FIAE Chapter 2

Chapter two helps define mastery, how it relates to differentiation, and how it affects grades. One of the main ways to determine if students fully understand, or have a mastery of material, is to use the six facets of understanding. I feel like the six facets of understanding are useful in determining how a teacher can assess how much their students understand, but I feel like some of the facets aren’t used as regularly in the classroom. To me, the facets of understanding are more about mastering a subject, which makes sense because that’s what the chapter is about, but that students can still understand a topic, even if they can’t do all six. I feel like this relates to what the chapter was saying about assessment because, when deciding on what assessment to use, or how appropriate an assessment is, it only relates to how the assessment is highlighting the essential questions. In most assessments, the material is presented as an interpretation and, sometimes, how it applies to the outside world. That’s only using two of the six facets. Although I think the chapter is trying to say that in order to properly assess, a teacher needs to understand how to get their students to master the material first, I don’t actually know if assessments are determining if they know all six. Although it’s still slightly vague, the chapter did make a good point in saying, “We have to be clear as to what is evidence of mastery versus evidence of almost-mastery mixed with a lot of hard work.” (18) I hope that the next chapter further explains how to properly assess whether or not a student has mastered the content.