Understanding by Design Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

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Understanding by DesignGrant Wiggins and Jay
McTighe

• http//www.ascd.org

Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development
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WHAT IS UNDERSTANDING?

• Presented by
• Dottie Walls

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Explain how students who exhibit the
explanation facet of understanding will perform.

• Students who exhibit this aspect of understanding
  will be able to provide complex, insightful, and
  credible reasons--theories and principles, based
  on good evidence and argument-- to explain or
  illuminate an event, fact, text, or idea provide
  a systematic account, using helpful and vivid
  mental models. (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998)
• Students should also be able to reflect
  personally, thoughtfully, and coherently on a
  subject and consequently, substantiate or
  justify their own views with good arguments and
  evidence.

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SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

• In response to our class question about the World
  Trade center, Explain the sequence of events
  that took place Tuesday morning, September 11,
  2001 during the attack on America?, the
  following would show an understanding of the
  explanation facet

(CNN.COM)
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Chronology of Attack on America

• 845 a.m. A hijacked passenger jet, American
  Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts,
  crashed into the north tower of the World Trade
  Center, tearing a gaping hole in the building and
  setting it on fire.
• 903 a.m. A second hijacked airliner, United
  Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, crashed into the
  south tower of the World Trade Center and
  exploded. Both buildings were burning.
• 943 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed
  into the Pentagon, sending up a huge cloud of
  smoke. Evacuation began immediately.
• 1005 a.m. The south tower of the World Trade
  Center collapsed, plummeting into the streets
  below. A massive cloud of dust and debris forms
  and slowly drifted away from the building.
• 1010 a.m. A portion of the Pentagon collapsed.
• 1010 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93, also
  hijacked, crashed in Somerset County,
  Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh.
• 1028 a.m. The World Trade Center's north tower
  collapsed from the top down as if it were being
  peeled apart, releasing a tremendous cloud of
  debris and smoke.

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Example (1) of Assessment Taskto Assess
Explanation Facet

• Instead of using short-answer test and/or oral
  responses I would get more in-depth responses by
  using an interactive activity. For example, if I
  were to assess my students to see if they knew
  the parts of microcomputer system and their
  importance, I could just give them a worksheet
  that would require them to identify parts and
  matching pictures, but would that show true
  understanding or simply memorization? To better
  assess the students complete understanding of
  the essential parts of a microcomputer system and
  their importance, I would require them to utilize
  a computer presentation program such as
  HyperStudio or PowerPoint to create a
  presentation. In the presentation they would be
  asked to utilize the Internet to help them
  explain each essential part of the computer
  system as well as import graphics to go along
  with their definitions.

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Example (2) of Assessment Taskto Assess
Explanation Facet

• To help my students see the interrelation of
  ideas, I would ask them to use Inspirations to
  create a web. For example, when learning to
  format memos I try to make the lesson more
  meaningful. So, instead of reproducing a memo
  from their keyboarding book, I would ask them to
  compose and format a memo to their principal
  describing the good vs. poor qualities of our
  school. Before they begin to compose or write,
  they must create a concept web to show their main
  idea and how their points of view correlate.

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Example (3) of Assessment Taskto Assess
Explanation Facet

• After an introduction to word processing with
  step-by-step and hands-on examples of the
  software program, I would ask the students to
  summarize what they learned about word processing
  and list all of the features they can use when a
  complete a word processing document.