The article “On Teaching for Understanding: A Conversation with Howard Gardner” stresses that most students don’t understand what they’ve been taught. That is, they can’t take the knowledge they learn in one setting and apply it in another setting. He goes on to say that the five-year-old has a terrific mind and he or she can figure out most things he/she needs to know to survive. He or she has answers to everything. To preserve imagination and questioning of a five-year-old and at the same time develop an understanding of correct facts and theories is indeed the challenge!
The greatest enemy of understanding if coverage. As long as we are determined to cover everything, we ensure that most kids are not going to understand anything. We have got to take enough time to get kids deeply involved in something so they can think about it in lots of different ways and apply it–not just at school but at home and on the street and so on. We should be approaching our thematic units and projects in compelling intriguing ways so the children will “hook” into our activities and become deeply involved so that understanding will come.
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