FIAE+B2+Chapter+2


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Abstract
Chapter Two discusses mastery in students. Wormeli poses the questions, how do we know when students have mastered the material, and what should students be able to do when they have mastered the material. One clear definition of mastery is not given, however, the chapter does make clear how to know when students achieve mastery. One of the ways of knowing is if students do not just know the information, but can relate the content to different situations. Also, if students can "access", "analyze", "evaluate", and "create" no matter the condition (pg. 12). In also describing how to tell mastery in students, the the six facets are included because mastery is evident when proficiency is displayed with all of the six facets. Wormeli stresses from the beginning that mastery can not be known in one assessment, but can be seen through multiple assignments and the tracking of a students progress on important assignments over time. Multiple varying assignments will allow the student to demonstrate their understanding in different ways, and gives the student a chance to display proficiency in the different facets and also to relate the content to real life.

[|Corinne Synthesis]
Many people reflected on their past experiences as students as a result of this chapter. The realization that in the past teachers did not assess their mastery of the content, but merely forced them to memorize the content in order to pass the tests and receive a good grade. Neither were they able to apply content to real life to gain understanding. Many of these reflections admitted that after memorizing the information, they would forget it. In other words they were never taught the [|skills to master] content, nor were they made to understand what is important to know or why is it important for more than just a grade, but in life. The reflections also look back at the [|six facets] and gained a better sense of where they fit in to assessment. Looking back and understanding what did not work for us will allow us to be better teachers, and not succumb to simply teaching the content with the purpose of giving a letter grade to each student.

Kirsten
This chapter covered everything we could want to know about how a student masters material, how we teachers determine IF the student's mastered material, and figuring out what is important for a student to master all in a very short amount of space. Wormeli also brings in the six facets of understanding, explaining that these six things are what a student should be able to do with material when she's mastered them. Although I feel like I could recite the six facets now, it's been really helpful to see them in a couple of different contexts because it has helped me finish the first part of creating my unit as well as reaffirming my ideas. Many of the ideas suggested in the fifth UbD/DI chapter come back here, like looking at multiple assignments over time to determine mastery/understanding. Wormeli also offers ideas as to what a teacher could assign to use to track a student's continuum of understanding, like written responses. I hadn't considered written responses in the way Wormeli describes them--they can be used to uncover "misconceptions", as he puts it, about ideas, because students have to write something clearly and coherently for the teacher to say, "Ah, she's got it," instead of talking their way around it (which I totally did all through high school...).

Jordan
In this chapter, Wormeli makes an attempt to clarify the meaning of “mastery” and it’s importance in the field of education. He concludes that the term “mastery” has various meanings in education (none of which are considered “right”) and the assessments that are provided for students only give teachers a vague idea to whether or not the concepts that are supposed to be projected were actually mastered. He suggests that by using the six facets of understanding and by doing something “substantive with the content” (Wormeli 12), the student has mastered the material. Written responses, student-produced graphs, and other assessment methods act as evidence to students’ strengths and weaknesses that may not be detected orally in class or on a homework assignment. When I was in high school, I felt that I was rarely assessed for mastery of material and instead I was assessed on how well I was able to memorize material. Though I was able to get a good grade, I now realize that I gained nothing from those classes. As a teacher, mastery is going to by my priority and I hope to use the six facets in a way that I can quickly and effectively unpack standards for my students.

Jennie
In the beginning of the chapter, an example is given where the student got a math problem correct. Does this mean that they have mastered the concept of multiplying binomials? Its possible that they understand it, but its only one problem. In //Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design// chapter 5, Tomlinson and McTighe talk about getting a "photo album" rather than a "portrait" of the the way students learn. In other words, use different kinds of assessments throughout the unit to see if the students understand the material. Also, another way that might be considered mastery was said by McTighe and Wiggins in their book //Understanding by Design//, "True understanding manifests itself by spontaneous applications." When a student can actually apply what they learned in one class to not only another class but in real life, that's when they have truly mastered the information.

Brittany
The six facets are used as a guide to judge knowledge of a student in a subject area. When a student is able to correctly apply the subject matter to each of the six facets, then one knows that the student has mastered the material. Applications of the subject to different situations, such as a project or daily life, demonstrate that the content has been committed to memory and can be used in life situations. The ability for the students to use the material in different situations is the ultimate goal. Through learning this, I have realized that many teachers look over the goal of having students apply knowledge in daily life. Many students, including myself, have learned the material for the sole purpose of doing well on an exam and had forgotten the information after. As a teacher, I want to present math so that from the start students know how the lesson will tie into their daily life. Hopefully, this will cause them to realize the importance of these skills and commit them to memory.

Sarah
Before delving into assessment, Chapter Two deemed it necessary to establish what is meant by “comprehension”. Throughout the chapter, multiple examples of student understanding melded together to form a general concept of mastery. From this reading, I was able to establish my own definition of the term “mastery” as a student’s ability to apply a concept in more than one instance. Another topic touched upon was how to determine what material to teach. This reading suggested a wide variety of resources for the new teacher to investigate in order to gain a correct interpretation of standards and curriculum. I found this chapter to be very beneficial not only for my own teaching, but as insight into chapters from the UbDDI book. Now that I have an fixed definition of “mastery” (which, in the educational context, I consider to be synonymous with “comprehension” and “understanding”), I feel as though I have means to concretely apply concepts presented in external readings.

