Chapter 7: Teaching for Understanding in Academically Diverse Classrooms

The idea of teaching in general is not to simply get through a textbook in a given year, just to say that the students finished it. In real teaching the idea is for students to discover the important truths hidden in the material. That takes time. Using the essential questions from a unit plan to probe students’ minds to start thinking on their own is a good way to introduce a new topic. Open ended questions, with which students can make up their own opinions and draw their own conclusions, helps jump start students’ thinking. By the end of the unit, the students’ understanding and “answer” to the essential questions should have evolved much deeper than the first time the question was posed. The six facets of thinking can tie in here and help deepen students’ understanding. Students do not always need to master the basic skills of a subject before they start theorizing or become involved in higher order thinking. This all affects me as a teacher because I have to plan how all of this will fit into a unit plan. There is a solution to this problem in the WHERETO model. Each letter stands for one step to remember while designing how to teach the students. This will impact my students because they will be forced not only to “cover” the material in the subject but “uncover” the deeper meanings and understandings within the information. Higher level thinking and understanding of the important meanings will help them in their future.