Chapter 3: What Really Matters In Learning? (Content)

Chapter three of UbD/DI speaks of the difficulties of incorporating all content standards into the classroom, and gives the shocking fact that it would take nine extra years of school if all of the benchmarks were to be even touched upon. Rather than selecting enormous concepts which can easily be misunderstood, standards should instead be addressed as big concepts broken into smaller guiding questions. At the same time, it is not necessary to break every concept down as thoroughly as this destroys the overall concept. Students as well as teachers get lost in the details and miss the important issues. In addition, the chapter instructs the teacher to work backwards with a goal in mind, beginning with identifying desired results. In identifying the results, the teacher should understand what the student needs to learn and be able to reapply in a daily context. The next step is to determine the evidence which will help us to assess the student’s results. The final step is to plan effective lesson plans which will assist the teacher through achieving the desired results. The final thing I enjoyed about this chapter was the explanation of the “twin sins”, an interesting way in which teachers either teach based upon the activities they plan or use curriculum to support the book rather than the book to explain the curriculum.