Grant Wiggins – TeachThought

11 Smart Strategies For Improving Your Teaching

To what things do we as teachers in classrooms tend to be blind? Where should we look to better understand what is happening in our class?

Note that there are no books about education on the list from 1990 – present. Too early to make the call, in my humble opinion.

One condition: There is no single, obvious, or superficial solution path – yet, the task is ‘doable.’

If the goal a student has to clear is absurdly low, then the assessment is not rigorous even though it is ‘standards-based’ grading.

An authentic assessment is meant to focus on the impact of one’s work in real or realistic contexts.

Initially, in your teaching, you may want to practice aiming only for one Understanding per unit to get a feel for the kind of groundwork.

The problem: transfer of understanding is poor. Students do not understand that the long-term and bottom-line goal of education is transfer.

Mastery of a complex whole requires designing backward from the complex whole and the interesting questions related to it.