UbD Chapter 7: Teaching for Understanding in Academically Diverse Classrooms

             In this chapter, Tomlinson and McTighe show you many techniques for teaching and understanding in a diverse classroom. One of the methods they describe is the thought of understanding the big idea and how this involves students constructing meaning for themselves. They discuss how students must think, question, apply, rethink, and reflect on these big ideas to come up with a comprehension of information brought forward in the class. However, students can only do so when they have teachers pushing them and stimulating the students to discuss and look deeper into basic thoughts. The chapter then goes on to discuss the idea of uncovering which kind of goes with the thoughts before. This challenged me to think that as a teacher I must help students uncover content that can be found below the surface of basic understandings, questions, and skills. This means that I must use teaching methods I learn that go in depth and encourage students to want to study the context. The text then discusses essential questions and how they are good to get one’s students to think and respond. As teachers we can use essential questions to acquire a better grasp on what our students know. It can also be revisited later to see the information students obtained through the lesson. The questions can easily relate to students’ lives and can be very helpful; therefore, essential questions are proficient for the classroom. Tomlinson and McTighe spent the rest of the chapter discussing the WHERETO framework and how it works. This is a beneficial system to use to help guide a series of lessons in the classroom.  It gives you an idea of questions to ask and answer while working with students. These techniques in turn will help better the class as a whole.