Chapter Six: Responsive Teaching with UbD

Chapter Six of UbD/DI was mostly a series of tables offering instructional and management strategies. Mortimer Adler’s division of the teacher’s three key instructional roles (direct instructor, facilitator, and coach) makes a lot of sense, and the table that offers the students counterroles to each of the teacher’s roles. Since we’re doing all of this Stage 1 and Stage 2 stuff, I thought it was a really interesting idea to share the information on our sheets with the students – after all, making education a series of surprises for students doesn’t seem to make that much sense now that I think about it. The idea of flexibly using classroom elements as a way to address student needs was interesting too, especially on the topic of space. I was really struck with the efficiency of clustering learning needs together and addressing them as groups. It looks like a lot of work, but using these elements in my classroom will be really helpful.