2. Understanding by Design Ensuring Learning through Lesson Design
i.e. Backward Design
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

3. Big Idea …… “Making Best Practices, Common Practice”
We teach so that others may understand.
Our challenges:
Finding time to ‘teach all standards’ and maintain the rigor (teaching for understanding - not just ‘to cover’)
Making lessons meaningful
Engaging students in the learning process
Among a thousand other challenges!!!!!

4. Old saying….
“If you don’t know exactly where you are headed, then any road will get you there.”
Hopefully, we know where we are going when we begin a class or unit! (focused teaching!!!)
Thus, shouldn’t we know the road to take before we start?

5. Three Stages of UbD Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 1: Identify the Desired Results
Unpack the learning, prioritize learning goals, determine expectations ….
Clarify Learning Outcomes
Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction

6. “Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child’s education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible.”
-Whitehead, 1929

7. Understanding is the ability to transfer learning to new, different and unique experiences.”
Wiggins

8. A Big Idea … (bottom line)
Provides a ‘lens for prioritizing’
Serves as an organizer for facts, skills and actions … focusing on big ideas, helps students see purpose and relevance of pieces
Support Transference … create coherence
Manifest itself in many ways and in many content areas
Requires Uncovering - its meaning is abstract, so it must be discovered, constructed or inferred by learners
H-out from wkbk pp. 65,66,72

9. 2nd Component: Essential Questions
“To question means to lay open, to place in the open. Only a person who has questions can have real understanding.”
Gadamer, 1994

10. Essential Questions …
Have no simple ‘right answer; they are meant to be argued and discussed (discovered, uncovered)
Designed to provoke and sustain inquiry
Often address the foundational or historical issues of a subject
Lead to more questions
Naturally come back again when learning
Encourage ongoing re-thinking of big ideas, assumptions, prior learning (transference…)
Could be overarching or topical
Hand-outs: wkbk p. 83, 88, 92

11. 3rd Component - Desired Outcomes
Determine the Learning Goal (standard)
Clarify specifically what the student will know, understand, and be able to do (unpack the standards)
Referred to by others as KUD….

12. Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 1: Identify the Desired Results
Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
What evidence could be used to document and validate the learning that has been achieved
Evidence is gathered throughout the learning time - includes formative and not only summative assessments
Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction

13. Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction
Stage 1: Identify the Desired Results
Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction
What specific content and skills must be ‘taught’ to achieve desired results?
What is the best way to ‘teach’ the content and skills?
What resources will we need?
How much time might be required for learning?
"Reduce your plan to writing... The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire." - Napoleon Hill
Have template (blank and with example available at this point) as well as Standards for self-assessment
-ex within book p
-we don’t want to HOPE for learning!

14. Lasting thought ….
“For any subject taught in primary school, we might ask [is it] worth an adult’s knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult. A negative or ambiguous answer means the material is cluttering up the curriculum.”
Bruner, 1960

16. UbD - Stage 2
Assessment Evidence

17. Why Assess? Assessments are not just to provide a ‘grade’
Purpose of assessment:
Determine if learner ‘got it’……Gather evidence which demonstrates learning outcomes were achieved
Help teachers determine extent of student understanding
Guide next steps of instructions
Provide appropriate scaffolding/differentiated instruction for students throughout the learning experience
Provide feedback to stakeholders (students/parents)

18. Continuum of Assessments
Kinds of evidence …
Continuum of Assessments
Informal checks for understanding
Observations and dialogues
Performance tasks
Tests and quizzes
Academic prompts
Have participants brainstorm list of assessments which could be used …… then match with continuum (book p. 152)
*h-out p. 153 book

19. 6-Facets of Learning Bloom’s Taxonomy Knowledge Application Synthesis
Evaluation
Comprehension
Analysis
Know it
Can apply it
Heard of it
Can teach it
Emerging
Developing
Proficient
Advanced
6-Facets of Learning
Explain
Interpret
Self-knowledge
Perspective
Apply
Empathy

20. Stage 3
Designing the Lessons