Monday, February 18, 2008
Are certain fads that districts are pushing working towards or against the UbD concept?
As I was doing the readings for this week, I started to think about what activities we do in our classrooms that may or may not make sense in terms of UbD. One fad that has really been pushed in my district over the past two years is that of cooperative learning, team building, and classbuilding activities. With this push, teachers feel that students must be involved in some kind of activity at all times. While there are certainly excellent things that can come out of these group activities, Wiggins and McTighe state that the kinds of questions that we should be posing to our students, "demand more than just a smorgasbord of activities and bits of knowledge in isolated units"(106). This is exactly what we are doing! Ahhh! It seems to me that while I'm sure cooperative group activities can be more geared towards discussing essential questions, that this kind of model would require some more discussions and leadership from the teachers (especially for the little kids)...almost moving in the other direction from what we are currently being asked to do.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I completely understand what you are saying. It seems that we have so much to incorporate into our daily routine. Cooperative learning, relevant educational "games" or activities, peer tutoring, individual practice, anticipatory sets, closure, oh yeah, and not to mention incorporating test taking skills! How do we even have the opportunity to present the material to the students and make sure that they understand when our time is being consumed with all of this fluff? Truly the greatest teachers are able to incorporate all of these things and make the lesson meaningful, relevant, and keep the students engaged! It is a lot to handle!
Post a Comment