Understanding by Design


 It has been another week of intensive learning.  I started with reading and watching videos about Understanding by Design, a planning model developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.

Last week I wrote about MOOCs.  One thing I’ve learned is that in a MOOC each learner takes a different journey to the learning goal.  Students are encouraged to explore topics of interest and choose readings and other resources that relate to what they want to learn.

I practiced that this week as I started by learning about various methods for looking at student work in the Deeper Learning MOOC, then moved from reading more about Understanding by Design to an article about Mastery; I read about myths about learning styles and then perused another article by Howard Gardner as he tried to clear up misconceptions about his theory of multiple intelligences.  Finally, I ended up back at the Deeper Learning MOOC and learned about protocols for looking at student work.

This week I will facilitate a session with colleagues around scoring benchmark assessments in language arts.  I am going to use one of the protocols to try to structure the meeting.  This information could not have come along at a better time.

Unfortunately, I am still experiencing problems with Storify.  The support staff at Storify have been very helpful and are working on the issue.  In the meantime, I have decided to present my learning experiences from the week in the form of a Google Presentation.   Click here to view my “Storify.”

cc image by:  Ryan Schultz

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