Backward design

As in the article is stated, we are not only professionals whose mission is to check the stipulated contents for each level, but we have the responsibility to guide the students’ learning towards the total fulfillment of the expected goals. Off course this only can be possible through the design of the different units, which gives the guidelines to be clear on what we want to get, and how we might get it. These are the two most important factors that must be taken into account at the moment to start any teaching process. Personally I consider that if we have in mind both, the expected results will be come true more easily, because we will be ready to face any unforeseen event, applying the experience gained in the previous years. The idea is to make students aware about what is the purpose of the class and work together in order to achieve it, however for this sake, there must be coherence between the proposed goals and how they can be reached. It means that we always have to keep in mind what to teach and how to teach all the time, focusing our teaching practices on this logic.
The framework of our teaching and learning priorities will help us to design our lessons respecting the established standards as well as to respond to the demands made by the different students. However the problem is that there is not a real match between what teachers are looking for and what the curriculum says because the latter is more worried about the coverage of the contents (quantity) than the use that students can give them in a real context (quality). Therefore the question is how we can open the door to understanding if the government policies state other goals as ideal. This is the mismatch that the current system shows, which provokes confusion especially during the design stage, constraining us to design our contents, regarding the curriculum expectations. Obviously this incoherence affects the fulfillment of the expected goals, because the application of what we have learnt through the reading of the different chapters can not be carried out in the classroom. For example: the use of tasks which guide students to get a real understanding from the contents , the use of assessment as a way to collect enough evidences to say whether the students achieved the expected results or not , and the procedures that can fulfill them.
Undoubtedly we need to make a shift related to work for goals in common, which point to plan tasks based on their application and not only on their coverage, making the learning a more meaningful process by the students what would bring as a consequence the improvement of the current educational system.

validity

Since we have a deep notion of what Assessment involves, it seems to be more than just a mean to grade students. According to the chapter, we must focus on the kind of assessment that provides the necessary evidences to see whether the students achieved the desired results or not. Therefore we need to plan the different assessment instruments, based on tasks in which the students can apply their knowledge in a real context. It means that we need to change the current aim that Chilean education has, which is entirely focused on teaching isolated pieces of information, and start thinking how we can make students understand from an application view. The idea is not longer consider contents as abstract units, but as concrete tools that may allow them to solve any problem in their lives. Personally I think that this particular way of teaching might produce the easiest engagement of the students with the task proposed, what would facilitate its understanding. It is produced because those tasks are closer to what they have learnt or seen in the reality (personal background), allowing them to make their own connections, in order to face challenges.
Another aspect that assessment involves is how reliable and valid an instrument could become. At the first sight there is not difference between the concepts of reliability and validity but there is. According to what we have learnt in class the first one is regarded as the way of getting concrete results (marks), and the second one is regarded as the interpretation that teachers give to those results. In spite of their differences, both are essential at the moment of assessing, because we need to be one hundred percent sure that that method applied will reflect the required evidences, based on the different student performances. This is crucial, in order to have a general outlook related to the operation of our teaching practices. That is why the use guidelines or criteria to evaluate, specifically non- productive skills are really important because they allow collecting evidences by means of an accurate process. For example, rubrics and specification tables help to measure not only the results, but all the variables which are involved in the learning process, giving real evidences of the level of understanding achieved by the students. Obviously the interpretation of that data is in charge of the teacher who will have to consider as the external factors as the internal ones, in order to make the necessary adjustments which help to enhance the level of feedback between the parts.

Thinking like an Assessor

As in the article is stated, during the learning process we must look for evidences that not only show the superficial or obvious knowledge acquired from any contents but a deep understanding from them. It is very usual to associate the word assessment with grades, which come up as the advisable method to measure whether the students learnt or not. Undoubtedly this is the most basic way to view the culmination of a learning process, because our goal is not only focused in getting grades at the end of a unit but to create the instances in which the students can show evidences of their understanding through its practice. It means that teachers can control the process from the very beginning to the end through the application of formal and informal ways of assessing in order to check how students have assimilated the tasks and how they have worked related to achieve our goals. Therefore we can say that assessment is not only a way of grading students but one to give a point of reference about whether our teaching practices have been effective or not according to the expected results. That is why it is fundamental to have pre- determined what our goals are, before we plan the further activities, because teaching without regarding an aim, seems to be a waste of time and effort in the classroom.
We can not conceive to teach something just for the fact of getting marks, on the contrary we must teach, thinking in how we can guide our students to develop the necessary skills which allow them to extract a deep understanding from the different units taught. In that way we will be aware about what are the suitable tasks which can make them to transfer abstract pieces of information into the real world, assuring a fruitful teaching and learning process, because the more we focus our lesson on the reality, the more students will learn, while at the same time they may have the opportunities to make the necessary connection to reach a true understanding. If we as teachers are able to show them how adults solve x situation in the real world, I am sure that we would obtain better results than only teaching meaningless and isolated units. Therefore the students ‘performance will depend on how teachers plan their lesson looking for: the statements of the goals, the correct design of the core tasks or activities, and finally the application of a balanced type of assessment which allows to measure permanently the level of understanding achieved by students related to each unit seen in class.

