Summary
This week’s assignment sounds like I have to critique your postings. It says “discussant should provide a summary of peer-review to list the strengths and weakness of the “Development Procedure” It is hard and uncomfortable.
Nick stated “The U.S Government” as his big concept to be taught and clearly stated the sub-topics as Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches. Is a good concept because it contains a lot that students can learn. Since concept needs to be understood, I think the three sub-topics could have included brief definitions of the three branches of Government to help students acquire information that will allow them to connect to the next concept to be learned. Number (2) of the development procedure, expects relationships to constitute the important dimensions to help students understand the big concept. The relationship listed under this section does not really bring connection to the big concept. It listed some provisions in the constitution which specifically does not relate to the U.S. Government. Concepts like the role of each branch of government could have be taught to bring connection to big concept. The new relationships listed are very good. They related information that students need to acquire to completely understand the U.S. Government. The multimedia technology chosen by Nick are Videos and games and they are very adaptive for this concept especially “http://www.texaslre.org/branches_game/branches_game.html”.
Katie’s big concept provided analysis and content analysis. The big concept is; Elements of Drama in MacBeth and went on to list the following as part of the big concept. 1) understanding basic dramatic elements found in the play 2)recognize tone, dictions, imagery and mood through interpretive reading. 3) compare and contrast modern day situation to themes in literature. Katie started answering question (2) with a statement which I found it to be very important, “understanding is something that has a growing knowledge base”. Relating it to development procedure (2), relationship should constitute the important dimensions of understanding, that is forming connections, making use of prior knowledge. Katie explained how students would establish relationships of understanding the big concept through inferential and interpretive reading, listening, and viewing. Katie listed the following as relationships that would be self taught by students trough reading of Shakespearean play, MacBeth; which include figurative speech, literacy devices, use of paradox, and story telling elements. She said that will solidify the knowledge by putting what they have learn into practice in developing their own story involving comparing and contrasting the modern thematic litercy element. Katie asserts that the use if images stimulates students’ interest and therefore listed the following media to helps students understand the concept as modern Mac’Beth movie and media collage.
Natalie stated “Microsoft Office” as her big concept listing Word, Excel, and Access as the three sub-topics. Considering Development Procedure (1), that requires analysis and content analysis, there should have been simple definitions to allow students the ability to connect prior knowledge to development procedure (2). Natalie showed relationships to the big concept, stating that students will apply word processing technology by identifying two other concepts that can be learned to help students understand this information (Word). For Excel, she stated that students will apply spreadsheet technology including performing mathematical process and formulating and producing solutions to a variety of business problems. For Access, students will identify software to create database that will facilitate business decisions. Natalie listed opening a blank document as a concept that has been learnt and the following as new relationships that needs to be taught to help apply understanding
of what have been learned already (prior knowledge); Add Sample Text, Indent, Paragraphs, Align Paragraphs, Create a Hanging Indent, Order of Operations,Standard ribbons, groupings, icons for Office Suite, Start and navigate the Access Window, Explore database objects, and Navigate the various views. Natalie chose the following as the best practice of using multimedia technology for each of the relationships, Video Clips from youtube and this very good site http://www.baycongroup.com/el0.htm.
Research
Understanding according to Smith (2006) “is an individual’s ability to connect a learned information or concept to other representations” This is where the individual learns a new knowledge and is able to associate it or apply to make meaning of something in relation to that information. That is the ability to use previous or prior knowledge to make sense, solve a problem or make an information meaningful. Let’s use Nick’s posting as an example; The student gets the first knowledge that the U.S Government is made of three branches. For understanding to take place, the student uses acquired knowledge to the next step; that is, the U.S Government is made of three branches, then each branch would have a specific role to play in our governmental system. Smith (2006) also asserts that, “understanding is also an individuals’s ability to answer questions correctly”. Why? Because He thinks as an information is understood, the individual should be able to recall the information and answer a question correctly. This is where memorization and understanding cross paths. He continues to explain situations that make understanding a failure ;1) When there are too few connections made, 2)Bad connections, therefore causing misunderstanding, 3) Nothing having an index for retrieval, 4) wrong symbols used in an index. Christy (2005), approaches the meaning of understanding with a scenario, “you share information with a group of students, several of them do well on an assessment when it came to a time to apply the knowledge in a different situation, only a few were able to do that”. This is because some of the students just learned the facts of the concept and demonstrated their skills and knowledge instead of understanding the concept to be able to apply in different situations. This bring educators to a level where we have to teach students to understand a concept than just teaching facts.
During my research I came across this video and I think is worth to share.
Perkins (1993), made the following to help teachers with how best we can teach for understanding, as make learning a long-term thinking-center process, provide for rich ongoing assessment, support learning with powerful representations, pay heed to developmental factors, induct students into the discipline and teach for transfer.
Personally, I have a problem with the way we state goals and objectives to teach understanding. For example “ students will understand the principles of Government”, “ Students will understand factorization”. I see this to be vague.
A question for team members, How best can we state our objectives to make understanding measurable.
References
Christy, J. (2005). Teaching for Understanding. Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, a division of the Educational and Professional Publishing Group of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,
1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020.
1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020.
Perkins, D. (1993). TEACHING FOR UNDERSTANDING. American Educator: The Professional Journal of the American Federation of Teachers; v17 n3, pp. 8,28-35, Fall 1993.
Smith, D.A. (2006). What Is Understanding?
