Chapter 9: planning for learning

     A good plan for learning must have important qualities, such as engaging and effective. In order to accomplish that the goals should be based on interesting and relevant work that can develop students cognition, understanding and achievement of content.
    I noticed that in this chapter the author mentions that "students need to experience the big ideas as real, and they need to be equipped for their final performances." (pg 208)
    But...How can students experience those big ideas as real? The author responds to that by developing the idea of exploring through experience, which is similar to student-center type of learning. What about the use of authentic materials and tasks in a teacher-center teaching environment? It is possible to achieve as well engagement on big ideas and essential questions through a techer-centered learning using mainly authentic materials and activities for the students, so that students feel immersed in a more real learning environment and not an artificial one.

Chapter 6: Crafting understandings

In this chapter, a straightfoward question was written on page 143, "But what if the desired understanding is that there is no official, single, greed-upon understanding?" When I started reading the chapter, a similar question came up to my mind. I agree, but not absolutely, with the fact that teachers must frame understandings and that unit and courses need to explicitly include desired understandings, underlying concepts, etc. What is missing here, in my opinion, is to include other important factors that are always present in a classroom: that is, the different types of intelligences and motivation towards the topic or presentation of the unit. I say this because I think that there is not always an unique nor final understanding. The understanding will vary according to the type of intellingence the student has. For example, if two students (one with more natural type of intelligence, the other with a logical-type of intelligence) are learing about chemical components of a substance, these two students will make inferences about the problem in different ways, and may have different conclusions. Different conclusions that could open doors e.g. to new dilemmas and discoveries
I think that what is explained in the chapter should not be taken too strictly... it is important to reflect that as long as students are making inquiries, thinking analytically, and trying to get conclusions, they are developing their high-cognitive skills. Nothing is absolutely black or white, we as teachers, always have to think in the possibility of a grey color.