1. Understanding by Design “Backwards Design”
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

2. 3 Stages of Backward Design
Identify desired results
Determine acceptable evidence
Plan learning experiences & instruction.

3. Backward Design Backward Design focus:
Clarify results and evidence of them before designing lessons.
Teaching for understanding is the goal of teaching and compatible with standards-based curricula.
Backward Design is a way of thinking more carefully about design, not a program.

4. Backward Design
Thinking like an assessor, not only an activity designer, is key to effective design.
Overcoming the “twin sins” of “aimless activity” and “superficial coverage”.
The work is only “coverage” or “nice activity” unless focused on questions and big ideas, related to the Standards.

5. The Understanding
Insightful use of knowledge and skill, observable in performance
Essential for maximal recall and apt transfer of “content” to new situations
Reflective, recursive “spiral”
Conventional linear [textbook-driven] scope and sequence is a major impediment to developing understanding.

6. Stage 1 Identify desired results
Consists of four components
Content standards
Understandings
Essential questions
Knowledge and skills
Key: Focus on Big Ideas!

7. Some questions for identifying truly “big ideas”
Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious to the naïve or inexperienced person?
Does it yield optimal depth and breadth of insight into the subject?
Do you have to dig deep to really understand its meanings and implications even if you have a surface grasp of it?

8. Some questions for identifying truly “big ideas” cont.
Is it (therefore) prone to misunderstanding as well as disagreement?
Are you likely to change your mind about its meaning and importance over a lifetime?
Does it reflect the core ideas as judged by experts?

9. Avoid truisms, facts, definitions!
The Big Ideas
To determine the Big Ideas for your unit or course, ask yourself…
Why? So what?
What is the “moral of the story”?
How is _____ applied in the world beyond the classroom?
What couldn’t we do if we didn’t understand _____?
Avoid truisms, facts, definitions!

10. Essential questions Are arguable-and important to argue about.
Are at the heart of the subject.
Recur--and should recur--in professional work, adult life, as well as in the classroom inquiry.
Raise more questions-provoking and sustaining engaged inquiry.
Often raise important conceptual or philosophical issues.
Can provide purpose for learning.

11. Essential Questions
Designed to “uncover” new ideas, views, lines of argument.
Set up inquiry, heading to new understandings.
Open-ended.
Can’t be answered in a sentence.

12. Tips for Using Essential Questions
use Essential Questions to organize programs, courses, and units of study.
“less is more”
edit to make them “kid friendly”
post the questions

13. Knowledge and Skill
Students will know…
Students will be able to…

14. Stage 2 - Assessment Evidence
What are key complex performance tasks indicative of understanding?
What other evidence will be collected to build the case for understanding, knowledge, and skill.
How will students self-assess?

15. Stage 2 is the essence of backward design & alignment
“Measure what we value; value and act on what we measure.”
Link assessment types to curricular priorities

16. Assessment types Traditional Worth being quizzes& tests Familiar with
paper/pencil
selected-response
constructed response
Performance tasks
& projects
open-ended
complex
authentic
Worth being
Familiar with
Important to
know& do
Big Ideas
Worth
understanding

17. 2 Questions for a practical test of performance tasks:
Could the performance be accomplished (or the test be passed) without in-depth understanding?
Could the specific performance be poor, but the student still understand the ideas in question?
The goal is to answer NO to both!

18. Scenarios for Authentic Tasks
Build assessments anchored in authentic tasks using GRASPS:
G-What is the Goal in the scenario?
R-What is the Role?
A-Who is the Audience?
S-What is your Situation (context)?
P-What is the Performance challenge?
S-By what Standards will work be judged in the scenario?

19. Stage 3-Plan learning experience and instruction
A focus on engaging and effective learning, “designed in”
What learning experiences and instruction will promote the desired understanding, knowledge and skill?
How will you best promote the deepening of insight and interest?
How will you prepare students for the performance(s)?

20. Organize by W.H.E.R.E.
W = Where are we headed? and why? (from the student’s perspective)
H = How will the student be ‘hooked’?
E = What opportunities will there be to be equipped and explore key ideas.
R = How will we provide opportunities to rethink, rehearse, refine and revise?
E = How will students evaluate (so as to improve) their own performance?

21. For More Information
Wiggins, Grant & McTighe, Jay. Backward Design. New York: Prentice Hall