GAINNING CLARITY ON OUR GOALS

It is well known that in the education field the backward design should be coherent with the goals proposed by the government, the questions is what are they? According to my own educational perspective we have not been able to get an agreement in order to discover what society really needs. That is why we work separately pursuing different goals what distorts the results obtained in the system. From my point of view the purpose of learning other languages should be known first by teachers and then by the students. If we regard that learning other language is a vital tool to have access to different pieces of information, we must focus our teaching on its use and application and forget for a while our current way of teaching which just points to explore the theoretical aspects of it. Therefore I think that the process should pursuit the development of practical skills among the students, in order that they can use them as a true means of gaining in communicative competences which are necessary to insert in this global world.
The problem is how we can become a bilingual nation if we are not able to set up our goals clearly?. May be, the answer is in the design area which has two main problems according to the chapter: the aimless coverage of contents and isolated activities which
In my opinion are the responsible that lessons pursuit neither a deep understanding nor the transferability of big ideas, together with the misperception that teachers show to
promote probably unconsciously the learning of the contents by heart what is seen as the right method to get understanding by the students without regarding the most relevant part of the process which is to take this information to the reality through its application in daily and common situations. The only way to revert this phenomenon is through the improvements of our current teaching practices, which should have a free access in order to obtain progressively better results in education along with the state of long-term goals which allow students to fulfill with the requirements to learn a foreign language.
As a conclusion I would say that is impossible to impart a ‘quality education’ without regarding the fact of promoting the inquiry, analysis and transfer capacities on the students, because they arise as essential to bring contents to life and extract a real understanding from them.

Essential questions:Doorway to understanding

In this chapter, we can see what is the real importance of making students go beyond the information given by means of ‘essential questions’ that have as purpose to stimulate the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes, habits of mind, and understanding on the students. The idea is that they find a real sense to what is learned in every one of the units through its application in different contexts. However to attain this aim, it is necessary to change the way in which our students are using the information, together with the focus given by the different textbooks, because learners frequently work on questions which stimulate neither thought nor their capacity of inquiry. That’s why our mission consists on framing work around such questions which allow them to explore beyond the boundaries of the topic given, and the use of connections that promote the transference of their ideas from one setting to others. Regrettably this aim is not entirely fulfilled in our current system of education, because of the lack of a clear proposal by the curriculum in order to stimulate and encourage the constructivist thinking among the Chilean students. A clear example of that situation is the training received by most of the teachers which includes neither the achievement nor the development of these competences, together with the lack of material that supports them.
Actually the questions formulated in the different textbooks do not help to get to the heart of the things (the essence). On the contrary they frequently stimulate the memorization of the content without giving the possibility to be transferred across other disciplines. This happens because the students can find neither the usefulness nor the purpose of why they have to learn that, causing confusion and lack of commitment by them. Personally I consider that behind the learning and teaching process should exist a reason for, in order that knowledge be enough meaningful to cover most of the students ‘need. If we have a clear target in education, we will surely be able to make the suitable questions which provoke in the students a deep thought, a spirit of inquiry, support their ideas, spark meaningful connections, and transfer power. The idea is to propose a challenger in every one of them in order to put in practice all the previous skills to solve problems, going from the most general questions (overarching questions) to the most specific ones (topical questions). The mixture of the different types of ‘Essential questions’ such as: open and guiding as well as topical and overarching allow the accomplishment of understanding and application of a determined content, because when we have identified one or more topical questions, we need broader questions to take the students beyond the topic’s boundaries, improving their capacity of argument to produce knowledge. Based on that, it is a mistake to consider students as passive actors of the process; on the contrary we must focus our teaching in giving them the right tools to become active ones. If we have clear, what is the role of essential questions, we will see that they are not only used to teach stuff, but to frame our goals in the current system of education.

assignment

‘Understanding Understanding’.

This article is focused on clarifying the term ‘understanding’, because from the earliest times, many curriculum writers have avoided the notion, producing confusion mainly among teachers. However, others have tried to give to this term a definition but without the accuracy required because of the existence of different degrees of understanding, what brings serious difficulties to provide evidences, in order to define this nebulous term.
For example, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, ‘understanding’ refers to the ‘commonly sought’, ‘but ill- defined’ objectives. This obstacle provokes that teachers, in most of the cases, confuse whether their students are only able to internalize knowledge or indeed understand the contents taught. The difference seems slight but it is not, that is why many authors have highlighted the distinction that exists between ‘understanding’ and ‘know’. According to Bloom the first term is defined as ‘the ability to marshal skills and facts wisely and appropriately, through an effective application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation’. In simple words, it is the capacity that students should have to transfer what they have learnt to a new setting or situation.
Based on that, it is fundamental to help the students to learn how they can transfer their inherently limited learning to many other settings. If we take in to account the latter, we will see that transfer must be taken as the aim of all teaching in schools, and not only the fact of storing information that in most of the cases is just forgotten by the learners.
Undoubtedly, it is a mistake to think that ‘the more I cover, the more they will learn and the better they will do in a test’. It proves that quantity has nothing to do with the success in terms of application of knowledge. This misunderstood has broken out that most of the teachers focus the lessons in just conveying information without considering the application that it may have in other issues or problems. Thus, coverage should not be seen as ‘a virtue in an educational context’, but rather as ‘a flaw in the current system’, because it leaves the students with no sense of the whole what affects the development of their intellectual capacities, producing confusion in the information given. The other crucial stage in this process is the way in which the understanding is showed, because there is also a wrong focus on our tests. Commonly teachers tend to measure only the superficial knowledge acquired by their students and not their capacity to transfer information. As we can see, the misperception of the word ‘understanding’ has drawn us to make serious mistakes related to the aim of teaching and learning process. There is not doubt that this way of thinking should change from now on, because the fulfillment of these practices will help us considerably to improve the quality of Chilean education, giving the right and necessary tools to students to be applied by them in any setting.