Six Facets of Understanding

OK, so we're getting more concrete on what the authors understand as Understanding. Six facets are given, and my immediate reactions to them. 

- Can explain

(As Einstein supposedly said, if you can' explain something in simple language, then you don't really understand it.)
As Einstein supposedly said, if you can't explain something in simple words, then you don't really understand it. This is a nice definition, but gives only one facet of understanding: I'm sure there are many things we understand intimately without being able to explain. Such as people like self-trained artists or musicians, who don't have theoretical language to explain their work and give reasons like, "I just kept painting until I was good at it." Or for example: who understands life in Japan more, a person studying the country in books or a kid that lives there?
All that said, being able to explain something in your own words IS evidence of understanding. So it is still useful to keep.

- Can interpret
This is close to empathy, or at least, the end goal should be.
It's the reason that, once upon a time, I wanted to be a literature teacher. Narratives are vitally important, something inherent to the human species--we tell each other stories and remember them. We  learn from them, whether we realise it or not. Everything is a narrative--the news, books, myths, etc. Every narrative reflects and perpetuates society--our perception of the world can be greatly altered by narratives! Being able to understand them--critique them--is vital, too.

- Can Apply
This, to me, is an excellent sign of "understanding," better than being able to explain things. Knowing multiple uses for one tool (a mathematical formula, a reading skill, knowledge of a historical time period, an actual tool like a hammer or something) is a more useful, more complex grasp of it. It's info that you can use in multiple areas of life, not only to solve problems but to increase your understanding of something. (For example, some study into biology and medicine can give you a better understanding of what went down during the bubonic plague, for example.)

-  Have perspective
Know your own limits!!
It's easier to know your ideological limits once they are labeled by someone, so you can accept, reject, reconsider, or otherwise think about them. It also helps to know what other ideological paths people are labeling themselves with, especially if they're fanatical about it.
Of course you gotta critique those labels! Don't tell me "but don't align yourself to a label!" Heck, no. But knowing all the existing paths helps you think outside of them.

- Can empathize
I'm surprised this one's on here, to be frank. I'm glad it's on there, though. I enjoy that it's listed as a sign of intelligence. I come from a country/area where empathy is seen as some sort of intellectual or moral immaturity: just because something is sad doesn't mean it's not bad or worth it! Like slavery! And drone bombs! But I digress.
I think it's a bit revolutionary to say that empathy is a sign of intelligence, and it's completely congruent with the educational goals we keep saying we want: better-rounded, critical people!

- Have self-knowledge 

Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

Long-term priorities, long-term priorities, this chapter keeps saying. Reminds me of my guidance counselor. It's difficult having long-term, intellectual, spiritual goals in class when the school, state, and students' goals seem to be "learn English." 

I very  much enjoy the book's admission that teachers frequently ASSUME students have the necessary subskills required of an activity, such as study skills, teamwork skills, public speaking, et cetera, and that this leads to problems, the least of which are invalid assessments! How can you accurately assess someone's knowledge of a subject if the public speaking part of the presentation is making them fall apart? These are very valuable skills--it could be argued that they're MORE valuable than some of the facts and shit students are expected to learn--and teachers should not fault students for not having them. They must be taught, and school is the perfect place to learn them.

Ah, the standards issue. A hotly debated topic in the US, it is strangely non-partisan, unlike most issues in the US of A. Basically, everyone hates the damn standards. To me, this goes hand in hand with the chapter on Understanding--if you memorise 989,028,298 facts about WW2, do you really understand more about the war? 

How well do the Chilean educational standards for English measure English ability?

And, do the standards include the aforementioned important subskills?

I have other questions with this chapter. For example, the thing about the Essential Questions as a guide for what's important to learn--how can these be applied in EFL?

What would this look like?

What is a "big idea" and "core concept" in terms of learning another language? 

Big idea: Talking about the past

Core concept: -d/-ed endings in simple past

(??? Or what??) 

I agree that essential questions and big ideas are great for choosing what subject matter to view and how to talk about it, but it's a bit confusing to me in terms of applying it to the actual nuts and bolts of English that we must pass along. 

