Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe
Chapter 7: What is “Uncoverage”?
Created & Presented by Jane Cook,
EASTCONN Staff Development/Literacy & Technology Specialist
Mill #1, 322 Main Street
Willimantic, CT 06226
(860) 455-0707, ext. 3011
Essential Questions
What is uncoverage?What is the difference between covering
and uncovering the curriculum?How do we ensure depth and breadth in
curriculum design?
Enduring Understandings
Students will understand that uncoverage is essential for deep understanding.
Students will understand how to apply the concept of “uncoverage” to their curriculum design work.
Where Are We in the UBD Process?
Stage 3: Designing Learning Activities What learning experiences and teaching
promote understanding, interest and excellence? (p. 99)
What is “uncoverage”?
Uncovering and bringing abstract ideas and far-away facts to life
Helping students see learning as connected, not isolated from real life
Asking students to explain, interpret and apply knowledge
Simply put, “uncoverage” is a shorthand phrase for the results of inquiries, problems and arguments. (p. 99-100)
Why do we need to uncover?
To bring knowledge to lifeTo ensure that the learner, not the teacher,
makes the connectionsTo transform facts and ideas into meaningsWhen a teacher designs to “uncover”, s/he
provides materials, resources and learning activities that allow students to “connect the dots” to create their own meaning. (p. 101-103)
How do we design for “uncoverage”?
Through Depth
ANDThrough Breadth
(p. 101-102)
What is depth?
Going below the surface of a topicDigging deeperIn-depth is the opposite of superficial. Going
in-depth means designing curriculum that encourages students to dig deeply, explore important ideas and learn significant concepts. (p. 100-101)
What is breadth?
Freedom from narrownessWidening the lens Breadth means designing curriculum in which
students extend and connect facts and ideas into a meaningful whole. (p. 100-101)
How do we ensure depth & breadth?
For Depth Unearth it Analyze it Question it Prove it Generalize it
For Breadth Connect it Picture it Extend it
(p. 102)
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding
Facet 1: ExplanationGive students opportunities to build, test
and verify theories and explanations.Problem-based learning is a vehicle for this
process. (p. 105)
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding
Facet 2: InterpretationGive students opportunities to build their
own interpretations, translations and narratives from primary sources, events and experiences.
Oral histories, literary analyses, the case method and Socratic seminars support this facet. (p. 105)
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding
Facet 3: ApplicationGive students opportunities to apply what
they have learned in the classroom to real or realistic situations.
Real or simulated tasks, e.g., computer simulations and Odyssey of the Mind, support this facet. (p. 105)
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding
Facet 4: PerspectiveGive students opportunities to take multiple
points of view on the same issue.Studying the same event through different
texts; challenging assumptions, laws or postulates; and role-play are vehicles that support this facet. (p. 105)
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding
Facet 5: EmpathyGive students opportunities to confront a variety
of direct experiences, walk in other people’s shoes, and confront their assumptions.
To support this facet, give students direct experiences with the ideas in question and have them re-create different characters to simulate past events and attitudes. (p. 105)
Depth, Breadth and the 6 Facets of Understanding
Facet 6: Self-KnowledgeGive students opportunities to engage in
ongoing self-assessment about what they know and how they know it so that they will make their thinking explicit.
To support this facet, make self-assessment and self-adjustment a key part of instruction as well as assessment. (p. 105-106)
What’s the difference between covering and uncovering?Covering
Teacher presents information
Students read text Students answer end of
chapter questions Students take unit or
teacher-made test Teacher assesses
understanding
Uncovering Teacher assesses students'
knowledge of topic Teacher creates enduring
understandings, essential questions, rubrics & activities
Students participate in engaging, meaningful learning activities
Students produce real-world products/projects
Teacher assesses understanding
“No experience is educative that does not tend both to knowledge of more facts and entertaining of more ideas and to a better, a more orderly arrangement of them… Experiences, in order to be educative, must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter… This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.” Dewey, 1938
