Design is a great approach that I feel all teachers should incorporate in their classrooms. It is the idea of teaching students concepts that they can apply to different problems. It is the idea of teaching students not just things that they need to know to do well on the test, but things that they can use. It is the idea of knowing what you want your students to get out of the lesson before teaching the lesson to alleviate any unnecessary and irrelevant material. Understanding by Design needs more recognition by teachers so that our students can retain content throughout the years, instead of retaining it just for the time of the unit.