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Abstract of Chapter 4 UbD/DI
In this chapter, the book discusses the most important part to teaching is not the curriculum itself, but the attitude that the learner and teacher puts on the material. This is the chapter that reveals that teachers should have real life explanations for the reason things happen. Once a student is able to put their all into a subject, since they know what they are doing is important, they will finally be able to learn. Teachers need not be able to give students less or more homework based upon how much the student is capable of completing. Instead entirely, the teacher needs to come up with different ways to teach a student that is not capable of learning it the way it is being presented at the moment. The most important part of teaching is being able to teach to all students. The ability to know your students inside and out is the biggest key to a teacher. A teacher is unable to teach effectively to a student that the teacher does not know how the student learns. Once the teacher is able to connect to a student true learning is able to take place. The teacher needs to also be able to be very specific and clear about what is being asked of the students. The key to this chapter is to make sure there is variety in your lesson.

[|Synthesis Zack] We as a class thought the main ideas of this chapter are that teaching is a responsibilty, we must be responsible for what our students learn, their successes as well as their failures. The class believes that we need to realize that we are not there to teach students, we are their to teach people, each one with a different meaning in life. There was an overall concensus of everyone that [|homework] cannot be piled on to the smart students, while lessened on the students that are struggling. We all agree that we must teach to the [|intelligences] of all the students, not just the ones which we believe will do the best. Variety in lesson plans, and ways we ask students to voice what they have learned is another major peice that came up in most people's works. Lastly quite a few people put clarity down, we as teachers must be aware of what we ask of the students, and we need to make sure the students know exactly what is being asked of them.

**Amy**
Chapter 4 Chapter four starts out by discussing the most crucial parts of planning for student success. Successful planning calls for content knowledge of the teacher. A teacher that is not sure of what to teach and/or that does not have a clear understanding of the topic can hinder the learning of her students. When teachers feel comfortable teaching a lesson, they are more likely to allow options for student work (reports, and projects). The chapter goes on to address the issue of variety in planning. All students should be allowed the chance to learn solid material in his/her own way. It was found that most teachers would like to teach using a variety of strategies to target the needs of every student, however, most teachers do not actually practice strategies that reflect variety in the classroom. A common strategy teachers’ use in the classroom to meet the needs of his/her students that struggle, and those who are ahead, is the “more or less” approach. The “more or less” approach occurs when a student/s struggles, and the teacher’s solution is to give less work about the same material. For students that are ahead of the class, some teachers will pile on the homework. The problem is that if a student does not understand something, less work just means he/she will not understand the subject, but with less work, and vice versa for students that fully understand the material. That approach does nothing for any of the parties involved.

Andy
Chapter 4 The way the chapter highlights important characteristics one should be aware of and conscience of while teaching followed by examples and a scenario was great. There were a few of these characteristics were new to me. One of these is the section on Helping Students Become Effective Partners in Their own Success. Being a student I have always seen the teacher as the leader of class. What he/she says go and we have no say in anything. Having the students take part in their own learning will give them some stock in their learning. Not all students will understand that but it will give the opportunity to take their learning into their own hands, to some extent. Going into teaching this will be tough work into units, but to me it sounds as though at a high school level it will make the classroom less stressful for the students and make lesson go more smoothly.

Zack
Chapter 4: What Really Matters in Planning for Student Success? This chapter coincides with that of the multiple intelligences, variety. When planning a chapter to teach to a student the chapter should not be taught just in lesson. Each lesson plan should have at least some type of variety in it so that people of other intelligences can take away a meaningful part of that lesson. Students should know that they have more power than they think they have, give them some control in the classroom and there will be positive outcome for everyone. Teachers should not consider giving more homework as an effective way to teach. The more homework that is given does not mean the more good practice a student gets. If a student does not know how to a question on number one by doing number three does not increase the amount the student knows just how much work the student has to do.

George
Chapter 4- This chapter introduced the books model of how to be a good teacher. What I was surprised about was the fact that a lot of the concepts were related to the MEL model that we have been learning about in Dr. Theresa's class. The main similarities included creating a good learning environment, accepting responsibility for a student's success and biggest of all, being sensitive to the fact that not all students learn the same way and that you need to have a variety of tools in the bag to help communicate concepts.

Cassie
Chapter 4: This chapter goes hand in hand with the multiple intelligences. We need to make our goals applicable to everyone, not just the linguistic learners in English and the logistical learners in Mathematics. When trying to help students reach the goals we set for them, our lessons and assessments need to be friendly to all of the different kinds of learners as well. If the student understands the unit, yet is being tested in a way that he/she struggles with, than we can’t fully know how well we taught our lessons. Of course that also means that we need to be teaching our lessons in a way that meets all of the students.

Damian
UbD & DI; Chapter 4 I thought I understood the "Accepting Responsibility for Learner Success" point, but I realized that I did not when I read page 44. It explains students in a way that I had not previously considered. Each student is sent to their teachers by someone who has to trust that the teacher will realize the worth of the child. Too often teacher's think of the student as an individual alone without considering that there exists a whole family of caring (we all hope) people behind them who see a side of the student we rarely get to see. Thinking of the student as a person as opposed to just someone to be taught influences the level to which we as teachers decide to educate.

Dan
In chapter four we are given scenarios in each of the talents for teachers who can help all students learning abilities in their class. In all the cases given the teacher has a wide array of learning abilities and learning styles. One of the most important things I learned was that quantity of work does not directly correlate with student’s ability to work, and knowledge of the work’s topic. No matter the classes array of learning skills, the teacher must have all students being able to grasp the same ideas by the end of the unit. The idea of the content is much more important for the student to learn than the actual content. If the student can relate the content to their life and understand it, than they have grasped the content.

Liz
Chapter four requires me to ponder what is important in the classroom. The answer: the students. Not only the students but each person. The chapter further explains that teachers know what needs to happen but lack the ability to get their classrooms differentiated. I can also understand that there is a failure in a plan to decrease the workload for struggling students and to increase it for students who have mastered a section. I particularly like where it suggested that teachers who do differentiate their classrooms are always looking for one more way to explore an option. This all sums up into a particular phrase that baffled me for most of the chapter: teacher clarity. Teacher Clarity is where a teacher is clear in their expectations but also clear in their expectations **AND** set with a well laid lesson plan.

Jennifer
Chapter 4 UbDDI

To become a responsive teacher, one that helps learners, there are certain skills we must develop. Understanding that we cannot teach everything and instead teaching what would be most useful to students, is something I would like to practice as a teacher and instead focus on the broader topics instead of all the details. Not only can we not teach everything, but students cannot possibly learn or remember everything. Creating a comfortable classroom environment where everyone respects and is respected is important and will benefit the learning of students. I want to teach my students to accept everyone's individual learning style and not be judgmental or critical of others opinions and ideas. Teachers should be flexible about lessons and teaching routines and if something is not working be able to change it and do something else. Also I want to teach using many different instructional strategies and create lessons that apply to many different intelligences.

Brian
We learn from chapter four that there are many ways in which we as teachers can succeed and also fail. However by understanding ourselves as well as our very important curriculum we can reach our students with ease. We must stay flexible in the classroom, be fun and pleasant. We must be respectful, and develop methods that can successfully build management skills, team-working skills, but always keeping sight of the curriculum set by the school.

Ethan
This section gives the reader a bunch of different ways to insure that each and every student has the best possible experience in your class. There are lists of ways to insure learning takes place throughout the chapter. Things like developing routines in the classroom to make the students as comfortable as possible stick out of my in chapter four. The author list scenarios for each point they talk about and these situations are ones that I can reflect upon to help myself become a better teacher personally. However, that is not to say that all of what I learning in this chapter will not also be applied to my classroom.

Darren
When teachers give struggling students less work than others, they are not “differentiating” for the kids that are struggling. In fact, this can have an adverse effect. Students that see themselves as inferior because of shortened assignments and less homework may crawl deeper into any shell they previously had. Furthermore, this way of separating a classroom has negative effects on both the underachieving and excelling kids. This is true because teachers who give struggling kids less work give advanced students more work to do, but the work is not different. It is more of the same. In effect, these teachers drone effective students in monotony. My job will be to find ways to keep both underachieving and excelling students engaged, active, and participating. This is probably the part of teaching I am most scared of; I have no idea how to do it. I can’t wait to learn how, and after that, I’ll be very confident in my abilities of teaching.

Sean
Chapter 4

One big thing this chapter made me think about early on was that while an entertaining class is more likely to keep the students attention where I want it, it doesn't necessarily guarantee that they'll actually take something out of the lesson. I need to make my lessons very important content, while balancing it with some sort of mode of teaching it that can keep the students attention on the lesson at hand. Then it goes into scenarios later to help with possible scenarios down the road. There was a scenario for "Building Awareness of What Works for Each Student" which goes into detail about how teachers should take the effort to learn more about their students. This, as well as the other scenarios, are great tools for helping me make my lessons more tuned towards my students so they can walk away from my class and say they learned something.

Josh
The beginning of chapter 4 discusses teaching for understanding which means “to provide the sort of intellectual diet that yields thoughtful, capable, confident learners-and citizens.” The idea behind this is that we are not just teachers of academic students, we are teachers of human beings. There are nine skills that define the type of teacher that helps all learners, the thought being that the more professional a teacher is in all of the areas, the more successful students are likely to be as learners. I liked the quote, “It is not helpful to struggling students to do less of what they do not grasp. Nor is it helpful to advanced students to do more of what they already understood before they began the task.” I feel that is not always the belief for some teachers. Making sure the student understands what is being taught is the key to this chapter. A teacher needs to be clear about understandings of a unit in order for the student to learn. The chapter ended with discussing how a teacher can expand their teaching strategies. When a teacher uses different teaching strategies, tasks become more engaging.