Understanding by Design: Chapter 2

The beginning of chapter two starts out with provided us to the centrals of teaching.  The main focus’ as teachers is “what we ought to teach-what we want students to know, understand, and be able to do.  Another important focus that we need to remember is whom we are teaching.  We need to remember that students although alike in many ways, are all different.  The main idea of this chapter is to learn about the variance of students.   They proceed to explain different situations in which kids vary in the meaning behind certain actions.  The overall explanation is that not all of your kids are going to be trying to find the ins and outs of math or reading, but to try and find themselves and where they belong.  For most kids the importance of a teaching is not only to teach them the different subjects but always be an individual that they think cares about them and their abilities.  The end of the chapter gives you examples on how the teacher can connect to all of their students without making it seem that way.  Some examples are building positive relationships with your students, positive climate in the classroom matters, how “interest ignites motivation to learn, and many more.  Differentiation is also mentioned in the later part of the chapter with examples of how teachers can provide variance in teaching.  They book mentions how it’s important to get to know your students, having them engage in group sharing and readings, engaging students in challenges, having them be able to express ideas individual to each student, providing assessments that are not necessarily graded, varying expressions in which you teach and many more.  The importance of incorporating all these ideas in your curriculum design is essential to communications “to real human beings in the power of knowledge”.