Understanding by Design

1. Understanding by Design Using Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units Welcome! We are glad you are here!

2. Overall Outcome Participants will use their knowledge of the Understanding by Design process to create at least one complete unit for their content area and grade level.

3. Norms“Having to know the answers puts us in a terrible position from which to learn.” Collaborative Norms • Harness the power of what we know and can do together. • Promote a sense of inquiry • Make our practice public to one another. • Pay attention to self and others. • Assume positive intentions. • Be reflective. Courtesy Norms • Be on time and return from breaks on time. • Cell phones on silent, vibrate or off. • Be mindful of side-bar conservations. • Focus on the task at hand.

4. Vocabulary Sort • Learning Principles • Standards • Course or Yearlong Curriculum Map • Transfer • UbD • Stage 1: Desired Outcomes • Stage 2: Acceptable Evidence • Stage 3: Learning Plan • Enduring Understandings • Essential Questions • Curriculum • Performance Tasks Write vocabulary terms on small sticky notes. Place each sticky in the column that best describes your understanding of the term.

5. Enduring Understandings • Learning principles guide decisions made during unit design processes. • Understanding by Design provides a framework for identifying the core ideas and questions that form the work of the content and disciplines we teach. • By beginning with the end in mind, we are able to determine what students should know, be able to do, and understand in order to support them as they master content and reach performance standards. • The integration of assessment and instruction leads to genuine differentiation that supports the unique strengths and needs of individual students.

6. Essential Questions • What does a viable, guaranteed, and coherent curriculum mean for Cabarrus County Schools? • Why Understanding by Design? • How does Understanding by Design align with the other current initiatives (PLC, Workshop, SBIGR, etc.) that we are focused on in Cabarrus County? • How can we use Understanding by Design to create meaningful learning opportunities for students that align with the Common Core State Standards? • How can we use our Understanding by Design experiences to transform attitudes and perceptions about standardized testing and overcome notions of drill-and-kill teaching and test preparation? • In what wayscan we acquire and ensure the long-term availability of resources required to sustain successful UbD implementation? • How can we ensure that UbD is a clear and natural part of instruction and learning for all students, including those in primary grades, those enrolled in special education, language learners, and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged?

7. Learning Principles

8. Learning Principles Think back to your many prior experiences with well-designed learning, both in and out of school. What was the most well-designed learning experience you have ever encountered as a learner? What features of the design – not the teacher’s style or your interests – made the learning so engaging and effective? • Design elements include: challenges posed, sequence of activities, resources provided, assignments, assessments, groupings, teacher’s role, etc. Describe the design.

9. Learning Principles Mission of Cabarrus County Schools: We will value, teach and empower each student in a culture of educational excellence. Learning Principles: • Provide an accessible, conceptual foundation of how people learn • Guide how we are going to achieve our mission and program goals • curriculum design, assessment procedures, instructional practices/resources, professional development, school structures

10. Learning Principles Effective Learning Principles… • Reflect research on learning from multiple sources • Resonate with our personal and professional experience in learning and teaching

11. We Believe… • All students can learn and be successful • Student learning is best achieved through rigorous, integrated, and culturally responsive lessons • Teachers facilitate learning by probing student thinking through purposeful, provocative questions that encourage mathematical justifications • Effective mathematics instruction develops most effectively in a safe learning environment where student ideas are valued and a love of mathematics is fostered • Research-based instructional techniques that allow for differentiation (product, process, content, etc.) support all learners • Collaboration and reflection is essential among teachers and students

12. We Believe… • Mathematics learning experiences should plan for students to be challenged and allow for some struggle • There should be a balance of building of number sense, computational fluency, and conceptual understanding • Opportunities should be provided for the application of the mathematical concepts students are learning (problem solving) • Students must be engaged in conversation, interaction, and metacognitive processes • There should be a balance of teacher talk and student talk • The standards for mathematical practice should be integrated with the content standards • Student mistakes areopportunities to learn • Students must create and solve a variety of problems • Students should be provided with opportunities to check for reasonableness and self-assess

13. Learning PrinciplesCabarrus County Schools • What do we know about the teaching and learning of social studies? Visual arts? Chorus? • What do we believe? Working in small groups, work to develop your learning principles. Put your ideas on chart paper.

14. Learning Principles Gallery Walk Look for commonalities: • Big ideas • Themes • Vocabulary Consider your learning principles. Tally those that appear in other groups’ lists.

