In the process of “checking for understanding”, there are a few things teachers tend to look for..
When faced with a “problem”
1. Do you know exactly what you’re dealing with?
2. Do you know where to begin?
3. Are you familiar with all of the steps it takes to solve it?
4. How do you know your end result is correct?
A good teacher wants to make sure you are comfortable and confident with answering these four fundamental questions before proceeding to the next topic. They want to know if you really know how to “do this”! Otherwise, we are just covering material.
Unfortunately, when for the sake of time, we have to move on, all students in a given class may not understand everything as we would like. For whatever reason, some student(s) didn’t “get it”. Some, because they were not even trying to get it. They are not motivated to learn it. Others, motivated by fear of falling, don’t “get it” because they were really only interested in the quickest and easiest way to arrive at the end result. They just don’t want to “fail”. Therefore, they really don’t understand the process of how to arrive at the right answer, why the answer is correct, nor why the process of arriving at the answer even works. They are not studying, they are copying the process being shown. They may even be “guessing their way” to the correct answer based on what they knew beforehand. These students may be able to give you the correct answer, but they themselves will not be 100% sure if the answer they gave is actually correct. Nor will they be able to explain why their answer is correct and what it means with respect to the problem given.
When students only follow the process you show them (which may be needed in the beginning, by the way…) but never want to know “why” the answer is what it is, or why the way works the way it does, they are not really studying. It’s easier to just follow the instructions of another than to do the work of UNDERSTANDING when you are really not interested in the subject matter at hand.
There is a method of “checking for understanding” where you can present a student with a problem along with the answer to the problem up front. When you give a student the answer to a problem, their task is to figure out the process it took to obtain it and explain the process to you. The hope is that during the process of figuring out “how” to get the answer, they solidify within themselves the steps of the process, “why” the answer given is in fact the correct answer and why the process they used to solve the problem works
Another more traditional way to check for understanding is for the student to be presented a problem that they have already been shown “how” to solve and verify. It is their task to trust what you showed them, follow it to the “T” and arrive at the correct answer. Through sheer repetition, (and having been given a variety of different expressions of the same type of problem to practice..) the hope is that, by arriving at the correct answer, they’ve shown (1) recognition of the type of problem they’re facing and (2) that they understand at least the steps involved in solving it.
In either case, the end result is NOT the answer, the understanding of the “mechanics” behind the process is. If you understand the Principles that makeup the process of solving one problem, you can use the same Principles to solve any problem of that type that is out there.
God is constantly “checking our understanding” when it comes to our lives and whether or not we know “where we are” and “what we are doing”. He is not just looking for the correct “end result”. He is looking for the true UNDERSTANDING that produces it. So, with all of our “getting”…
Jason C. Smith
jasoncsmith.org
Jason C. Smith 