Week #5 Application vs. Memorization

Discussion Point

From the readings this week, explain what you find to be the most potent concepts that can be transferred into your own teaching practices and why. Remember to respond to at least two of your peers.

Grant Wiggins brought up a lot of interesting points with Understandings by Design.  Teaching needs to be a collaborative effort not just one idea within a subject. 

The moment he brought up math I cringed, as someone who has never been “math person” I just don’t get it.  But what Wiggins said it doesn’t need to be memorization instead it’s the application.  That can be transferred into my teaching and that is what the Common Core is doing for students today.  Students don’t need to memorize facts and figures instead they need to apply their learning.  As a Kindergarten teacher a lot of what I teach is introductory skills and sometimes does require memorization.  Instead of just memorizing I have students show their thinking.  5+5=10, students can use cubes to show how 5 cubes plus 5 more cubes equal ten cubes.  Students need to show the real life application rather than just knowing the facts.

Juan Enriquez showed how everything we do is permanent like a tattoo.  It is scary to think that there is technology that can identify me in different places and locations.  Andy Warhol did have it wrong we aren’t famous for 15 minutes we are only anonymous for that long.  That is something that students even in Kindergarten need to understand.   We aren’t anonymous, there is someone always watching!