According to Wiggins and McTighe (2005), understanding is remarkable in that it is “drawn from the experience of experts” and is “transferable… having enduring value” and is “best acquired by “uncovering”, constructed by the learner” and “summarizes important principles”. There are 6 facets of understanding: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, self-knowledge, as stated by Wiggins and McTighe (2005). What I gathered from the readings is that we should use the 6 facets in all three stages of backward design in order to guide our goals for students, our assessments, and the actual activities. I really appreciate that they made a point to say that the facets help teachers to guide student critical thinking, that we …show more content…
Understandings can definitely be applied to skills based objectives. For example, it would help the student to achieve authentic learning in painting to understand why different chemical compounds in varnish dry at different rates and thus produce varying affects on oil paint.
Stewart and Walker (2005) propose that essential questions help to keep the learner on track as to uncovering the information needed by the objectives of the lesson. I agree, and some essential questions that I could use to guide the exploration of the students’ course of study that are specific to my Big Idea: Culture would be: “Why is culture important in modern society?”, “What are examples of cultural vocabulary?” Some higher order thinking essential questions I could use would be: describing- “What symbols of cultural reference do you see in the artwork?”, interpreting- “What message do you think the artist is trying to say?” analyzing- “What elements of art did the artist use?”, or judgment- “What is worth remembering about this