1. Understanding by Design
the ‘big ideas’
of UbD

2. 3 Stages of (“Backward”) Design
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
Earlier this week (today) you were introduced the ASCD Online Professional Development Course, “The Backward Design Process”, and asked to begin work on Lessons 1 – 4, so you are already aware that this design model includes three stages of development.
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction

3. The stages are logical but they go against habits
Why “backward”?
The stages are logical but they go against habits
We’re used to jumping to lesson and activity ideas - before clarifying our performance goals for students
By thinking through the assessments upfront, we ensure greater alignment of our goals and means, and that teaching is focused on desired results
Why “backward”? Because for most of us, this design model asks us to re-examine our curriculum development practices and to look at them in different light.

4. Understanding by Design Template
Unit Template
Overarching understandings
Knowledge and skill to be acquired
Essential Questions
The UBD template embodies the 3 stages of “Backward Design”
The DDN Curriculum site provides an easy mechanism for exchange of ideas.
The curriculum design template we’ll be using to develop our unit includes the three stages of the backward design process, and the DDN Curriculum Lesson Plan Bank where our units will be posted on the world wide web, is based on the same format and provides for the exchange of ideas.

5. Misconception Alert: the work is non-linear!
Misconception Alert: the work is non-linear
It doesn’t matter where you start as long as the final design is coherent (all elements aligned)
Clarifying one element or Stage often forces changes to another element or Stage
The template “blueprint” is logical but the process is non-linear (think: home improvement!)
It is important to remember that this design process is not linear and it is not necessary to complete the template “in order”. While we are working through the process in a linear fashion our first time through it, as you become more familiar with the process you’ll find there are many doorways to successful design that you may start with. For example, you may find that you are most comfortable beginning with content standards, performance goals, a key activity or resource, a required assessment, an important skill or process, a big idea that is often misunderstood, or an existing unit or lesson that you wish to edit. You will also find that as we work through the three stages, new insights gained from the processes will prompt revisions of areas previously addressed.

6. You’ve got to go below the surface...
The biggest thing to remember is that….

7. to uncover the really ‘big ideas.’
The Backward Design model provides a practical framework for designing curriculum, instruction and assessment to make student learning more likely and to ensure the really big ideas are ‘uncovered’.

8. 3 Stages of Design, elaborated
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
Let’s take a closer look at Stage 1 which involves identifying the desired result of what students should know, understand and be able to do.
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction

9. Stage 1 – Identify desired results.
Key: Focus on Big ideas
Enduring Understandings: What specific insights about big ideas do we want students to leave with?
What essential questions will frame the teaching and learning, pointing toward key issues and ideas, and suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into content?
What should students know and be able to do?
What content standards are addressed explicitly by the unit? U Q
Specifically, we will focus on identifying the enduring understandings, essential questions, the knowledge and skills we want students to achieve and the content standards that will be explicitly addressed by the unit. K CS

10. Establishing Priorities
Knowledge that is worth being familiar with
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
“Enduring” understanding
Knowledge and skills that are important to know and do
Because there is typically more content than can be reasonably addressed within the available instructional time, we are obligated to make choices and to establish curricular priorities. Lesson 3 of your ASCD Professional Development course asks you to use the framework of concentric circles as a framework for decision making in this regard. We’re going to get a head start on the process. (Wkst 4.1 Establishing Curricular Priorities) Think of your unit and with the outermost circle begin identify the knowledge that students should be familiar with. During the proposed unit, what do you want students to read, hear, view, research or otherwise encounter? Using the middle ring, sharpen your choices by specifying important knowledge (facts, concepts and principles) and skills (processes, strategies and methods). These are the “essentials” the prerequisite knowledge and skills that students need in order to successfully accomplish key performances. The smallest, innermost ring, requires us to really focus on our intellectual priorities. Here we select the enduring understandings that will anchor or unit and establish a rationale for it. Here we will consider the larger purpose for learning the targeted content. Ask yourself: What is it that I really want students to “get a hold of” and retain long after the minor details may have been forgotten. What is it that I want them to remember 5 years from now? What is it that I want them to be able to apply outside of school? You may wish to consider the prompts provided on Handout 1 to help you focus on your unit. When you’ve completed your initial brainstorming, use the filtering criteria (Wkst 4.2) to further target your possible understandings. (Support Material: Handout 1)
Understandings that are enduring

11. Taking a Closer Look at Understandings: They are...
specific generalizations about the “big ideas.” They summarize the key meanings, inferences, and importance of the ‘content’
Require “uncoverage” because they are not “facts” to the novice, but unobvious inferences drawn from facts - counter-intuitive & easily misunderstood
deliberately framed as a full sentence “moral of the story” – “Students will understand THAT…”
Rephrase you understandings as full sentences – “Students will understand that…”.
In small groups, share your desired understandings and discuss the extent to which they are enduring.

