Gaining clarity on our goals...

This chapter starts by giving a brief summary of what GOALS would be. As the authors express, what we need to do before and while planning is to have in mind what we are aiming at. So, the authors in this chapter define four points to aim at when planning a lesson: First of all we need to identify what our goals are, meaning what we want students to achieve. Secondly, it’s necessary to know what understandings we are expected. Third, We need to define some essential questions that will guide and focus our teaching to address what we want to, and finally, we need to identify what knowledge and skills our students will get from this, meaning the evidence and the results we want.

This chapter deals with some problems with standards teachers may have while planning. There are many reasons why teachers can get overwhelmed with standards, maybe because there are too many, they are too big or too small, and even sometimes they are nebulous, meaning that they can be misunderstood or interpreted differently depending on who is reading them. So at least I would say the same happens in Chile; teachers do not know how to address or direct their planning and many times they do not even try to do so. I would say that’s what happens most of the times in Chile, at least that is what I have observed throughout my experiences at school…This may happen, among other things, because teachers barely have the time to prepare their classes and so thinking of doing something more elaborated? .. No way!

The author describes a common problem teachers (and I would say people) have at the time to think of the concepts "understanding" and "knowledge". They are difficult to define and to differentiate when speaking about educational issues. 

Many teachers' goal is to make their students understand, but how can we make sure they all understand what understanding is in the same way? It is because of this disagreement that there are many problems at the time to design and specially test.

Well, it seems like nowadays we use both concepts almost with the same purpose, but the truth is that there is a huge difference between one and the other. I agree with the author when he places knowledge first separated from knowledge and second, as a  narrowed form of understanding. As the author well expresses (and in the particular case of English) there are many times in which students know words, know their meaning and know some structures, but that does not guarantee their understanding of the language and its form at all. The idea of understanding implies, far from just knowing, beeing able to make conections with other subjects, creating mental patterns, comprehending how things work and function, etc. This is what we need to have in mind when planning or thinking of what we want to achieve, what we want our students to learn/understand and what our goals are. Let's think about this... 

I think this quotation very well summarizes what this chapter was all about and it perfectly relates to the Educational context. Basically, people who have knowledge, just have it, but people who understand can go beyond.

Introduction & Backward Design

I decided to create a wordcloud that represented the concepts and ideas that best sumarize the first two readings (Introduction and Chapter 1 on Backward Design). 

Wh questions represent the questions we should ask ourselves when teaching and planning. However, according to the author, we should start designing our classes with the question why. Why understanding what students are asked to understand,  why are students doing things, what for, etc.

Backward design would be a goal-oriented approach, in which teachers plan their classes with a specific objective in mind. The three steps given in this chapter are achievable and easy to apply, and much more importantly, make perfect sense together.

I created a graphic version of what I understood from these chapters:

The blue sequence is what the author traduces as the traditional method when planning a class. Teachers first think of the topic/content they are going to teach, then decide on the materials/methods they are using to finally decide what students will do.

The green graph instead, represents the author's proposal: Backward Design. The idea is to first identify what teachers want students to learn/know/understand and why (What is this lesson for?, what do I think students should learn? why are students supposed to learn/know this?), then what are the expected results/evidence from that to finally plan their lessons.

It's always difficult to go out from our comfort zone and decide to change the way we do things. However, as the text suggests at the beginning, there are things we need to consider before planning the method we are going to use. There will always be constraints and other macro factors that seem to limit/shape our teaching practices, but thinking out of the box and trying new things in our micro-context is always an experience to keep learning/practicing.