Gaining Clarity on our Goals

UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN
Grant Wiggins and Jay Mc Tighe
Chapter 3
Gaining Clarity on Our Goals


“Teachers = Sinners?”

I would like to start saying that “I believe in God” and that I regret from my sins that probably I have done before since I have realized from a new one: “the aimless content of my lessons”, i.e., there is no guiding intellectual purpose or clear priorities which frame the learning experience. Unfortunately, this is a big and common problem because we as teachers sometimes do not have enough time to prepare everything properly as we have to deal with “coverage” of all the contents meant to be developed through a school period previously established; therefore, we sometimes tend to use isolated activities with no clear aim on its contents or there is no intellectual purpose on it. For example, there is no intellectual purpose when we play games without planning them adequately, let’s say, “The Hangman”, the most useless or aimless one, as somebody mentioned once. However, that’s not an excuse to avoid correct planning for my lessons as a teacher. I have to ask questions and find the answers for them, such as “What is the point? What is the important big idea here? Why should the students learn this? When doing so, I can say that there is a clear purpose of my teaching activities or lessons. Therefore, it is relevant to consider that the remedy for this problem is to consider explicit big ideas as a guide for the teaching process and a concrete plan for ensuring the learning process. And obviously the most relevant aspect is to consider and perform the “Backward design”, which calls for us as teachers to make our goals or standards specific and concrete, in terms of assessment evidence, as we teachers begin to plan a unit or course.