UBDDI Chapter 7

This chapter really emphasizes that it is bad to simply cover material when teaching a unit. This is why a teacher must think of essential questions when they plan out a lesson. I think this is a good organizational strategy for building a course. When you are required to think of specific questions that you would like students to answer, the course will be more organized since the main ideas are right in front of you. I think the devil's advocate follow-up strategy will be one that I use often because I have a challenging personality. I like to hear the reasoning behind the answers a person gives me. The chapter gave a little more background on the facets, which helped me to remember them all a little more clearly.

UBDDI Chapter 6

Flexibility seemed like the "big idea" of this chapter. I might have done a little better in some of my science and math classes if I had known what the teacher really wanted me to get out of each of their units. Honestly, practicum might be the only class that I have ever seen the course objective or main ideas included in the syllabus. In the chapter, it is mentioned that a teacher must plan and improvise in a differentiated classroom. This makes sense to me. It is always good to have a plan in mind, but plans sometimes must be tweaked slightly in certain situations. The little diagrams in the section about teacher flexibility may be some of the things I turn back to once I am in the classroom.

UBDDI Chapter 5

One style of testing is not a good example of what a student knows or understands. I am terrible at taking tests, even when I understand the material. The “photo album” concept is introduced in the chapter and we as teachers are encouraged to use this when assessing students’ work. In high school, I did well on projects and homework, however. The word understand can have so many different meanings, too, that it is difficult to find one way to measure understanding. Again, the author emphasized the idea of making concepts relate to the real world and the students’ lives.

UBDDI Chapter 4

A teacher is responsible for the learning of many different students. Because of this, a teacher must get to know a student in order to find different approaches to teaching a lesson to ensure that each student is getting an equal education and is learning. I liked that the authors suggested that a teacher show a student what good work looks like and how to get there. I can remember being in high school and not knowing what the teacher expected our end results of a project to be. If the teacher had been clear about what good work looks like, I feel that I would have done better. Being clear, holding oneself responsible for each student’s learning, and knowing how the class should look are all important when teaching.

UBDDI Chapter 3

Course planning is broken down into small and understandable steps in chapter three. The suggestion of planning backward is very helpful for a beginning teacher. Planning a curriculum can be overwhelming because what exactly do you want to include out of what seems like an endless bucket of material? I found that thinking of the understandings and essential question first took away a lot of the frustration of planning out a course. This may be a chapter that I will continue to visit as I go out into the field.

UBDDI Chapter 2

Teachers must use different strategies to help them get to know their students. In the chapter, the importance of getting to know students was highlighted because knowing a student will help a teacher to discover how that student learns. I really liked the suggestion of having students answer a couple of questions about the class material at the end of the class. Knowing what the students understand, what they do not understand, and how they answer the question could be the first step into the right direction for that group of students. The book emphasized the importance of thinking of the students needs first. It is important to have a plan, but plans can change in response to the needs of students.

UBDDI Chapter 1

As the time drew nearer and nearer for me to begin practicum, I began to wonder how a teacher can teach the same material to a class of 20 students. The first chapter of this book introduced me to Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction and I already know that this book will follow me to my first classroom. The opening sentence of the last paragraph of chapter one really caught me; “Professionals in any field are distinguished by two characterizes: (1) They act on the most current knowledge that defines the field, and (2) they are client centered and adapt to meet the needs of individuals.“ (Tomlinson and McTighe 11) A teacher must know their subject and design a curriculum which is flexible to the needs of the students in the classroom.