When planning a lesson we have to consider, not our intentions as teachers, but how to accomplish the learners’ goals. This means that we have to consider characteristics, like age, interests, needs and (very important) previous knowledge. This will determine the heterogeneity in our classroom.

When planning we have to be able to engage these heterogonous groups, motivate and address them towards an effective learning process. Our classes have to meet the needs of every student’s individual characteristics and have to make them develop skills, competitiveness and productivity.

The effectiveness of a class will be measured by the capacity of our students to produce worthy work that derives from understanding and proficiency when performing in the real world.

Understanding

When designing curricula that will be useful for our students, we have to consider the essence of understanding so they can really acquire the new knowledge and make good use of it, without forgetting “after the test”.

In chapter 6, Wiggins and McTighe define understanding as follows.

1. 1. An understanding is an important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, stated in a specific and useful generalization;
2. 2. An understanding refers to transferable, big ideas having enduring value beyond a specific topic;
3. 3. An understanding involves abstract, counter-intuitive, and easily misunderstood ideas;
4. 4. An understanding is best acquired by "uncovering" and "doing" the subject (i.e., using the ideas in realistic settings and with real-world problems;
5. 5. An understanding summarizes important strategic principles in skills area.

In accordance to this, understanding we have to take into account that understanding is a long time process, where the student gets involved in order to solve tasks.

For this to take place, we have to establish priorities according to what is more important for our learners. In order for contents to be meaningful, we have to filter the topics. In this process we have to consider the characteristics of our pupils and how they learn.

Essential Questions

On this chapter, just three ideas:

A question is essential if it's useful, if it is coherent with our teaching goals. As teachers we have to pose it in connection with follow up activities they will just lead to yes/no answers or cause confusion.

Essential questions do not lead to a final answer, but to provisional findings and new questions. This means that - when posing a question - our goal must be to teach students how to learn.

We must always be clear on why we pose a question, how we intend students to tackle it and what we expect for learning activities and assessments as a result.

The final idea I want to emphasize is that important questions demand transfer beyond the particular context in which we find them. We must make sure they stay in the student mind so they can promote conceptual connections and curriculum coherence.

Rethinking Thinking Backwards

I think that stating that curriculum design should focus on its objectives sounds fairly obvious. The whole point of a plan (or a study plan in this case) lies in its effectiveness. The difference here lies in that the authors offer a clear method for carrying this out and a specific tool (a template) that would allow teachers to follow the proposed principles easily and quickly.

The three stage method understands that first you have to identify goals and decide on priorities. It also calls teachers to be aware of the demands and restrictions that institutions put on their work. Then you have to “determine the acceptable evidence” of achievement of desired results. This means that firs you have to “think as an assessor” when planning the content of a unit. Only then you can start designing the content.

This leads to another important idea that the authors put forward: there is not just one learning to be sought, but a set of six different specific learnings. Although the text does not provide more information on the subject this is a point that surely will guide the rest of the reading.

Finally, I think that the effectiveness of the template has to be put to the test. Probably there are more questions to be answered or other issues at stake. At a first glance, it looks perfect, but perhaps it should be tested on a real life situation, before giving a final opinion.