Teaching for Understanding 
Teaching for Understanding challenges students to connect learning to large scale themes that are central to the discipline being studied while enabling students to actively use knowledge and skills across disciplines in purposeful ways. For additional information, read How Teachers Recognize Student Understanding.
When does Teaching for Understanding take place in the Learning Experience?
- Understanding Goal shared with students
- Understanding and misconceptions assessed by teacher and/or learner
- Learners explain thinking
- Learners use knowledge to create a product or express a novel idea
Learn about Teaching for Understanding
- Creating Understanding Goals
- Goal Worksheet and Investigative Question Worksheet
- Best Instructional Practices Bulletin
Teaching for Understanding Online Bibliography
Perkins, D. Blythe, T.(1994). Putting Understanding Up Front. Educational Leadership. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online through the National Education Association.
ALPS Web site (Active Learning Practice for Schools). Teaching for Understanding Introduction. Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Project Zero.
Bransford , J., Brown, A. Cocking, R. (editors). (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. National Research Council.
Thinking Routines
Teachers need to make student thinking visible in the classroom to assess and foster the development of student understanding of the curriculum. "Thinking Routines" developed through research at Harvard's Graduate School of Education Project Zero. Primary sources provide many opportunties for students to practice thinking and for teachers to assess student thinking because primary sources require thoughtful interpretation. Learn more about making thinking visible and thinking routines at the following Web sites:
Artful Thinking
Alps: The Thinking Classroom
Read Learning Experiences that use Thinking Routines:
Math with a Civil War Map
Westward Expansion Mural: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Thinking
See How Model Activities Use this Best Instructional Practice
- "Images Draw You In" Model Activity (Workshop 1)
- "Sort-It-Out" Model Activity (Workshop 1)
- "Primary Source Investigations" Model Activity (Workshop 2)
- "Life in a Box" Model Activity (Workshop 3)
- "Zoom-In Inquiry" Model Activity (Workshop 4)
- "How Primary Sources Challenge Student Understanding" Model Activity (Workshop 5)
- Arts - "Moving Art" Model Activity
- Language Arts - Women's Writing
- Social Studies - Gettysburg Model Activity