Teaching for Understanding pt 2

The third, fourth and fifth chapters in Teaching for Understanding deal with how to create lessons and units that peak students' interest and incorporate technology. Wiske (2005) states the topics should connect to multiple important ideas across subject matter; be authentic, accessible and interesting to students; be interesting to the teacher; be approachable through several entry points' and generate continued inquiry. Subject matter they suggest teachers use "teaching for understanding" are literature, biology, history, social sciences and math.

There are several questions teachers should ask themselves before creating lessons; What topics are really important but difficult for students to understand? and How can I use technology to create lessons students find interesting yet help them to understand the topic? After addressing these questions, teachers need to create clear cut goals and objectives for the students. Without these goals, students are unclear about what they are learning or trying to master. Basically, there needs to be a lot of prep time before implementing the lesson. If you are introduction a new technology, you have to teach the students how to use the technology before hand.

These chapters are fairly self explanatory on how to create the lesson plans and give examples of real world applications. Being a first year teacher it is very overwhelming to try to implement these kinds of lessons. I would like to try it out but given the short time allotted for teaching subjects, I feel like I have to fall back on reading chapters in books, lecture and worksheets. It would be nice if someone could come in before school started and help me plan out how to introduce technology to my students. It would make implementing these types of lesson plans seem less overwhelming.


Wiske, M.S., Franz, K.R., & Breit, L. (2005) Teaching for understanding with technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass