Enduring Understanding and Deep Learning

Task: Enduring Understanding

Task: Understanding by Design

Enduring Understanding and Deep Learning

Our goal as teachers is to make sure our students understand the important concepts and ideas they are learning. We need to ask ourselves what is it we want our students to truly understand and be able to draw upon for the rest of their lives.

Think about your curriculum. What deep learning do you want your students to keep forever. Do your students really understand why they are learning what they are learning? Do we really understand why our students must learn what we are teaching?

Part of the disconnection between real life and school is that students don’t fully understand why they are learning the things they are learning. Consequently, it is critical that we, as teachers fully understand why the students must learn what we are teaching, and how this learning will benefit them in life. We must also be able to help our student understand what the deep learning or enduring understandings are so they can make these connections for themselves.

Enduring understandings are based on the higher order thinking skills. According to Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, they involve the big ideas that give meaning and importance to facts. It is the enduring understandings or deep learning that allow students to transfer knowledge from one topic to another, from one class to another, from school to life. Identifying the enduring understandings or deep learning allow us to provide the conceptual foundation for the basic skills we must teach. They are general rather than specific. For example if you teach money as part of a math unit your enduring understanding might be that value is a function of supply and demand or that cost is based on how much demand there is for a product in relationship to how much of the product is available. This is what you will want your students to really “get” and keep throughout their lives. You will then teach the appropriate money/math skills for your grade level standards in relation to this enduring understanding.

Enduring understandings or deep learning are not obvious to the students. We must guide them to “uncover” or discover these enduring understandings through well-designed learning experiences. Essential understandings are framed in the language Students will understand that.” Notice that essential understandings are not understanding why, how, which or how to. These infer the focus of the topic not what should be understood as a result of the learning. This is done by asking essential questions and helping your students learn to ask appropriate essential questions. Jamie McKenzie has the best information on essential questions on his “From Now On” Web site.

 

	Task: Enduring Understanding Take a look at this example and reflect on the questions that follow the example. A teacher designs a multimedia project regarding the principles of DNA for her 8th grade science class. After teaching the concepts, she gave them a fill-in-the blank test and concluded that they understood DNA because the students scored high on their tests. The next step in her unit was for the students to create a simulation of DNA on the computer. The first day the students started to make their simulations the teacher said to herself, “Wait a minute. They don’t understand DNA!” Students went back to the textbooks, asked the teacher numerous questions and discussed concepts with their peers. When their simulations were complete the students did indeed understand DNA. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What did the students do to indicate to the teacher that they understood DNA? What happened that indicated they did not understand it? Can kids get the right answer without understanding? What did the students do to indicate they REALLY understood DNA? How did using technology as a tool contribute to enduring understanding?

 

	Task: Understanding by Design Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe have published part of their book called UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN on the Web. Go to: Understanding by Design and read the online chapter 1 of their book.   As you read, think about how you teach and plan curriculum.   Then compare that model to the backwards design model that McTighe and Wiggins discuss.   1. Consider your curriculum.   What big questions do you ask yourself when you plan curriculum? Where do you begin?   Think about the project you will plan during this institute. With your project partners or with a partner discuss and record the enduring understanding you would like your students to have by doing this project.   2. Next Wiggins and McTighe have divided indicators of “understanding” into six facets: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. These not hierarchical; you don't need all, all the time; and they don't apply to all students.)   3. Take a look at the list of performance verbs   and the Questioning for Undertanding Page form the McTighe and Wiggins materials.   Form some key questions for your project.