Understanding by Design

There is a difference between learning and understanding. Some students may only regurgitate information and seemingly useless facts without having the capability to apply that knowledge to appropriate situations. As teachers, it is our job to not only teach information, but to make sure that students are learning and understanding it.

Because of the Common Core, there are a lot of topics to be covered in different academic fields, cutting back on the teacher’s decision of content to be covered. However, we need to be able to use the Common Core and other standards to build a framework for instruction. In order for students to understand content that is being covered, we need to design appropriate units and lessons to optimize student achievement (it won’t happen just by chance), which is where we bring in Backward Design.

Backward Design is an educational framework that starts at the end. The first thing educators need to figure out is what their students are expected to know and be able to do at the end of a unit. By starting with the standards that need to be met, teachers can create educational goals and identify what type of results they are looking for to show that understanding has been attained. Next, we need to figure out what will show us that the students understand what they have learned through different types of assessment. Varying assessment will allow for deeper thought and application by the students. Tests and quizzes usually test immediate knowledge and recollection, while academic prompts and projects/tasks allow for students to analyze situations and use appropriate methods to apply their knowledge. Once you have figured out what is acceptable evidence of learning and understanding, then you can plan instruction and academic activities to promote that learning and understanding.

In order to reach certain goals for a unit or lesson, it is important to create essential questions. These questions are open-ended and promote thought and inquiry into a certain topic. Nonessential questions seek direct answers, whereas essential questions seek depth and understanding in order to find a solution. It is key to know what is important in a unit and determine what types of questions to ask in order to reach that so-called “instructional priority.”

How can you tell what is an “instructional priority” when covering wide content areas? If Common Core is requiring teachers to cover a wide range of topics, who is to say what is important and what it not? Covering content that is “a mile wide and an inch deep” will create gaps in learning and skill achievement, which it seems like Common Core and other standards are staring to create. Plus, it seems like Common Core and the ongoing list of national and state standards are putting strain on teachers, limiting what they can teach, ultimately affecting how we can teach. As if high-stakes testing isn’t enough strain on everyone in the schools, why not add on one more thing to make learning and teaching such a difficult task. Sure, Backward Design sounds like a hopeful strategy, but it only seems necessary because there are so many standards that need to be met in the school.

Subjects Matter: Reading about Reading

As part of a required text for class, we are reading Subjects Matter: Every Teacher's Guide to Content-Area Reading, by Daniels and Zemelman. The first chapter discusses reading as part of student learning. There is more to reading than meets the eye. Readers need to be able to comprehend and understand the information or text they are reading. Without certain reading strategies, students will get lost in the pages and won't be productive readers.

One story that Daniels and Zemelman shares with us is that of students at Best Practices High School. At BPHS, teachers believe in "real reading." Textbooks are filled with lots of information, but it's not real. Textbooks don't contain life or stories that students can relate to. Part of what grabs students' attention in a book, or other literary device, is being able to relate the story to something they have experienced or can relate to. In one specific classroom, students read Fast Food Nation, a book about the fast-food and meat-packing industries. Sure the content was a bit graphic, but the message was something that every students could relate to. This book was just one part of a complex unit in which students compiled multiple sources about worker conditions, slaughterhouses, and fast-food companies in order to find meaning and create personal opinions, with evidence to support their ideas.

Students are always told to read, but they were never taught to read with meaning. There is a difference between reading and understanding. In order for students to understand what they are reading, they need to be able to relate to the text and have a conversation with it. Students should be able to ask questions and formulate opinions when reading specific texts, allowing them to connect with it and create a relationship with the text. Once that occurs, and students actually care about what they are reading, then they will remember the text better, get more out of it, and be able to think about the information they have gathered.

Reading is harder than you think, at least when it is done effectively

The Student Knows Best

We have all been students before. We know what we expect of a teacher or what we think they should do. Now that we are becoming teachers, we have a habit of falling back into old ways, where we are comfortable and what we have experience with. We have lost sight of what we need to or should be.

Instead of thinking about the teaching you don't want to be, figure out what type of teacher you do want to be. And the best way to do that is to ask the students what they think a good teacher should be like. That is why we invited a panel of students at CFHS to talk to us, a group of prospective teachers, and be brutally honest with us.

We asked the students lots of questions about what they like and don't like about teachers, and they gave us lots of answers. Here's a list of things that students say we, as teachers, should and should not do:

• Be open-minded.
• Understand that everyone learns differently. Be open to different ways of learning.
• Respect is a two-way street - if you respect the students and their individuality,  then they will respect you.
• Know what age/grade level you are teaching and keep in mind the level of instruction/direction that they need (i.e. Freshmen need more instruction and guidance than Seniors, who should be able to do many tasks on  their own).
• Keep class fun. Don't talk the whole time.
• If you are going to lecture, keep it short and be confident in what you are saying.
• Students can tell when you are not confident in what you are saying or doing. Don't look weak.
•  Have multiple ways to explain things. If a student doesn't understand one way of an explanation, try a different approach.
• When assigning group work, know what type of group is appropriate.
• If students are working together to do classwork, it is okay to let them work with friends.
• When students are assigned a project, it is better for you (the teacher) to assign groups so that groups can be productive and diverse.
• Don't make students feel stupid. Encourage them to reason and think things through, praise them, and push them to achieve greater.
• Don't be afraid of students.
• Let students know that you are in control. Set guidelines from the beginning. Have a tough skin but a gooey center.
• Don't be too loose, but don't be too strict. Being on extremes of the spectrum can be dangerous.
• Be patient. Don't force anything on your students.
• Understand that students have a life outside of school, too.
• CARE

A Theory of Teaching

As part of a class reading, we read the first two chapters of Strategic Reading, by Wilhelm, Baker and Dube, which discussed "A Theory of Teaching" and "A Theory of Teaching Reading." The first chapter discusses a lot about the 5-w's of teaching. The first thing is that you need to know what you want your students to know and knowing how to get that knowledge across. We have to know what we are trying to achieve and justify our methods of teaching.

Wilhelm, Baker and Dube also have this theory that teaching is scientific, like a research study. You have to know your experimental group, in this case the students - knowing and understanding childhood development and cognitive abilities. You don't know if lessons and learning will be successful, so we have to examine our instruction. We need to know what the bottom line is, where teaching/learning is headed, and if it is on the right track.



There is a strong connection between student and teacher. The teacher is responsible for student learning, but the students are responsible for participation. Teachers need to aid their students to reach higher levels of thinking, scaffolding them to help them learn in their Zone of Proximal Development. Learning can't occur if the material is too easy or too hard. Teachers also need to be able to pick up on student behavior to ensure that the student is understanding the material and not crying out for help. Once you get to know and understand your students, you can interpret their actions and behaviors in terms of learning hindrances and capabilities.

There is also a connection between students and reading. In order for students to be engaged in higher-level reading, the material needs to be something that the students can relate to and make a connection with. When the material is something that students personally understand, they can create a relationship and conversation with the text, making the reading more meaningful.

Guided reading is also important when students are trying to reach higher levels of reading. If a specific type of text is unfamiliar to a student, it is important to guide them through reading it so that information can be correctly interpreted. For example, Wilhelm, Baker and Dube share information about a class that is learning to read ironic texts, but they start students off small, with something they know - in this case, comic books. They give students the skills they need to bridge the gap in reading and understand the new information. By providing them with reading skills like that, the students can then apply those skills to other topics and translations later on, instead of just in the present. Reading strategies are important to develop in students so that they can understand and interpret what they are reading. Reading strategies help students build literacy skills.

Am I Literate?

Everyone has a skill or hobby that they are good at. We build on these skills till we become literate enough in that skill to make good use out of it. Some people are literate at baking and can memorize recipes and alter ingredients to put a new spin on it. One of my favorite hobbies is photography. I may not be a pro at it yet, but I am literate in the world of photography and am willing to learn so much more.

