Understanding by Design

Understanding by Design Using 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 • 6thGrade 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 Design Using 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 Design Using 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 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? • How precise must the math be here? • What constitutes “appropriate supporting evidence”? • What strategy is best when you are winning a game early?

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 James Popham’s Learning Progression Model Prioritized EvidenceOutcome

“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 Big Ideas Essential Questions Knowledge, Understandings & Skills 1. Identify desired results 2. Determine acceptable evidence • 3. Plan Learning Experiences

Understanding by Design Using 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.

Understanding by Design