Teaching for Understanding
Perkins Article

STICKY NOTE ACTIVITY

Untitled Slide

WHAT IS TEACHING FOR UNDERSTANDING?

• Knowledge and skills do not guarantee understanding.
• People can acquire knowledge and routine without understanding the basis or when to use them.

QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION

• Why might it be important to connect understanding to learning rather than allowing the student to just "know" it?

UNDERSTANDING IS COMIBINING

• Prior knowledge,
• Prediction ability,
• Common sense,
• & Other factors.

GOALS TO REACH FOR

• Understanding a topic is being able to perform in a variety of thought-demanding ways in order to:
• Explain,
• Muster evidence,
• Find examples,
• generalize,
• apply concepts,
• and represent it in a new way, etc.
• (Conceptual versus procedural knowledge)
• (Meaningful versus Rote learning)

SITUATION PRACTICE

• Problem: A room has an area of of 240 ft^2. Draw some possibilities of the length and width of the room. Then draw some of the given items you might include in your dream room that can fit comfortably in here.
• Items to add to dream room:
• Bounce house: 40 ft^2
• Chocolate fountain: 15 ft^2
• King sized bed: 25 ft^2
• Trampoline: 30 ft^2
• Dance floor: 150 ft^2
• Bowling lane: 6ftx30ft

Untitled Slide

• Come up with a multi-part word problem that aims at teaching for understanding rather than just solving a problem.
• Use 5x3=15 in your problem.

UNDERSTANDING IN YOUR OWN CLASSROOM

• How should I teach?
• Learning should be long-term.
• Provide for rich ongoing assessment.
• Support learning with representations.
• Pay heed to developmental factors.
• Induct students into the discipline. (When to use formulas in word problems)
• Teach for transfer. (Connect subjects)

FURTHER CONNECTION

• How can teaching for understanding be implemented and useful in your classroom if you have a student receiving SPED?