Understanding by DesignUsing Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units
Welcome! We’re glad you’re here…
Today’s Objectives
Learn basic Understanding by Design (UbD) elements and principles within Design Stage 1
Make a connection between our work of prioritizing the standards, creating a scope and sequence and applying that thinking within a unit of study
Reflect upon potential expectations for you as in your role
Setting the Purpose
Developing a basic understanding of the intentional focus on Backwards Design
Building your confidence to be able to use UbD principles to develop an integrated unit of study
Deconstructing a Model
Mixed Groups Please move to your pre-assigned
groups if you have not already done so
We intentionally created purposeful groupings to maximize strategic conversations
Deconstructing a Model
Review Sample Early Childhood UbD Unit What do you notice about the structure? How do the Standards compare to the
Understandings and the Essential Questions? How do Knowledge and Skills add depth to
understanding the Desired Results? In what ways does the Learning Plan scaffold
student understanding?
Deconstructing a Model
Facilitator Shares 6th Grade SS & RWC integrated unit 6th Grade SS & RWC Scope and Sequences
What similarities do you notice between the ECE and 6th Grade examples?
What do you notice about how the Scope and Sequence guides the Unit design
Deconstructing a Model
Whole Group Share What are you noticing? What were some of the ways the Priority Learnings
and Scope and Sequence were connected to the Unit Maps?
What are some of the important elements in the UbD framework?
What might be some of the implications for you in your role?
Understanding by DesignUsing Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units
Let’s deepen our schema around the UbD components a bit more!
Cue the Video Now
Understanding by DesignUsing Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units
The Basics of Stage 1
The 3 Stages of Design
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan Learning Experiences
Stage 1 – Identify Desired Results
KEY: Focus on Big Ideas Enduring Understandings: What specific insights about
Big Ideas do we want students to leave with?
What Essential Questions will frame the teaching and learning, pointing toward key issues and ideas, suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into content?
What specific Knowledge and Skills need to be acquired to understand the Big Ideas?
Understandings and Essential Questions evolve from the Big Ideas
Is it a Big Idea? Does it: Have lasting value/transfer to other inquiries?
Serve as a key concept for making important facts, skills, and actions more connected and useful?
Summarize key findings/expert insights in a subject or discipline?
Require “uncoverage” (since it is an abstract and/or often misunderstood idea?)
Some questions for identifying Big Ideas
Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious to the naïve or inexperienced?
Do you have to dig deep to really understand its meanings and implications even if you have a surface grasp of it?
Is it prone to misunderstanding as well as disagreement?
Are you likely to change your mind about its meaning an importance over a lifetime?
Does it yield optimal depth and breadth of insight into the subject?
Does it reflect the core ideas as judged by experts?
Big Idea “Starters” in Scope & Sequence
Understandings
What are Understandings? Understandings are genuine,
sometimes unobvious, important insights we want students to leave with about a concept and Big Idea
Misconception Alert
“Objectives” “Evidence Outcomes” “Standards” are rarely stated as Understandings
The following are NOT Understandings Students will understand the Revolutionary War and its causes Students will understand ratios and proportions Students will understand figurative language devices
Uncovering to the Understanding
“Students will understand the Revolutionary War and its causes”
Understandings Revolutions cause fundamental change in the balance of
power and governmental structure
The relationship between the early American colonists and their British governors shifted over time as the colonists desired to be a separate nation
Freedom and self-determination are values that many people feel are worth fighting for
Examples of Understandings
Great artists often break with conventions to better express what they see and feel
Price is a function of supply and demand
Friendships can be deepened or undone by hard times
History is the story told by winners
F≠ms (weight is not mass)
Math models simplify physical relations and even sometimes distort relationships to deepen our understanding of them
The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story explicitly
Essential Questions
Frame the teaching and learning, pointing learners toward the key issues and ideas and suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into content
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 classroom inquiry
Raise more questions, provoking and sustaining engaged inquiry
Often raise important conceptual or philosophical issues
Can provide purpose for learning
Sample Essential Questions
Is the market “rational”?
Does a good read differ from a Great Book?
To what extent is geography destiny?
How important is the past?
Is a scientific theory more than a plausible opinion?
What is the government’s proper role?
Essential Questions in Scope & Sequence
Scope of Essential Questions
Topical
(Unit) Are lions truly Kings of the
jungle?
Why did pioneers head West?
Overarching
(Program) In nature, do only the strong
survive?
Why leave home?
Provoking vs. Guiding
A provoking question looks for opening up thinking, varied and divergent answers – “uncoverage” of important issues The question is more important than any answer
A guiding question focuses inquiry and may coverage on an unobvious understanding A guiding question ≠ a leading question: a leading
question points to an unarguable fact
Types of Essential Questions
Guiding How precise must the math
be here?
What constitutes “appropriate supporting evidence”?
What strategy is best when you are winning a game early?
Provoking Is an author or artist a
privileged interpreter of his/her own work?
Is it fair to let the market dictate the costs of all vital goods and services?
Who should define mastery?
Design Tips
Most units will contain a mixture of topical and overarching questions
Most units will contain a mixture of provoking and guiding questions
Don’t try to edit questions while developing them. Work on maximal provocative value and kid-friendly language after you clarify the question from the teacher’s perspective
Student questions belong in Stage 3 (and perhaps Stage 2) after you have clarified the point of the unit.
Knowledge and Skills
Specific Knowledge Including vocabulary
Specific Skills These are often found in the Grade
Level Expectations (GLE) and Evidence Outcomes of the new Colorado Standards
“Unwrapping” the Standard
Prioritized Evidence Outcome
James Popham’s Learning Progression Model
“Unwrapping” the Standard
James Popham’s Learning Progression Model
Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.
“Unwrapping” the Standard
James Popham’s Learning Progression Model
Key Targets for Formative Assessment
Stage 2 Readiness
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan Learning Experiences
Big Ideas
Essential Questions
Knowledge, Understandings & Skills
Understanding by DesignUsing Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units
During our next gathering you will work with your peers to create the Stage 1 parts and pieces of Unit 1 for your grade.