Week 2 Thoughts

Unit DescriptionUnit TemplateI was really upset when I heard that this week's webinar presenter could not make it.  A few years back, I took a moodle class through UAA.  Our district runs a moodle site and gives teachers access to the site to create courses of our own.  I really liked the moodle set up and enjoyed creating a class.  My class was not much of a class, but more of a place where students could go to keep up with assignments and exam dates, and ask questions or set up after-school appointments with me.  I did this for a year.  It worked well for most of the year and participation dwindled as the end of the school year approached.  I believe the next school year started off slow for me, as I was on maternity leave until November and I just never started up the moodle site again.  In conclusion, it has been a while since I have used moodle and was hoping this week's webinar would be a great refresher for me.

However, I did enjoy the reading and videos on UbD.  It is one of those concepts that you read about and say, "Duh!  Of course it works.  That just makes so much sense."  With the amount of standards that we have to cover in our curriculum and the short amount of time with which we have to accomplish this task, it just seems smart to determine what you want your students to know and to be sure to build your instruction and activities around that understanding.  Throughout the year, it seems there is always something that pops-up that takes my students away from the classroom - MAPS and Aimsweb testing that happens 4 times a year, LEP testing, someone from the district wants to meet with the sophomores and juniors this week, our school is hosting an NYO tournament this week and we need the team to help prepare and set up.  It takes away from the little time that we do have to cover all that we need to cover.  UbD allows you to cover those important concepts that your students cannot succeed without.  Once you have your essential questions established, then you can build in those meaningful activities that are going to engage your students and give them something to think about and discuss.

Finally, understanding understanding was an eye opener for me.  I enjoyed the puppet show which did a great job of summarizing what Chapter 2 discussed.  I can always tell when my students understand what I have taught by the way they tackle extended assignments that I give them.  There are the group of students that start tackling the problem and then there are the students that read through the problem and automatically say - this is too hard.  My students have also never understood the concept of studying, and they are not really good at recalling information.  Therefore, I can always tell the students that understand from the ones that don't because they can still work problems about a specific concept a month down the road.  They understood the concept, therefore they remember how to solve the problems.  Unfortunately, I find that this does not happen often enough, which makes me think I should really work on creating some great meaningful activities for my students this upcoming year - I am hoping I will be able to do this using more technology.


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