If  the Essential Question is meant to be a guide for learning, do we put the Essential question in Spanish? What if we write it in English and they don't understand it because their level of English is very low? Is it still a useful guide for the student in this case?

This chapter provided me with a lot of good information, but the applicability to EFL teaching is still unclear to me. I hope to be enlightened in later chapters, and from my classmates' blog posts. 

2 Understanding Understanding 

This is a chapter that excites my brain, right from the title. One of the hardest things about our profession, especially in the realm of the theoretical, is defining just what "knowing" and "learning" are. I have taken around four years of Education classes, and the only consist definition is "there is no consistent definition."

This is sort of the whole point of assessment: how do you graph/quantify/measure/assess/etc something immaterial and subjective? W hat the heck even IS "understanding" anyways?

I like the examples the books give:
One person can memorise a recipe, but a person who understands baking will be able to replace ingredients as necessary, change the amounts in the correct proportions, knows all the tricks of proper rack placement and timing, and all the other things that the recipe does not include. This backs up what, to me, is a larger educational truth: doing is better then talking. (Don't confuse this for "don't talk"; I'll get to that later.) In some dead words, "Facta Non Verba", Deeds, Not Words, which I would tattoo on my person.

It echoes the same things we've been talking about all dang semester.
 A valuable lesson needs to:
- Be student-centered, with students preforming the actions and uncovering knowledge
- Useful in real-life shit the students actually care about doing
- English must be authentic

The person who goes through 20 different attempts at making cookies probably has a better grasp of the baking process than the person who followed the recipe very exactly, the same way each time. In the same way, the student who's been hitting the gringo bars to chat up the patrons will speak better English than the kid who finished all his worksheets.
Whatever "understanding" is, it seems to come more fully when the learning process involves actually rolling up your sleeves and getting to it, especially when they're your linguistic sleeves.

This, also, I think, is far more observable: did the student understand what I said? Were they able to hold a conversation in English during discussion? Did they get the reading? I find that, a lot of times, we will have a sense of a definite yes or no: yeah, this one gets it. Or, no, this kid is lost. But how can record those results in a definitive, objective way?

Well I'm taking a course on it so I'm developing some ideas on that.


"Misunderstanding is not Ignorance"

Hey, there's another nice tattoo idea.

Here's what I immediately thought after I read that list of student misunderstandings. This is why we should teach what is "wrong" in language. (That is, things that obscure the intended meaning.)
For example, I once taught my students the difference between "pantis" here in Chile and "panties" in English. (If you say "I like your panties!" to someone, you better be sure you're saying what you mean.)

I'm sure we've all been affected by the Expert Blind Spot at one point or another. I've found that seeing things from a student's point of view is a skill that gets developed over time.

Introduction

The introduction ]makes some important distinctions between terminology. It explains the difference between "assessment" and "evaluation."   Assessments are distinct from assessments in that they, well, assess-- they give some score or grade of the task based on standards to be met. I also enjoyed how the author explored the etymology of the word "curriculum." By reinforcing it as the "course to run," it illustrates more effectively the usefulness of a curriculum. It's more than a list of topics to be covered, it's a plan for all the experiences to be had, things to really work through rather than a checklist to be completed. These are useful definitions to have in mind while reading the book.
I am also intrigued by the clarification the authors make, that they are not against traditional testing. I interested to see how their strategies for planning could be applied to testing, even "traditional" testing.

Chapter 1

 There are some key points presented in the opening of the chapter that are at least familiar to me.
First of all, that the lessons should be planned around the desired outcomes rather than a list of topics to be covered. A newer, important distinction is the specification that lessons should focus more on the output rather than the input, and I know I myself have made the mistake of tending too much to the activities rather than the results and what to do with them. Basically, results > content.

Something I already enjoy about this book is the seeming empiricism of the strategy: define the desired outcome, define what is acceptable evidence of understanding, then plan. This allows freedom of specific teaching techniques, as the focus of the strategy is in the first two steps. Also interesting is the inclusion of peer-review and self-assessment as a benefit of the planning template. It makes it easier to examine, review, and change--more of that empiricism I enjoy.