15. Learning Principles

16. Break

17. What is UbD?

18. UbD in a Nutshell • A way of thinking purposefully about curricular planning and school reform. • A means of integrating curriculum, instruction, and assessment within a unit of study in any discipline • A unit design template for beginning with the end in mind • A way to enhance meaningful understanding and transfer of learning • Ubdtransforms content standards into relevant desired results, authentic assessments, and appropriate learning plans

19. UbD is NOT… • …a rigid program or prescriptive recipe • Rather, UbD offers helpful design tools and design standards. It • does not tell us how to teach or which activities to use. • …a philosophy of education • UbD does not require a belief in any single pedagogical approach. • …incompatible with established content standards or state • testing • In fact, the focus on understanding and transfer of knowledge, not recall of • facts and procedures, highly correlates with Common Core State • Standards and the Standards for Mathematical Practice.

20. Connections Between Understanding by Design and Professional Learning Communities

21. From Standards to Curriculum A “course to be run”

24. Our Commitment

26. Cabarrus County SchoolsCurriculum Design Process • Implementation of the new standards across all content areas and grade levels. • Grouping the standards into units covering 4-6 weeks of content. • Using Understanding by Design to provide the framework for the units. This work is done by a few and shared with ALL.

29. How do we get there? Unpacking Standards

30. Unpacking Standards Why unpack standards? • The practical meaning of a standard is not self-evident even if the writing is clear. • Standards are typically written in hierarchical form. • Standards typically address different types of learning goals.

31. Tips for Unpacking Standards Tip 1: Look at all key verbs to clarify and highlight valid student performance in which content is used. Tip 2: Look at the recurring nouns that signal big ideas. Tip 3: Identify and analyze the key adjectives and adverbs to determine valid scoring criteria and rubrics related to successful performance against the standards. Tip 4: Identify and/or infer the long-term transfer goals by looking closely at the highest-level standards and indicators for them, or inferring the transfer goal from the content and justification for the standard. Tip 5: Consider the standards in terms of the long-term goal of autonomous performance.

32. Unpacking Worksheets

33. Caution! “Unpacking” often results in a checklist of discrete skills and a fostering of skill-and-drill instruction that can fragment and isolate student learning in such a way that conceptual understanding, higher order thinking, cohesion, and synergy are made more difficult. Too often, the process of “unpacking” is engaged in an attempt to isolate the specific foundational or prerequisite skills necessary to be successful with the ideas conveyed by the overall standard and is a common precursor to test preparation and reductive teaching. Although this process may be important work in some instances and can certainly be enlightening, it also poses substantial problems if those completing the work never take the time to examine the synergy that can be created when those foundational or prerequisite skills are reassembled into a cohesive whole. Metaphorically speaking, “unpacking” often leads educators to concentrate on the trees at the expense of the forest. Kansas Department of Education

34. Stage 1: Identify Desired Results

35. Identify Desired Results • What long-term transfer goals are targeted? • What meanings should students make to arrive at important understandings? • What essential questions will students keep considering? • What knowledge and skill will students acquire? • What standards are targeted?

36. Stage 1 With a partner, take turns reading pages 14-15 in The Understanding by Design Guide to Create High-Quality Units. Begin with Stage 1: Clarifying Desired Results. Read a paragraph and then each “say something.”

37. Stage 1 • Look at the examples on pages 18, 23, and 29 • What do you notice about Stage 1? • Sections • Components • Language • Do a close read (see wiki for instructions) and discuss.

38. Curriculum:A Pathway toward a Destination Having learned key content, what will students be able to do with it?

39. Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions 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?)

40. Some questions for identifyingEnduring Understandings and Essential Questions • 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?

41. Essential Questions: Doorways to Inquiry • Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas of the standards • Provoke deep thought, lively discussions, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions • Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers

42. Essential Questions: Doorways to Inquiry • Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons • Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences • Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations

43. Essential Questions • Purpose of Essential question is more important than the form • Intent of the question is to sustain inquiry- you should have a range of answers • 2-5 per unit • Should be engaging and provocative for the age group

44. Are these Enduring Understandings? • Mathematicians create models to interpret and predict the behavior of real world phenomena. • Great artists often break with conventions to better express what they see and feel. • Mathematical models have limits and sometimes they distort or misrepresent. • Writers don’t always say things directly or literally; sometimes they convey their ideas indirectly. • Friendships can be deepened or undone by hard times. • History is the story told by winners. • The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story.

45. Are these 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? • How accurate does a solution have to be? • How do you “read between the lines?” • How reliable are the predictions of mathematical models?

46. MeaningEssential Questions • An essential question is: • A provocative question looks for opening up thinking, varied and divergent answers – “uncoverage” of important issues • The question is more important than any answer • An essential question is not: • A leading question points to an unarguable fact

47. Returning to Unpacking

48. AcquisitionKnow and Be Able to Do • Specific Knowledge • Including vocabulary • Specific Skills • These are often found in the Grade Level Expectations and Evidence Outcomes of the new Standards

49. Stage 1 Have we connected everything so that all teachers can understand what should be taught in this unit and what students should understand about the content area?

50. Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence