I love the "backward design" approach to teaching illustrated in the article Understanding by Design. Reflecting back on previous science courses, I can't even count the number of times I have done a lab activity and thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? What is the point?" I think it's very common for teachers to assign an intricate, creative activity meant to help students gain an understanding of a concept, only to lose sight of the activity's objective during its execution. By determining ahead of time "acceptable evidence" for understanding, a teacher can periodically check to make sure that the students are understanding what the teacher had initially intended.
I will attempt to implement "backward design" during tomorrow's technology class while planning a lesson on the aftereffects of the tsunami in Japan. I am really looking forward to this project, as I think it's important to be able to connect science in the classroom to real-world events. It makes the material more applicable and interesting to the students.
The idea of applicability is reflected in a recent blog post by Dan Meyer. He mentions the stereotypical math problem of figuring out when two trains, leaving from different stations, will meet. The blog post is titled "A Train Leaves Chicago Traveling at Who Cares?" And for many students, why should they care? Many students may not have been on a train before, so this type of problem is not very relevant or engaging to them. To really get students interested in a subject, it is important to relate topics to the "student's world." That is exactly what this tsunami assignment is trying to do.
YES YES YES!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. The realities of school mean that sometimes, we won't do our best planning, but when we can work "backwards," the results are stunning. Tomorrow, you'll do a modified version of this -- and this is precisely why our goal is for you to explore and experiment but not to have something pretty and typed up by the end of class. Because the doing and the planning is what matters most.
From a fellow member of the Meyer Fan Club
I love this post. You are so right that too many teachers are activity-focused or just pull something out to do without really thinking about its purpose or how the learning that takes place will be evaluated. I think teaching things in a way that gets students to care / connect things with their lives is central to education.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that backwards design is the way to go in planning a lesson. I agree that there are too many teachers that are activity focused without thinking everything through and keeping their end goal in mind. While kids may have fun doing the activity, it is important to keep in the forefront the goal of kids learning worthwhile lessons from the activity. If they can have fun and effectively learn at the same time, then that's the best!
ReplyDelete