Leah
It is important that the faculty of a school have the same goals in mind, and to do that that they will have to do a very simple thing: have the same definition for words such as "mastery," "understanding," and "knowledge." The six facets of understanding from the UbD and DI book can provide a starting place to a definition of mastery. After developing a standard definition assessment of mastery must take place, and several times this chapter states that sophisticated mastery is shown through not just "echoing" the material but using it with intent in new situations. From the beginning examples in the chapter Wormeli states that the problem with the two assessments is that they only "momentary inferences." This illustrated to me how important the "photo album" style of assessment from UbD and DI is, and how much it can help me as a teacher understand how far along my students are to mastering a skill.

Ryan
In chapter two of //Fair isn’t Always Equal// there was a lot of discussion about mastery of a topic. One aspect of chapter two that stands out is the way to determine if students have mastered a topic and the way to do that is give multiple assignments and track progress on a few important assignments over time. Once students have mastered a topic they should be able to explain, interpret, apply, perceive, empathize, and show self-knowledge about that topic. This information will impact me as a student by seeing if I can do this when it comes to learning something new. This knowledge will impact me as a teacher to see if my students have mastered a lesson.

Corinne
This chapter contains many similarities to chapter 5 in UbDDI that is previously outlined. Like the chapter in UbDDI, it discusses assessment and the necessity of multiple ways of assessing. It states that while after applying one or two methods of assessment a teacher may start to grasp some things a student does not know, it can not give them an accurate description of all that the student might know. The chapter provided and example that I liked, and that is the multiple question essay. An essay that asks students to answer a few questions on one subject, requiring the student to show whether they have gained knowledge about all the big ideas and aspects of the big unit. It relates, but it is also multifaceted. At the same time the chapter outlines many ways of assessing, reminding us that while the essay may show a variety of knowledge, some students may not be as good at writing essays as they are at orally presenting the knowledge. It impacted me because instead of the strict essay, the questions posed in the essay could also be turned in to questions to answer in a project. There are always multiple ways of finding out what a student knows.

Ryan Snowman
This chapter discusses mastery and how to determine acceptable evidence of mastery. Assessment is always linked to the enduring understandings and skills designated in the unit or lesson plan. Assessment is how well that the students show they know the understandings of the lesson. There is also a difference between just recitation and true mastery of the material. To make sure that students do not just recite material, it is beneficial to have lots of evidence in determining mastery, rather than just one piece. I think the most important facet of assessment is that the understandings and essential questions are clearly identified. This way, the teachers knows where they are going and can gauge the evidence of mastery against the understandings.

Drew
The main focus of this chapter is in its title, “mastery”. This chapter discusses how to know when a student has mastered material. Often times students can simply recite material or reuse knowledge on the short-term basis. This is a camouflaged hoax being played on any teacher that once thought a student knew something but didn’t. It is important to understand that mastery is when a student can display their understanding using the six facets. The chapter discusses identifying mastery as well. We can see it with the use of multiple assignments and tracking works of a period of time. The positive outcomes should result in the proficient applications of all six facets of understanding. Anything less would not be mastery proper.

Cara
It is sometimes difficult to know when a student has truly "master" the material from a lesson. At one point in the chapter, mastery is described as being able to apply the concept spontaneously. If the students can demonstrate each of the six facets (explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge), then they truly do understand the concepts. I really liked that the book gave a real classroom example of the types of assessment questions a teacher may want to ask in order to see whether or not the student understands the concepts. I think this chapter goes well with Chapter 5 of the UDDI book because it is emphasizing the importance of using different approaches to assessing students.

Scott
"Mastery is more than knowing than knowing information, of course, but is can go beyond manipulating and applying that information successfully in other situations." I found where the six six facets are introduced, and understand the building blocks to reach self-knowledge. Many assignments can show hints of mastery of a topic, but no single one can exhibit mastery by itself. We need to identify the specific criteria that students will need to know before they are able to successfully describe a response to the desired goal on page 15. There is a long list of great resources on page 17 that first year teachers can use to help establish what content is important for their students to master.

Mykayla
According Rick Wormeli, mastery of a subject is when a student can use the six facets of McTighe and Wiggins. When a student can use explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge on a topic that he or she just learned then he or she has mastered the subject. This chapter explains that a teacher must decide what is the most important to master. To accomplish this, I would talk to colleagues and look at the text to see what they would emphasize in my lesson. Mastery of a concept is important in education. It shows us that as teachers we are achieving our goal because students understand the material so well that they are classified masters.

Tim
Chapter two of FAIE was all about mastery of subjects and how students can demonstrate their personal mastery of a specific topic, such as multiplication. The authors touched upon a couple of different definitions of mastery and ultimately seemed to connect mastery to first understanding the subject. (This brought us back to the six facets of understanding.) The authors agree upon two major ways of tracking mastery; multiple assignments and tracking the progress of a few pieces of work over time. The authors also went through “sophisticated mastery” and provided a few examples for that and rounded out the chapter by writing about different resources new teachers can use to discover specific standards to teach. I agreed the most with the authors when they wrote about tunnel vision with teachers. I’ve had so many teachers in the past where it was clear that they didn’t revise their standards and take a peek at new benchmarks, this just created a very stale environment in the classroom.

Rachel
The purpose of chapter 2 is to explain the concept of mastery. This is the process of assessing a student to determine his or her grasp of a particular subject. It is not meant to establish what a student knows, but what he /she understands. This chapter directly related to chapter 5 of Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design because it serves to establish a difference between knowledge and understanding and it discusses ways to assess students. In this chapter, the section on determining what is most important to teach stood out to me. It suggests resources and techniques to make this process easier. I know that this will be a challenge for me as a teacher, so it is a little reassuring to being worrying about this question now.

