I was tweaking our Year 10 unit (Geographies of Human Wellbeing) using the KUD criteria (Know, Understand, Do). This scaffold, created by differentiation guru Carol Tomlinson, has been around for a while.
- Students will KNOW: (often represented in bulleted forma
t) facts, dates, definitions, rules, people, places, vocabulary, information. - Students will UNDERSTAND : (best stated as a sentence which includes concept-based thought), Essential questions, theories “Big” ideas, Important generalizations, thesis-like statements
- Students will DO: (represented with verbs), basic skills, communication, planning/organisation, thinking skills, evaluation, working collaboratively, skills of the discipline: mapping, graphing, collecting data, show p.o.v.
I
t was a really interesting exercise to represent the unit in a mindmap, it focussed my mind on what it was exactly what I wanted the students to understand from the this unit. The concept ‘understanding’ is hard to pin down.
David Perkins in “Teaching for Understanding” (1993) defines understanding as follows: Continue reading “What is ‘understanding’?”
Despite the efforts of the Individual Needs Department at my school, I still usually see Differentiation as a difficult to incorporate add-on.
I had the pleasure of hosting a Teachmeet at my school this evening. As expected, it was an inspirational, informative and informal evening, full of great sharing and networking. We had an excellent group of people with very interesting presentations.