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Session #6

• Final Discussion of Interview AnalysisInterviewData2010.xls

• Is Everything Worth Understanding?

• Selecting an essential understanding for unit design.

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Any complex unit of study will involve many targets:

KnowledgeSkillsAttitudesHabits of MindUnderstanding

Which concept

requires

understanding?

Is Everything Worth Understanding?

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What is worthy of understanding?

EstablishingCurricular Priorities

Worth being familiar with

Important to know and do

“Enduring” understanding

Is Everything Worth Understanding?

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The need to understand is heightened when something is counterintuitive.

2 x 3 = a larger number

but

½ x ½ = a smaller number

How can this be?

Is Everything Worth Understanding?

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Acceleration can decrease at the same time velocity increases.

How is this possible?

Is Everything Worth Understanding?

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Is Everything Worth Understanding?

Material worth understanding:

• is enduring• is at the heart of the discipline• needs careful uncoverage• is potentially engaging

Do standards help us identify concepts worth understanding? Yes and No

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Is Everything Worth Understanding?

Material worth understanding:

• is enduring• is at the heart of the discipline• needs careful uncoverage• is potentially engaging

Do standards help us identify concepts worth understanding? Yes and No

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Filters for selecting enduring understandings?

Represent a big idea having enduring value beyond the classroom.

Resides at the heart of the discipline

(involves doing the subject).

Requires uncoverage of abstract or counterintuitive ideas.

Offers potential for engaging students.

Enduring Understanding

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- symbolizes achievement in several domains and is revealed through diverse performances and products.

 

- is not immediate, not you get it or you don’t, but a matter of degree.

- implies the ability to escape from a naïve or inexperienced point of view.

- includes an ability to transfer the information to new contexts.

Enduring Understanding

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A Doorway to Understanding

After we identify the enduring understandings what do we do next?

Ask Questions!Organizing a unit around questions provides focus and direction.

Questions demand more than a collection of activities.

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A Doorway to Understanding

•How have planting, growing, and harvest seasons affected life in the United States over the years?

•How have children’s roles at harvest time changed?

•Do we still need to close schools for nearly three months in the summer?

What key questions could frame a unit on apples?

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A Doorway to Understanding

•How do geography and climate affect the growth of apples?

•Why is apple growing well suited to our region?

•What other regions support apple growing?• Who was the real Johnny

Appleseed, and were there others? • Will an apple a day keep the doctor

away?• Compared to other foods, how good

for you are apples?• Can today’s apple farmers survive

economically?

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Weaknesses in a Conventional Unit Designs

Read and analyze vignette 1

Will this unit lead to understanding. If not, what is wrong with the units design?

Hands-on not minds on

No clear priorities

Participation in fun activities is the only goal

Activity-oriented approach assumes learning by osmosis.

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Weaknesses in a Conventional Unit Designs

Read and analyze vignette 2

Will this unit lead to understanding. If not, what is wrong with the unit?

Hurried march through the topic

No consideration for understanding or application

What information is most important?

Coverage approach = teaching by mentioning it.

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A Doorway to Understanding

Whatever the questions are, by asking questions a unit becomes more coherent and the students’ role become appropriately intellectual.

Important ideas must be questioned and verified if they are to be understood.

By framing our teaching around questions and worthy performances we can overcome activity-based and coverage oriented instruction.

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A Doorway to Understanding

The best questions have another virtue. They allow us to judge our progress?

For example: From our work so far, what do we know about the influence of apples on the economy of our region?

Student’s answers tell us a lot about the effectiveness of our activities.

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Will Any Old Questions Work?

Start with a Jeopardy approach?

View the textbook as a collection of Jeopardy answers. What are the questions for which the textbook provides those answers?

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Will Any Old Questions Work?

Ask questions that cannot be answered in one word or even one sentence.

•How do we know there enough (food, air, water, fuel) for everyone?

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Will Any Old Questions Work?

•Can a machine be made to overcome gravity?

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Will Any Old Questions Work?

•How close can you come to producing a perpetual motion machine?

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Essential Questions…

……..go to the heart of the discipline.

……..recur naturally.

……..raise other important questions.

……..have no obvious right answer.

……..are deliberately framed to provoke and sustain student interest.

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Essential Questions…

are deliberately framed to provoke and sustain student interest.

What are the chances of someone getting pregnant after one episode of unprotected sex?

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Essential Questions – Concept Attainment

Examine the following examples and non-examples to determine the common characteristics of Essential Questions.

1. How are “form” and “function” related in biology?

2. How many legs does a spider have?

3. How does an elephant use its trunk?

4. What is the original meaning of the term, technology (from its Greek root, “techne”)?

5. Who “wins” and who “loses” when technologies change?

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Essential Questions – Quiz yourself

Examine these six questions and tell whether or not each is an essential question.

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Essential Questions – Quiz yourself

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Essential Questions

Questions not only focus learning… they make all subject knowledge possible.

If students are to understand… they need to recreate some of the inquiry by which the knowledge was created.

Wiggins and McTighe, p. 33. UbD, 1998

Nichola

s Cop

ernic

us

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Learning Standards

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How do standards help?

In what ways do science learning standards help us as teachers?

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How do standards hurt?

The Overload Problem

250 individual content standards and 3,968 benchmarks

3,968 x 30 minutes per benchmark = 59,520 hours

15,465 hours (9 school years) more than we now have

The Goldilocks Problem

The Ambiguity Problem

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How do standards hurt?

The Overload Problem

250 individual content standards and 3,968 benchmarks

3,968 x 30 minutes per benchmark = 59,520 hours

15,465 hours (9 school years) more than we now have

The Goldilocks Problem – too big, too small, just right

The Ambiguity Problem – too open to interpretation

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How do standards hurt?

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Working with the Standards

Select a topic that you will be covering during the 3rd advisory.

Prioritize the concepts.Worth being familiar with

Important to know and do

“Enduring” understanding

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What makes a good unit

• The most important ideas (those worth understanding) are clearly identified.

• Essential questions are asked and ideas are linked in logical ways.

• Students have clear performance targets—they know what they have to do to demonstrate their understanding.

• Both teacher and students know what evidence is required to demonstrate understanding.

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Develop Your Own!

Write three essential questions that require the enduring understand that you identified for your unit.

•You may work together.

•After 15 minutes you will report:

the enduring understanding(s) for your unit

three essential questions