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.
Yes! absolutely true! things CAN'T be black or white. We teachers have to find the grey color somewhere
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to learn how different intelligences work with respect to learning English and how we can frame understanding to promote inquiry, critical and analytical thinking among our students.
ReplyDeleteUndoubtely in our teaching experience most of us face multi-intelligences on our sts that make our classes be more heterogenuous and more challenging to deal with.For this reason , we must try that sts experience the language with the corresponding activities and material to each type of intelligence eg. visual, auditory material, musical, body...among others.
ReplyDeleteI agree, our students are all different and inside the class we always deal with different realities, different learning styles and intelligences. That's is why we should try to do our bests but don't be so close-minded as to think that all our students should achieve the same goals at the same time but to give them the tools to work at their own pace and to develop the skills according to their own needs.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your last statement....
ReplyDeleteSometimes we need to see that students learn in a different way...
We tend to clasify students just bu marks, not foy their learning intentions...
Programs are just a guide and we have to adequate them to the context of our classroom...
I also agree with you on the fact that some aspects have not been taken into account, different kind of learnings and learners must be considered to plan the lessons in order to set the tasks otherwise only some students will be successful in this learning process.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting the mention you do to the different styles in which students learn. It is true we have to consider varied ways through which we can teach English in order to give potential to multiple intelligences and not only to the so common reinforced verbal and logical mathematical. Despite this fact may consider spend lots of time planning and creating new activities in order to fulfilled these new desired understandings, I do believe it is necessary to expand our students' abilities.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, we have to know our different styles of students, and the way they learn.We can teach in different ways and students learn in different ways too.
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