1. Building a Quality Curriculum
Understanding by Design
English Language Arts

2. Consider this scenario
I am working with my social studies counterpart to develop a unit on the following topic: Westward Movement and Pioneer Life.

3. We have designed the following activities
Read textbook section: “Life on the Prairie.” Answer the end-of-chapter questions.
Read and discuss Sarah Plain and Tall. Complete a word-search puzzle of pioneer vocabulary terms from the story.
Create a pioneer-life memory box with artifacts that reflect what life might be like for a child traveling west or living on the prairie.

4. We are especially proud of our Pioneer Day activities
Dress in pioneer clothes and complete the following learning stations:
Churn butter
Play 19th-century game
Send letter home with sealing wax
Play “dress the pioneer” computer game
Make a corn husk doll
Make a quilt square
Punch tin

5. Assessments Quiz on pioneer vocabulary terms from Sarah Plain and Tall
Answers to end-of-chapter questions on pioneer life
Show and tell for memory-box contents
Completion of seven learning stations during Pioneer Day
Student reflections on the unit

6. What could be wrong with such an approach?
Discuss in table groups
See Attachment 1 (pg. 19)

7. Goals for today Rethink how we write curriculum
Rethink how we plan units, develop lessons, design activities, and write assessments

8. What will I understand? I will understand that . . .
student learning occurs when students have access to a quality curriculum built from backward design.
teaching and assessing for understanding enhances learning of content standards.

9. What will I know? New vocabulary for talking about curriculum
The three stages of backward design

10. What will I be able to do?
Use a new curriculum template based on Understanding by Design (UbD) to plan my first unit of study

11. Where do we begin? We begin with the end in mind and work from there.
In other words . . .

12. We use backward design But . . . Not “What book will we read?”
“What should students walk out the door able to understand, regardless of what activities or texts we use?”
“What is evidence of such ability?
Not “What activities will we do?”
What texts, activities, and methods will best enable such a result?
Not “What will we discuss?”

13. Backward Design Three Stages of UbD
Identify Desired Results
What do I want my students
to understand, know, and be able to do?
What questions do I want them to be able to answer about reading, literature, writing, listening, and speaking?
Stage 2:
Determine Acceptable Evidence
(Design Balanced Assessments)
How will I know if my students
know it and/or can do it?
Stage 3:
Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
What learning experiences and instruction will enable students to achieve the desired results?

14. What does this look like in our new curriculum template?
We address the desired results before designing assessments or lessons.
We are going to spend the morning talking about Stage 1

15. Stage 1 Putting the Pieces Together

16. The Process of Backward Design: Stage 1
What relevant goals (Big Ideas) will this unit address?
GOALS
State Standards: TEKS
SAT/ACT AP
College Readiness-THEA
NCTE

17. The next piece
From Goals to Understandings

18. Enduring Understandings
What do we want students to understand about reading, literature, writing, listening, and speaking?
Is what we want them to understand worth knowing?
Does it have lasting value?
Can it transfer to other contexts?
Students will understand THAT . . .

19. EUs: Bad to Best Students will understand the Civil War.
Students will understand the causes of the Civil War.
Students will understand that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights issues more than over the morality of slavery.

20. Order the Enduring Understanding statements from Bad to Best
Students will know how to speak persuasively._____
Speak persuasively in public._____
Students will understand principles of persuasive speaking._____
Students will understand that persuasion often involves an emotional appeal to the particular wishes, needs, hopes, and fears of an audience, regardless of the logic of the argument._____
Verify ranking with your table group.

21. Enduring Understandings: Overarching and Topical
Overarching: More abstract and general; relate to many units of study
Students will understand that word meanings can change, sometimes dramatically.
Topical: More specific; related to a single unit.
Students will understand that some words have multiple meanings that can vary depending on the context of the sentence.

22. Checking for Understanding 1
List common characteristics of properly framed Enduring Understandings.
Check with a partner

23. Now try this . . .
Use your list of characteristics as criteria to determine which of the following examples are effectively framed as Enduring Understandings.
Authors use specific transitional strategies to organize text.
Why writing style and presentation are determined by audience.
Comprehension strategies.
How to identify symbols.
Conflict drives plot and character development.
Comprehension is an interactive process.
Thumbs Up – Thumbs Down

24. The next piece From Goals to Understandings From Understandings to
Questions

25. Essential Questions
What provocative questions will foster inquiry, understanding, and transfer of learning? These types of questions . . .
Often have no simple “right” answer
Raise other important questions
Address various levels of Bloom’s
Here’s a tip:
Student Expectations can often be turned into Essential Questions!

26. Types of Questions Overarching TOPICAL Literature
What makes a great story?
How do effective writers hook and hold their readers?
TOPICAL
Unit on Mysteries
What is unique about the mystery genre?
How do great mystery writers hook and hold their readers?

27. Time to Practice Essential Questions Generate new ones
Reading & Literature
Is a “good read” always a great book?
What is the relationship between “fiction” and “truth”?
What do good readers do when they don’t understand a text?
Does literature primarily reflect culture or shape it?
How do I read between the lines?
Writing
How is written language different than spoken language?
Were do ideas for writing come from?
How does the audience influence content, style, and form?

28. Checking for Understanding 2
From Understandings to Questions
Students will understand that persuasion often involves an emotional appeal to the particular wishes, needs, hopes, and fears of an audience, regardless of how logical and rational the argument.
Your Essential Questions?
Table Share

29. Design Tool with Prompts
Topics and Big Ideas
What essential questions are raised by this idea or topic? What, specifically, about reading, literature, writing, listening, or speaking do you want students to come to understand?
Why study ___? So what?
What makes the study of ___universal?
What’s the Big Idea implied in the skill or process of ___?
What larger concept, issue, or problem underlies ___?
What couldn’t we do if we didn’t understand ___?
How is ___ used and applied in the larger world?
What is a real-world insight about___?
What is the value of studying ___?
Understandings:
Questions:

30. Let’s Practice
Use the template (Attachment 2, pg. 20) to write Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions for studying grammar.