12. Six Facets of Understanding
Explain - provide thorough, supported, and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts and data
Interpret - tell meaningful stories; offer apt translations; provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make it personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models.
Apply - effectively use and adapt what is known in diverse contexts.
Perspective - can see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture.
Empathize - find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior direct experience.
Self-Knowledge - perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; having an awareness of what one does not understand and why understanding is so hard
A key design strategy for engaging student inquiry, uncovering subtle ideas, and developing understanding is to build curriculum around the kinds of questions that gave rise to the content knowledge in the first place. Such questions help in designing a curriculum that is more coherent, making the student’s role more inquisitive and in focusing the teacher’s priorities. Wiggins and McTighe suggest that students who have complete and mature understandings are able to explain, interpret and apply concepts while showing insight from perspective, empathy and self-knowledge. While generating possible essential questions, it is helpful to take these facets into consideration.

13. Brainstorming Essential Questions Based On the Facets
Interpretation Explanation Application
critique describe build
illustrate express create
judge justify design
translate predict perform
provide metaphors synthesize solve
assume role of be aware of analyze
consider realize argue
imagine recognize compare
relate reflect contrast
role-play self-assess infer
Empathy Self-Knowledge Perspective
Using Wkst 6.3 brainstorm possible essential questions for your unit. Some of the key performance verbs for each facet are listed as reference points.

14. Provocative Essential Questions
Have no one obvious right answer.
Raise other important questions.
Address the philosophical or conceptual foundations of a discipline.
Recur naturally.
Are framed to provoke and sustain student interest.
In small groups, share your essential questions and consider the characteristics of essential questions. Refine your questions as appropriate.

15. SD Content Standards
Goals - the "end results" of what we expect after thirteen years of content study
Indicators - further define the goals and provide the targets and anchors for instructional levels
Benchmarks - articulate what the goal and indicator represent at the different developmental levels, providing the targets for student performance
Standards - represent the classroom learning objectives or activities to help students reach the expectations articulated in the benchmarks, indicators, and goals
Refer to the SD CONTENT STANDARDS GOAL, INDICATOR, BENCHMARK, GRADE LEVEL STANDARD DEFINITIONS AND RELATION TO UBD INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN document. Visit the content standards on line: Select a core content area (language arts, social studies, science or mathematics) and choose the “Technical Guide” to demonstrate how to ‘drill down into’ the standards to be able to specifically identify them by Goal, Indicator, Benchmark and Grade Level Standard.

16. Identify the Content Standards for your Unit
By Goal, Indicator, Benchmark
3-5 for a 6 week unit of study
Remember these are the “Big Ideas” specifically addressed by teaching and learning experiences in the unit.
Specific knowledge and skills (grade level standards)will also be listed on the design template.
Ask participants to begin identifying the standards that will be specifically addressed by their unit. Only those standards that will be explicitly focused on in teaching and learning activities for mastery should be identified. (Handouts 2 and 3)

17. Test Design Against Standards
To what extent are the targeted understandings:
* Enduring
* Framed as Generalizations
* Framed by Provocative Essential Questions
Use the Design Standards (Figure 20.1) to review your own work for Stage 1. Consider the indicators of understanding and effective essential questions provided in Tests 1, 2 and 3 as you judge your work. (Keep in mind that as further development of your unit occurs, Stage 1 development activities can be revisited and modified. By judging your work against the standards as you work, you’ll know which areas you wish to further develop.)

18. Reflection - Stage 1 Choose 1 to answer individually.
Share response with your team.
Team selects 2 to share with group.
I was surprised…
I have been wondering…
I realized that…
Today I learned...
A quick check to see how everyone is doing with the information so far.
Follow-up assignment: Work on completing Lessons 1-4 of the ASCD Professional Development course, “The Backward Design Process”. Use initial findings and developments for Stage 1 to begin adding curriculum pieces to the curriculum design template.

