UbD Chapters 6&7, MI 5&6

In the chapter 6 & 7 from Understanding by Design and chapters 5 & 6 from Multiple Intelligences, the main focus is creating a curriculum and working in the right teaching styles for that curriculum. Both books talked a lot about the important key elements to a curriculum, although both brought up different elements that teachers should incorporate into their lesson plans. Understanding by Design focuses primarily on how to create a unit plan and curriculum and making sure students understand it and teaching it in a way that all students understand. Multiple Intelligences, on the other hand, focuses on how to make sure your curriculum is available for all students of all intelligences to understand, and teaching it in a way that reaches out to all intelligences.

            

In the two chapters of Understanding by Design they talk about backward design and the multiple stages involved in designing a unit. I liked how this chapter talked about the different stages in creating a unit, which allowed me to relate it back to what we’re doing in our class now and it’s something I can do when I have my own classroom. Chapter six in Understanding by Design talks mostly about how to do responsive teaching, which means being proactive and designing your curriculum to be available to all students. Chapter six also talks about how in order to create a successful curriculum and unit, the main goals and overarching questions that will be answered in the unit must be involved in in order to have students fully understand what they will be learning. Chapter seven in Understanding by Design talks about how teachers should teach these curriculums successfully, including uncovering the answers to the essential questions, using the facets of understanding and putting to use the WHERETO model, which answers basic questions that need to be uncovered in the unit. I found the WHERETO model very interesting and will probably use it my classroom.

In the two chapters of Multiple Intelligences, it like Understanding by Design focuses on the creation of a unit and how to teach that unit to a diverse group of learners. But, instead talks about how to incorporate the different intelligences into a curriculum. Chapter five of Multiple Intelligences talks about the important things that need to be incorporated into a curriculum to make it appropriate for MI. Some of the things the book suggests doing are, focus on a specific topic; ask key MI questions, to make sure the curriculum is accessible to all multiple intelligences. The book also suggests brainstorming how you can appeal to all intelligences. The sixth chapter of Multiple Intelligences gives activity suggestions for each intelligence in order to further understanding. These were very interesting to read, but it would be hard to incorporate them into every classroom.