31. BREAK! (10 minutes)

32. The next piece From Goals to Understandings From Understandings to
Questions
From Questions to Knowledge and Skills

33. Knowledge and Skills Facts Concepts Vocabulary
What key knowledge (vocabulary, facts, concepts) and skills will students acquire?
Skills
Processes
Procedures
What should students eventually be able to do as a result of such knowledge?
KNOWLEDGE
(declarative)
SKILLS
(procedural)

34. Example Enduring Understandings:
Conflict drives plot and character development.
Conflict crosses time and culture.
Readers engage actively and strategically with text to understand conflict and its effects.

35. Example Knowledge Skills
Conflicts that motivate characters and those that serve to drive the plot.
Literary elements: plot, character, setting, conflict, point of view
After-reading strategies: summarizing, comparing, contrasting, synthesizing.
Skills
consider plot, character, setting, conflict, and point of view when constructing the meaning of a text.
extend meaning by explaining the implications of the text for the reader or contemporary society.
use after-reading strategies appropriate to both the text and the purpose for reading.

36. Let’s Practice Knowledge
Skills (What will students be able to do with the knowledge?)
Generate a list of Knowledge and Skills that reflect the Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions you developed for studying grammar.

37. Revisiting Westward Movement and Pioneer Life
Compare and contrast Westward Movement and Pioneer Life before backward design and after backward design.
(see attachment 3 and 4, pgs )

38. Now that we’ve put the Stage 1 pieces together, what have we learned about backward design?

39. Instructional Planning
Standards-based Practice
Traditional Practice
Select standards from among those students need to know and identify desired results
Design an assessment through which students will have an opportunity to demonstrate those things
Decide what learning opportunities students will need to learn those things and plan appropriate instruction to assure that each student has adequate opportunities to learn
Use data from assessment to give feedback, reteach or move to next level
Select a topic from the curriculum
Design instructional activities
Design and give an assessment
Give grade or feedback
Move on to a new topic

40. Lunch
11:30 – 12:45

41. Meet in grade-level teams by campus
Work through Stage 1 of the UbD template for a unit of study (Attachment 5, pg. 24)
Use the Identifying Essential Questions and Understandings Design Tool (Attachment 6, pg. 25 ) to get you started
Sample EUs & EQs can be found at the end of your handout (pgs )
Work from 1:00 – 2:00
Meet back with whole group at 2:10

42. Backward Design Stage 2 Stage 1: Identify Desired Results Stage 2:
What do I want my students
to understand, know, and be able to do?
What questions do I want them to be able to answer about reading, literature, writing, listening, and speaking?
Stage 2:
Determine Acceptable Evidence
(Design Balanced Assessments)
How will I know if my students
know it and/or can do it?

43. Acceptable Evidence?

44. Stage 2 Assessment Evidence Performance Tasks:
Through what AUTHENTIC performance tasks will students demonstrate the desired understandings?
By what criteria will performances of understandings be judged? (rubric?)
Other Evidence:
Through what other evidence (e.g. quizzes, tests, academic prompts, observations, homework, journals) will students demonstrate achievement of the desired results?
How will students reflect upon and self-assess their learning?

45. Curricular Priorities and Assessment Methods
Traditional Quizzes and tests
Paper-and pencil
Selected-response
Constructed response
Performance tasks and projects
Complex
Open-ended
Authentic
worth being familiar with
important to know and do
Big Ideas
Enduring Understandings

46. Diverse Evidence informal observations tests academic performance
checks for and and prompts tasks
understanding dialogues quizzes

47. Jigsaw See Attachment 7 (pg. 26)
Table groups: number 1-4, read section, report out to the group. Provide a specific classroom example to illustrate the type of evidence being addressed.

48. Collecting Acceptable and Sufficient Evidence
Use the design tool (Attachment 8, pg. 27) to help you think through effective assessments.

49. Backward Design Stage 3 Stage 1: Identify Desired Results Stage 2:
What do I want my students
to understand, know, and be able to do?
What questions do I want them to be able to answer about reading, literature, writing, listening, and speaking?
Stage 2:
Determine Acceptable Evidence
(Design Balanced Assessments)
How will I know if my students
know it and/or can do it?
Stage 3:
Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
What learning experiences and instruction will enable students to achieve the desired results?

50. Stage 3
What learning experiences and instruction will enable students to achieve the desired results? How will the design
W = Ensure that students understand WHERE the unit is headed and WHY.
H = HOOK students in the beginning and HOLD their attention throughout.
E = EQUIP students with necessary experiences, tools, knowledge, and know-how to meet performance goals.
R = Provide students with numerous opportunities to RETHINK big ideas, REFLECT on progress, and REVISE their work.
E = Build in opportunities for students to EVALUATE progress and self-assess.
T = Be TAILORED to reflect individual talents, interests, styles, and needs.
O – Be ORGANIZED to optimize deep understanding as opposed to superficial coverage.

51. Putting It Together See you back here at 3:30
Spend the remainder of the afternoon working in your horizontal teams.
Goal: Complete Stage 1 and begin working on Stage 2 and Stage 3
See you back here at 3:30

52. Expectations
Begin using the UbD template to design your units.
Post Enduring Understandings and Essential Question on the board every day. (Administrators will be walking through classrooms and using your posted EUs and EQs to frame what they are seeing.)
Visit our UbD Exchange

53. What squares with my thinking? What’s still rolling around in my mind?
Final Reflection
What squares with my thinking?
What’s still rolling around in my mind?
What do I need to change?