19. 3 Stages of Design: Stage 2
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
Let’s move right along into Stage 2: Determining Acceptable Evidence of Understanding.
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction

20. Just because the student “knows it” …
Evidence of understanding is a greater challenge than evidence that the student knows a correct or valid answer
Understanding is inferred, not seen
It can only be inferred if we see evidence that the student knows why (it works) so what? (why it matters), how (to apply it) – not just knowing that specific inference
What is evidence of in-depth understanding, as opposed to superficial or naïve understanding? Where should we look, and what should we look for to determine the extent of student understanding? What kinds of assessment evidence will anchor our curricular units and guide our instruction?

21. Reliability: Snapshot vs. Photo Album
We need patterns that overcome inherent measurement error
Sound assessment (particularly of State Standards) requires multiple evidence over time - a photo album vs. a single snapshot
When planning to collect evidence of understanding, teachers should consider a range of assessment methods.

22. For Reliability & Sufficiency: Use a Variety of Assessments
Varied types, over time:
authentic tasks and projects
academic exam questions, prompts, and problems
quizzes and test items
informal checks for understanding
student self-assessments
These might include…

23. Curricular Priorities and Assessment Methods
Assessment Types
Traditional quizzes and tests
Paper-pencil
Selected-response
Constructed-response
Performance tasks and projects
Open-ended
Complex
Authentic
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
“Enduring” understanding
In effective assessments, we see a match between the type or format of the assessment and the achievement target it tends to measure. If the goal is for students to learn basic concepts and skills, then written tests and quizzes generally provide adequate and efficient measures. When the goal, however, is deep understanding, we need to rely on more complex assessment methods to determine if the goal has been reached.

24. Assessment of Understanding Brainstorming….
Using the Facets of Understanding
Considering a Range of Evidence
Determining Possible Performances
Use the prompts provided in Figure 9.7 to brainstorm ways that students might reveal their understanding of a topic within your unit. Then, brainstorm types of evidence that might be most useful, insightful, and fair in providing a sufficient range of evidence (Worksheet 7.1).

25. Scenarios for Authentic Tasks
Build assessments anchored in authentic tasks using GRASPS:
What is the Goal in the scenario?
What is the Role?
Who is the Audience?
What is your Situation (context)?
What is the Performance challenge?
By what Standards will work be judged in the scenario? G R A S
Assessment for understanding must be grounded in performance-based tasks and projects that are as authentic as possible. An assessment grounded in authentic work call for students (and teachers) to learn two important points. First, they must learn how adults in the world beyond school use the knowledge and skills that are being taught and learned. Second, students must learn why individual lessons to develop discrete knowledge and skills are meaningful – how such work leads to mastery of more complex and interesting performance tasks. Considering the prompts for constructing a performance task (Wkst 9.1) use the planning matrix (Wkst 9.3) to brainstorm possible performance task scenarios for your unit. Decide on a title for your task and rewrite your task as a performance vignette. (Refer to models on pages ) P S

26. A Performance Task is Authentic if it…
Is realistic.
Requires judgment and innovation.
Asks a student to “do” the subject.
Replicates or simulates the contexts in which adults are tested in the workplace.
Assess a student’s ability to efficiently and effectively use a repertoire of knowledge and skills to negotiate a complex task.
Allows appropriate opportunities to rehearse, practice, and consult resources; obtain feedback on performances; and refine performances and products.
Within small groups or teams share vignettes and identify how the tasks reflect the characteristics of an authentic task.

27. Rubrics,Checklists and Other Evidence
UBD Templates
Holistic Frame
Analytic Frame
Analytic Frame for the Facets
RubiStar
PBL Checklists
QuizStar
In selecting, revising or designing rubrics, checklists and other evidence of understanding, you may wish to utilize the UBD templates provided within the Understanding by Design Handbook and/or the online tools made available by High Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium.

28. Test Design Against Standards
To what extent do the assessment provide:
* Valid and Reliable Measures
* Authentic Performance Task Opportunities
* Sufficient and Varied Information
Use the Design Standards (Figure 20.1) to review your own work for Stage 2. Consider the indicators of valid performance tasks, authentic performance tasks and of sufficient evidence provided in Tests 4, 5 and 6 as you judge your work.

