This document discusses teaching for understanding and meaningful learning. It argues that students learn best when they actively construct knowledge rather than having information imposed on them. Teachers should create opportunities for students to think critically and engage in performances of understanding like applying concepts and working through ideas over an extended period. When students can generalize, find examples, and carry out applications on their own, it shows they have moved beyond rote memorization to true understanding.

1. Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program Student: Jacqueline Blanco Carranza Seminar: ESL Research Methods and Assessment Instructor: Nora Elbilawi October 8th, 2009.

2. Based on links within the following sites, how might you increase your students' understanding of what they learn? "http://www.weac.org/resource/june96/under.htm" Teaching for Understanding: Educating Students for Performance "http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/math/teach.html" Teaching for Meaningful Understanding

3. “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught” (Oscar Wilde) Teaching for understanding is to believe in the capacity of student to create, to construct knowledge and to assign meaning to what they have learned and experienced. Constructivism. The importance of this form of teaching lies in its potential to enhance the kinds of cognitive outcomes for students Students develop new knowledge through a process of active construction.

4. When we as teachers impose our order on students, we rob them of the opportunity to create knowledge and understanding themselves. Understanding is not a given nor is it static; it is the product of human agency. Our beliefs about "how schools ought to be" are in tension with new expectations of "what schools ought to accomplish.“ Students need to think for themselves. Critical Thinking

5. If understanding a topic means building up performances of understanding around that topic, the basis of learning for understanding must be actual engagement in those performances. The learners must spend the larger part of their time with activities that ask them to generalize, find new examples, carry out applications, and work through other understanding performances. The teacher must arrange for the students to think with and about the ideas they are learning for an extended period of time, so that they learn their way around a topic. Teachers have to make learning a long-term, thinking-centered process.

6. “Much learning does not teach understanding” (Heraclitus) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfloUd3eO_M&feature=PlayList&p=F8344EC9CBB1B78E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=37 Thank you!