Chapter 3 Synthesis

Abstract:
The primary focus of this chapter was upon the introduction of a technique called backwards design. This technique was developed to address a specific issue. The issue was that teachers often have lots of information to present and not enough time to present it in. Backwards design helps focus the information in a form that can be delivered with alacrity without sacrificing content.

Reflections: Everyone was able to relate this chapter to their own lives, usually as examples in which they participated or created an activity that went nowhere. Backwards design provides organization to an activity something everyone appreciates. Some of us even remember activities that weren’t just unorganized, but seemed downright pointless. Using the Backwards design technique, teachers should be able to make their lessons more meaningful for their students, something they will undoubtedly appreciate.

Chapter 2 Synthesis

Synthesis of Chapter 2 DI/UD

Synopsis:

This chapter discussed successful teaching and how it is extremely important for the material being taught to relate to students in some way. The chapter discusses several different ways in which the material can be tailored to the students learning aptitudes and how to teach responsively. Teaching responsively allows the teacher to respond appropriately to the different needs of different students. Among the most effective ways to teach responsively would be the use of group activities.

Connections and Reflections:

Readers were both reassured, and in agreement with the text. All of the readers were glad that successful teaching does require a certain amount of personal involvement in the class. A few noted some of the quotes that they liked including “teaching is an art that calls on its practitioners to work simultaneously in multiple media, with multiple elements”. Everyone agreed that finding new ways to relate to the students helps the students and the teachers.

Chapter 4

This chapter heavily emphasizes instructional strategies inside a curriculum and offers numerous scenarios to illustrate the points. It is about what we, as teachers, need to think about when planning lessons. In planning for the class, differentiation is important but can also cause more problems if not handled correctly. In differentiating, you don’t want to give the struggling students less work and the achieving students more work. We need to be effective and pay attention to the quality of how we teach. It is important for a teacher to hold a powerful curriculum, but to remember that they are teaching students, so it is important to make sure their curriculum caters to all their students. They need to focus on the students’ knowledge, understanding, and skill and focus their curriculum around that. When every student is able to learn it makes it easier for the teacher to communicate with the classroom. By changing the work, but keeping it in the structure and heading towards a desired goal, struggling students can learn the skills they need to comprehend the overall ideas. To achieve a successful class, we need to establish clarity, accept responsibility, develop respect, build awareness, develop classroom management routines, help students become effective partners, develop flexible routines, expand a collection of instructional strategies, and reflect on individual progress. It is also important for the teacher to teach each student as an equal and not let gender or race interfere. This means the teacher needs to get to know each student and follow his or her progress. It is important for the teacher to always have an image of what their classroom should ideally look like, and they should always hold high expectations for every element of the classroom.

We connected to the reading because it helped us realize that this information is what we need to keep in mind when planning our lessons. We need to keep in mind that while some students struggle through the lessons, others may get bored at the same time. This is something we related to, remembering, that in many classes some of us felt bored and not challenged. This led to us doing poorly in class because we wouldn’t apply ourselves. It is important to pay attention to both ends of the classroom (those who struggle and those who are ahead), as to not have this problem. Some of us also felt the teacher didn’t do enough to help us learn. Classes filled with ‘busy work’ often led to us not wanting to apply ourselves. This is also something a teacher needs to avoid. We were lucky, though, to have teachers that did do a lot for us and put a lot of work into their lessons. Some felt, however, that this chapter might have gotten a little repetitive at times. Despite the different examples for different subjects the main theme was always the same: diversify the curriculum to accommodate different students. What was more important were the various techniques, because as the text noted, nearly all teachers understand the value of a varied curriculum; however few actually are able to successfully introduce said curriculum into their classroom. The recommendation that the teacher allow for the students to take learning into their own hands is a good idea; a great deal can be learned from a self-driven project, and while some schools frown on independent projects. It will be difficult to try and incorporate all of these qualities into our lessons at first, but we should be able to get better at it over time.

Integrating Chapter 1

This chapter discussed the importance of Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design. Each of these instructions are seen as going side by side. Differentiated instruction focuses on the students, the classroom, and our methods of teaching. The goal of Differentiated Instruction is to ensure that teachers focus on methods that are effective for the students. It is important to have a quality curriculum that depends students’ understandings, so that they are able to apply it to the outside world. Using axioms, several examples were given to demonstrate different approaches of these methods.

We all connected to the reading through the axioms and corollaries. They helped us gain tips and ideas to use in the classroom. One, for instance, is to have students come up with their own questions about how the curriculum affects them. This will help them remember the material more because it would be something they were interested in. The chapter said one important aspect of a quality curriculum was a lesson that would help the student relate the material learned to the outside world, which was something we related to. We feel that in general we can learn a lot from this book, but it might be hard reaching different types of learners (like those you would see in AP level courses), with “standard” styles of teaching.