29. Reflection - Stage 2 Choose 1 to answer individually.
Share response with your team.
Team selects 2 to share with group.
I find it interesting that...
I have been wondering…
Today’s activities caused me to think differently about __ because...
Today I learned...
A quick check to see how everyone is doing with the information so far.
Follow-up assignment: Work on completing Lessons 1-4 of the ASCD Professional Development course, “The Backward Design Process” and begin Lesson 5. Use initial findings and developments for Stage s to add curriculum pieces to the curriculum design template.
Follow-up assignment: Work on completing Lessons 1-4 of the ASCD Professional Development course, “The Backward Design Process”. Use initial findings and developments for Stage 1 to begin adding curriculum pieces to the curriculum design template.

30. 3 Stages of Design: Stage 3
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
Ready for Stage 3: Planning Learning Experiences and Instruction
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction

31. Stage 3 big idea: and N G A G IN G E F C T I V E
As we begin planning learning experiences and instruction, we’ll want to ensure that work is both engaging and effective in leading towards maximum achievement. Use Wkst 12.1 and 12.2 to identify conditions and criteria for engaging and effective design. Then, in a small group discussion, use Wkst 12.3 to show the relationship between engaging and effective work. (Support Materials: Handouts 4, 5 and 6)

32. Taking a Closer Look at... Coverage vs. Uncoverage
Misunderstanding and
Misconceptions
Considering what needs to be uncovered is vital when designing curriculum because big ideas are often subtle, abstract and unobvious. Simply covering the material leaves students to guess what is most important. There are several exercises to assist designers in thinking through the coverage vs. uncoverage dilemma. (Participants may wish to refer to the UBD Handbook, pages )
Students often leave school with misunderstandings about what they (we thought) they learned. After stating an understanding target as a set of possible generalizations, educators can better appreciate the importance of confronting student misconceptions in assessment and lesson design. The challenge is to better anticipate misunderstandings and attack them more aggressively in our design work, not just as they arise and surprise our teaching. Use Wkst 14.1 to consider the types of ideas that typically confuse students and frequently cause misunderstandings. Then, consider the likely misunderstandings for your own unit of study. (Wkst 14.2 and 14.3)

33. Think of your obligations via W. H. E. R. E. T. O.
“Where are we headed?” (the student’s Q!)
How will the student be ‘hooked’?
What opportunities will there be to be equipped, and to experience and explore key ideas?
What will provide opportunities to rethink, rehearse, refine and revise?
How will students evaluate their work?
How will the work be tailored to individual needs, interests, styles?
How will the work be organized for maximal engagement and effectiveness? H E R E
With clearly specified understanding targets and assessments, we can now begin to identify instructional activities and sequence to make performance success most likely. Wiggins and McTighe use the acronym WHERETO to guide teachers on where to focus their efforts. All of these elements may not be needed in each unit, but as design guidelines and self-assessment criteria, they alert us to considering students as would=be performers. Use Handout 7 to consider these elements for you unit, then discuss the considerations with a partner or small group. T O

34. Test Design Against Standards
To what extent will students:
* Know where they are headed and why?
* Be hooked?
* Explore and experience key ideas?
* Reflect and Rethink?
* Evaluate their own work?
* Have work tailored to meet their needs?
* Participate in learning activities organized to be engaging and effective?
Use the Design Standards (Figure 20.1) to review your own work for Stage 3. Consider the indicators provided in Tests as you judge your work.

35. Reflection - Stage 3 Choose 1 to answer individually.
Share response with your team.
Team selects 2 to share with group.
I feel comfortable with...
I would like to learn more about...
I am still unclear or unsure about...
I realize I need to take a closer look at...
A quick check to see how everyone is doing with the information so far.
Follow-up assignment: Work on completing Lessons 1-5 of the ASCD Professional Development course, “The Backward Design Process” and begin Lesson 6. Use findings and developments for Stages to add curriculum pieces to the curriculum design template.

36. Areas needing improvement
Peer Review
Consider….
Strengths
Areas needing improvement
Feedback
Guidance
The primary purpose of peer review is to provide feedback to designers to help them improve their unit designs. Review sessions also provide the opportunity to share and discuss curriculum and assessment with colleagues providing a powerful approach to professional development because the conversations focus on the heart of teaching and learning. Use Wkst 21.1 and 21.2 to review your overall unit design with a peer or small group.

37. NBPTS
In what ways
does the Backward Design Process support the Five Core Propositions of “What Accomplished Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do”?
Consider each of the design stages and identify the core propositions (and key points of each) that are addressed through the backward design process. Discuss your findings.