Backwards design is a three-stage curriculum design process focused on the development and deepening of student understanding, developed by by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe as Understanding by Design. Much more can be found about UbD here.  This section will introduce some of their tools and approach. Download the links below to follow along with the slideshow.

 

• Understanding by Design in a Nutshell
  Understanding by Design from Jill A. Aguilar
• Three Stages of Backward Design
• Understanding by Design Template
• Six Facets of Understanding
• How to make a GRASPS Performance Task

 

The Understanding by Design process is time-intensive and challenging. It is intended to be used to design instructional units, which are typically from 3-6 weeks in duration. The products of this process will be of exceptional quality. Typically, a teacher might create 1-3 of these units per year, adding a few each year until the full year's instruction is of the highest quality.

 

For a less-demanding step in that direction, we can take 2 of the central ideas from UbD, 1) make learning meaningful, and 2) begin lesson design with the learning outcome in mind from the outset, to use at any level of instructional design, from 1 day, to a semester, to a year.

 

The sections below introduce and provide tools to practice these two central ideas, making high quality objectives, and making learning meaningful.

 

High Quality Learning Objectives

The Learning Objective is the tool we use to hold ourselves and our students accountable for learning. The learning objective is a statement of what we expect students to know and be able to do after successfully participating in the lesson. In order to make a statement like that, we need:

• Learning goals, or standards (Effective objectives employ English Language Development Standards as well as content and literacy standards)
• Knowledge of students previous and current learning, interests, talents
• A reasonable understanding of what this particular group of students can achieve with help. Remember, the sweet spot is beyond what students are capable of doing without help, but not so difficult that students will lose heart. We should always feel like we are leaning on students to push themselves.

An effective objective should be clear and easy to convey to students. It should also be easy to check back after the lesson to determine whether and to what degree students were successful in meeting the objective.

 

Well-crafted objectives include all of the following:

1. The specific performance required to demonstrate successful accomplishment of the objective.
2. The learning outcome or product by which successful accomplishment of this objective can be determined.
3. The conditions under which the behavior is to be performed.
4. The criterion or standard used to determine successful performance or achievement of the instructional objective.

 

#1 and #2 above, performance and outcome, are closely related. They focus on what the learner will do to demonstrate attainment of the objective. Performances must be able to be assessed, so we say they should be observable and measurable. For example,

 

• Students will be able to (this is often abbreviated as SWBAT) conduct an ethnographic interview of a military veteran.

The performance is conduct an interview. The product is the interview (which may be written, or audio or video recorded)

 

• SWBAT write a persuasive, formal letter to the Board of Education.

The performance is write in a formal and persuasive manner. The product is the letter.

 

• SWBAT correctly use the quadratic formula in a problem solution.

The performance is correctly use the quadratic formula. The product is the problem solution.

 

#3, conditions, is a description of the circumstances under which the performance will be carried out. It also includes a description of what will be available to learners when they perform the desired behavior. Think of what learners will be expected to use, or not use when performing, or what real world conditions apply. For example, to continue with the examples above,

 

• After viewing the documentary "Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1", and practicing interviewing techniques, students will meet with a volunteer veteran and... conduct an ethnographic interview of a military veteran
• After reading two opposing newspaper articles about a current controversy before the Board, students will select an argument and... write a persuasive, formal letter to the Board of Education.
• Acting as an engineer, students will examine the cost implications of three sets of specifications for headlight manufacturing, and then choose the most cost-effective of the three by... using the quadratic formula in a problem solution

 

#4, criterion, may sometimes refer to levels of correctness. For example, a traditional test is scored from 1-100. A score of 90-100 is considered an "A," 80-89 a "B," and so on. The higher the score, the more successful the performance.

 

But with more complex performances, as in the examples above, require most complex criteria. A common tool that teachers use to evaluate the success of student performance is the rubric. Rubrics are leveled descriptors of performance to a criterion. For example, if you were teaching a lesson on how to make a cake, the rubric might look like this:

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Across the top are the levels of performance. Assessors recommend a clear "cut" line, or the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable performance. In this example, the first 2 performances are unacceptable. The first performance never got to be a cake; it is just a kitchen mess. The second performance is on the right path, but it is not complete. The third performance, the frosted chocolate cake, is acceptable. The fourth performance, the fancy decorated cake with three layers, is above acceptable.

 

How do we decide what makes an acceptable performance? First, we must identify our criteria. What am I really considering when I evaluate a particular performance? In the example above, the criteria I am considering when I evaluate the cake are "technique," "flavor," and "appearance." Obviously, these will vary depending on the performance you are evaluating.

 

Rubrics do take some time to create, but they can be used over and over again. Also, they are not just a way for you to give grades. They are perhaps most useful in articulating to students your expectations of their performance. Best practice is for the teacher to introduce the rubric to students at the beginning of a lesson, teach the lesson, have students use the rubric to make their product, and then use the rubric to score their work.

 

The online rubric-making tool, Rubistar, makes simplifies rubric-making. Drop-down menus provide you with criteria and leveled descriptors of performances. A click provides you with a fully-editable excel table. You can also create a new rubric from scratch and save it to their website.

 

Some tips on writing objectives:

• Focus on outcome or product, not process
• The outcome or product must be observable and measurable
• Objectives tell what students will know or be able to do, not teachers

 

Why Do We Have to Learn This?

For some teachers, this is the question they dread more than any other. The thing is, if we think about, students have every right to ask it. They spend most of their waking hours in school... shouldn't we be able to explain, in a way that makes sense to young people, why they are there?

 

Using Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions as the basis for your planning aims at addressing this question directly. Framing your instruction with Enduring Understandings, or Big Ideas helps to make learning meaningful, and answers the question, "Why do we have to learn this?"

 

A Big Idea is stated in such a way that it identifies why the concept or skill is important to learn. While content standards often list concepts or skills, they typically do NOT provide the reason for learning the concepts or skills.

 

A standard might state, "understands purposes for reading," or "applies reading strategies." Why are those important?

 

Big Ideas/Enduring Understandings have enduring value because they:

1. Identify core concepts, principles, theories, and processes of the discipline
2. Serve to organize important facts, skills, or actions
3. Transfer to other contexts-- both in and out of school
4. Require "uncoverage"-- they are the abstract and/or complex ideas that require thought and real insight

 

Here are some examples of Big Ideas that can help give shape and direction to your content literacy objectives...

 

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