Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins

1
Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins Jay
McTighe Chapter 7 What is Uncoverage?

• Created Presented by Jane Cook,
• EASTCONN Staff Development/Literacy Technology
  Specialist
• Mill 1, 322 Main Street
• Willimantic, CT 06226
• [phone], ext. 3011
• jcook_at_eastconn.org

2
Essential Questions

• What is uncoverage?
• What is the difference between covering and
  uncovering the curriculum?
• How do we ensure depth and breadth in curriculum
  design?

3
Enduring Understandings

• Students will understand that uncoverage is
  essential for deep understanding.
• Students will understand how to apply the concept
  of uncoverage to their curriculum design work.

4
Where Are We in the UBD Process?

• Stage 3 Designing Learning Activities
• What learning experiences and teaching promote
  understanding, interest and excellence?
  (p. 99)

5
What is uncoverage?

• Uncovering and bringing abstract ideas and
  far-away facts to life
• Helping students see learning as connected, not
  isolated from real life
• Asking students to explain, interpret and apply
  knowledge
• Simply put, uncoverage is a shorthand phrase
  for the results of inquiries, problems and
  arguments. (p.
  99-100)

6
Why do we need to uncover?

• To bring knowledge to life
• To ensure that the learner, not the teacher,
  makes the connections
• To transform facts and ideas into meanings
• When a teacher designs to uncover, s/he
  provides materials, resources and learning
  activities that allow students to connect the
  dots to create their own meaning. (p. 101-103)

7
How do we design for uncoverage?

• Through Depth
• AND
• Through Breadth
• 
  (p. 101-102)

8
What is depth?

• Going below the surface of a topic
• Digging deeper
• In-depth is the opposite of superficial. Going
  in-depth means designing curriculum that
  encourages students to dig deeply, explore
  important ideas and learn significant concepts.
  (p.
  100-101)

9
What is breadth?

• Freedom from narrowness
• Widening the lens
• Breadth means designing curriculum in which
  students extend and connect facts and ideas into
  a meaningful whole. (p.
  100-101)

10
How do we ensure depth breadth?

• For Depth
• Unearth it
• Analyze it
• Question it
• Prove it
• Generalize it

• For Breadth
• Connect it
• Picture it
• Extend it
• 
  (p. 102)

11
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding

• Facet 1 Explanation
• Give students opportunities to build, test and
  verify theories and explanations.
• Problem-based learning is a vehicle for this
  process.
  (p. 105)

12
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding

• Facet 2 Interpretation
• Give students opportunities to build their own
  interpretations, translations and narratives from
  primary sources, events and experiences.
• Oral histories, literary analyses, the case
  method and Socratic seminars support this facet.
  
  (p. 105)

13
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding

• Facet 3 Application
• Give students opportunities to apply what they
  have learned in the classroom to real or
  realistic situations.
• Real or simulated tasks, e.g., computer
  simulations and Odyssey of the Mind, support this
  facet. (p. 105)

14
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding

• Facet 4 Perspective
• Give students opportunities to take multiple
  points of view on the same issue.
• Studying the same event through different texts
  challenging assumptions, laws or postulates and
  role-play are vehicles that support this facet.
  (p. 105)

15
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding

• Facet 5 Empathy
• Give students opportunities to confront a variety
  of direct experiences, walk in other peoples
  shoes, and confront their assumptions.
• To support this facet, give students direct
  experiences with the ideas in question and have
  them re-create different characters to simulate
  past events and attitudes. (p. 105)

16
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding

• Facet 6 Self-Knowledge
• Give students opportunities to engage in ongoing
  self-assessment about what they know and how they
  know it so that they will make their thinking
  explicit.
• To support this facet, make self-assessment and
  self-adjustment a key part of instruction as well
  as assessment. (p. 105-106)

17
Whats the difference between covering and
uncovering?

• Covering
• Teacher presents information
• Students read text
• Students answer end of chapter questions
• Students take unit or teacher-made test
• Teacher assesses understanding

• Uncovering
• Teacher assesses students' knowledge of topic
• Teacher creates enduring understandings,
  essential questions, rubrics activities
• Students participate in engaging, meaningful
  learning activities
• Students produce real-world products/projects
• Teacher assesses understanding

18
No experience is educative that does not tend
both to knowledge of more facts and entertaining
of more ideas and to a better, a more orderly
arrangement of them Experiences, in order to be
educative, must lead out into an expanding world
of subject matter This condition is satisfied
only as the educator views teaching and learning
as a continuous process of reconstruction of
experience.
Dewey, 1938