As with most children, as I was growing up, my parents always wanted to take pictures of me, whether for religious occasions, holidays, or annual family photos. I was very photogenic. As I grew older and saw my mom and grandma always taking pictures, I eventually wanted my own camera so that I could take pictures too. One year, for Christmas my mom had finally gotten me a digital camera, and it was pink, which made it even better.

With any new toy, all you ever want to do is play with it. For the rest of the day, all I did was take pictures of everything – presents being opened, family sitting together on the couch, the tree. I had a lot of fun with it. I tried to find any reason for me to take a picture with my new camera. The only interesting thing in my house to take a picture of, though, was my cat, so whenever I was out, I tried to find something pretty to take a picture of.

When I was in eighth grade, I went on a class trip to Washington D.C. Needless to say, my camera was out almost 24/7. I took pictures of everything – statues, buildings, my friends, and probably even the ice-cream on my face. From then on, any time I went on vacation, even to today, I always have a camera with me and will make everyone stop every twenty seconds so I can take a picture of something. That really started to annoy my sister when I did that on our last trip to Disney World. I always felt like there was something interesting to take a picture of, and I wanted to remember all of it.

For a while, I found photography as mainly a hobby for personal uses, whether it be to remember vacations or documenting nature, which was always beautiful. Once I started college, a friend of mine introduced me to the school newspaper, The Anchor, and I became a wanna-be professional photographer. I always took more pictures than I needed, which really bugged my boss because he was the one who had to filter through all of them. I learned how to use a professional camera, at least as much as I could learn without confusing myself, and played around with it as I attended many campus events. Each location had a different setting and purpose, so I learned to adjust my camera to the specific needs of the event, including shutter-speed and light density. After a year of being a photographer for the paper, I bumped my way up to Photo Editor, where I learned how to use the software to edit photos to have them printed in the paper. It was time-consuming, but it was a job that I loved because photography was such a passion of mine.

I only stayed in that position for a short time before I came over-worked with school, but I never let that get in the way of my passion for photography. I still love taking pictures and turning them into something amazing. 

When I was back in high school, my grandma also got me hooked on scrapbooking. She went on lots of cruises and took lots of pictures, aligning them all in a beautiful scrapbook with lots of decorations. She began buying me some scrapbook pieces, like paper and sticker decals, and I began displaying my pictures. When I was younger, I only put my pictures in photo albums so that I could flip through them and share my memories, but now, it has become an art. My first scrapbook was quite a project – I began looking through all my childhood photos, picked out my favorite, put them in chronological order, and made my own personal scrapbook.  I had so much fun putting all the pages together and adding personal touches, whether it was some ribbon, stickers, or a phrase. I felt proud of myself for what I had accomplished and felt like I had to show it off to everyone just so I could show them how good I was.

Having these skills has given me a new perspective – being able to see things differently than most people and viewing things in a different lens. I have developed a photographer’s eye and can see so many details that most people ignore or overlook. Sure, for now that may only mean I can see the flowers when most people only see the garden, but in the future, I think it will help me build a perspective that most people wouldn’t otherwise see.

In the future, I hope to become a teacher. Sure I can use photography in the classroom (pending consent of the students and parents), but the skills that photography has provided me with could be used even more. I can look at a situation from many angles and decide which angle I like. I also have a more artistic thought, so I can hopefully make learning fun and appealing. I am not saying that this is what I am expecting to happen, but I would love to find a way to let my photography follow me anywhere I go and use it to create my own lens and a new perspective.

A New Year

A new year and a new semester has started for me and this semester I will be learning how to be a teacher out in an actual high school. I am part of a new teacher residency program that will be taking place at CFHS this semester and I can't wait to share my new experiences. This semester is going to be filled with new learning and teaching opportunities that will keep me on my toes. What better way to learn to be a teacher than out in an actual classroom! Wish me luck!

Microteaching II: Volume and Surface Area

So I successfully made it through my second microteaching lesson. My lesson used a GeoModel and students we to generate equations for the volume and surface are of regular 3-dimensinoal shapes based on the knowledge they already had on 2-dimensional shapes. Using similar shapes and silicone surfaces, the students were able to explore on their own these two concepts.