Why does it matter?
The YouthTruth Survey question “Does your teacher ask you if you understand what you are learning?” measures the effect of classroom procedures meant to help teachers check for understanding. When classrooms are teaching for understanding, students have opportunities to build and demonstrate their mastery over the concepts.
Project Zero: Teaching for Understanding
Teaching for understanding means that students are being led forward with thought-provoking strategies like asking them to explain their thinking, find evidence in examples, generalize, make analogies, and represent topics in a new way. How can we know that our teaching is focused on understanding? Tina Blythe and David Allen have created a checklist to help educators assess how well they are teaching for understanding.