1. GPS, Essential Questions, and Word Walls…
…taking the first steps toward backward design.

2. Partner Organizer
Chat with a few neighbors and share your most recently read novel, a vacation destination from the summer, and a favorite dessert.

3. Paired Verbal Fluency- Thoughts on Backward Design
Set up: Students Pair, decide who will be 1 and in each pair. Announce topic.
Round 1: Talks 2 Listens 45 seconds
Switch roles
Round 2: remembers more ideas
2 Listens seconds
Switch roles
Repeat for
Round 3: seconds
Process or Write:
Things you and your partner shared
Ideas shared that need clarification
Questions about the topic

4. Essential Questions
How do skillful teachers deliver instruction at the level requested in the GPS?
How do you move from a content standard to a well crafted essential question?

5. Beginning with Standards
Georgia Standards
Quality Core Curriculum
Georgia Performance Standards
National Standards
Cobb Standards
Resources to access standards
PICASSO
Course Guides
Unit Outlines
Exemplary units
Resources

6. How do you move from a content standard to a well crafted essential question?
Questions
Identify
Understanding
Standards

7. What comes first… learning or understanding?

8. Standards/Picasso/GPS
Begin with your standards
Consider your learning goals before creating lessons or activities
Worth Being familiar with
Important to know
Look at your standards for the unit you are going to teach as a group.
Enduring Understanding

9. Begin with NOUNS and VERBS
Decide What Students
Must Know and How They Are to Demonstrate Knowledge

10. Unpacking a standard: 4th grade Science Strand: Physical Science
S4E3 States of Water, Water Cycle, and Weather Students will differentiate between the states of water and how they relate to the water cycle and weather.
Element: S4E3a States of Matter (Water)
a. Demonstrate how water changes states from solid (ice) to liquid (water) to gas (water vapor/steam) and changes from gas to liquid to solid.
Element: S4E3b Freezing/Boiling Temperatures of Water
b. Identify the temperatures at which water becomes a solid and at which water becomes a gas.

11. Unpacking a standard: 4th grade Science Strand: Physical Science
S4E3 States of Water, Water Cycle, and Weather Students will differentiate between the states of water and how they relate to the water cycle and weather.
Element: S4E3a States of Matter (Water)
a. Demonstrate how water changes states from solid (ice) to liquid (water) to gas (water vapor/steam) and changes from gas to liquid to solid.
Element: S4E3b Freezing/Boiling Temperatures of Water
b. Identify the temperatures at which water becomes a solid and at which water becomes a gas.

12. S2P1 Properties of Matter and Changes in Objects
4th grade science
Standard
Verbs (How students will show what is required)
Nouns (What students are required to know)
S4E3 States of Water, Water Cycle, and Weather
Differentiate
~relates
Demonstrate
~change in state
Identify
Becomes
states of water
Water cycle
Weather
Solid, liquid, gases
Temperatures
(Water)-Solid and Gas

13. Unpacking your standard…
Take a few minutes to …
Circle the verbs
Underline nouns

14. Create a Graphic Organizer
If done by teacher, can be used by students as a preview
If done by students can be used as a word wall

15. S4E3 States of Water, Water Cycle, and Weather Differentiate
Demonstrate
Relation
Weather
Water Cycle
Changes in States
Identify
Solid
Temperatures
Gas
Liquid

16. Your Turn! Think- Pair- Share!
Step 1: Review the standard identify nouns and verbs on your own.
Step 2: Pair up to create a concept map.
Step 3: Share your map with the class!

17. How do you move from a content standard to a well crafted essential question?
Questions
Identify
Understanding
Standards

18. What Is Understanding? Understanding is different than knowledge
Understanding is fluid, transferable to new contexts and transformable into new theory
Mere knowledge can be rote, understanding provides insight

19. Stage One Content Standards to Understandings
When writing understandings, ask yourself these questions:
What are the enduring understanding I want my students to take away from this unit?
Does my understanding have lasting value beyond the classroom?
Does the understanding help dispel misconceptions – is the understanding not obvious?

20. Modified Concept Attainment for Enduring Understandings
The student will understand that…
Effective readers use specific strategies to help them better understand the text.
A text’s structure helps a reader better understand its meaning.
The student will understand …
How to predict.
The table of contents.

21. Examples of Understandings
Reading involves making sense of the text, not just decoding the words.
History is a “story”, who tells the story affects how it is presented.
Punctuation marks and grammar rules are like highway signs and traffic signals. They guide readers through the text to help avoid confusion.
Meaning is conveyed through phrasing, intonation, and syntax.

22. Examples of Understandings
Science claims must be verified by independent investigations.
The topography, climate, and natural resources of a region influence the culture, economy, and lifestyle of its inhabitants.
Meaning is conveyed through phrasing, intonation, and syntax.

23. Enduring Understandings: Format
No: “Students will understand principles of persuasive speaking”
No: “Students will know how to speak persuasively”
No: “Speak persuasively in public”
YES: “Students will understand that persuasion often involves an emotional appeal to the particular wishes, needs, hopes, and fears of an audience, irrespective of how logical and rational the argument”

24. Begin with Understandings to get to Essential Questions
Remember understanding should be:
Knowledge that is enduring
Has value beyond the classroom
Understanding is not obvious to students
Most be “uncovered” – inferred, revealed, come to be seen, constructed
Can often be applied to other situations
Should be written as a full sentence statement

25. Your Turn! With a partner determine an Enduring
Understanding for your standard.
State understandings as sentences:
Students will understand that…
Write 1-2 understandings for the standard and elements.

26. Flip Book 1
Record the definition of an Enduring Understanding under the first flap.
You may also include an example.

27. How do you move from a content standard to a well crafted essential question?
Questions
Identify
Understanding
Standards

28. Essential Questions…
Questions of different scope and purpose are used to “uncover” important ideas and issues in a unit
Are arguable and lead to understandings, rather than “leading” questions that point to facts
Have no simple right answer
Raise other important questions, often across subject boundaries
Are thought provoking

29. Partner Activity Concept Attainment
With a partner, review the questions in the envelope.
Determine if the question is a “yes” example or a “no” example of EQs.
Record their common characteristics.

30. Modified Concept Attainment
To what extent does “form” derive from “function” in biology?
How do effective writers hook and hold their readers?
Who “wins” and who “loses” when technologies change?
How do you know that you comprehend when you read?
How do native speakers differ from fluent foreigners?
How can technology enhance understanding?
How many legs does a spider have?
How does an elephant use its trunk?
What is “foreshadowing”? Can you find an example of “foreshadowing” in the story?
What is the original meaning of the term, technology (from its Greek root, “techne”)?
What are continents?
How many hours are in day?
When was the Magna Carta signed and by whom?

31. 3 Types of Questions Overarching ~ Essential Questions
Point to broad transferable ideas
Transcend a particular unit
Can apply to various subjects or topics
Topical ~ Essential Questions
Frame a particular unit of study
Specific to a particular content topic
Guiding ~ Questions
NOT an Essential Question
More specific than topical
Answers are right or wrong
Can be looked up

32. Essential Questions Geography
How does where you live affect how you live?
History
How does the past shape the present?
Government
How does citizen satisfaction influence a country’s government?
Economics
What factors influence a country’s standard of living?
Culture
How cultural diffusion shape a region?

33. Essential and Guiding Questions
How does where you live affect how you live?
What landforms and bodies of water are located in _______________?
What are the natural resources in _________________?
What are the vegetation and climate zones in ___________?
Guiding
Questions

34. Your Turn!
Write 2 or 3 essential questions for your unit standard that are tied to your understandings.

35. Flip Book 2 Complete the analogy.
Overarching is to topical as ___________ is to _____________.
Share with a neighbor.

36. Elements of Word Walls
A Word Wall is something you and your class should “Do”, not “Have.”
A Word Wall is a work in progress…built over time and referenced frequently.
Add content words as they are taught or encountered in reading.
Word Walls are a source for informal writing activities to demonstrate student understanding.
Assessment tool

37. Example Word Wall

38. Example Word Wall

39. Example Word Wall

40. Example Word Wall

48. Flip Book 3 One Sentence Summary
A Word Wall is a kind of _________ that __________________.

49. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B.F. Skinner