Understanding by Design: Beginning the Journey

1. Understanding by Design:Beginning the Journey Donnell E. Gregory and Donna Herold, Presenters Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

2. *Who Are We? • Part I: In your professional role, do you consider yourself to be primarily (1) a teacher? (2) a school-based administrator? (3) a central office administrator or supervisor? (4) a college or university representative? (5) a Board of Education member? (6) a student? (7) Other?

3. *Who Are We? • Part II: As you start this workshop, how would you rate your knowledge and comfort level with Understanding by Design (UbD): Total Newcomer: I really don’t know anything about UbD. I’m brand new to it. Beginner: I have a basic knowledge of its ideas, but I’ve never written a unit using it. Intermediate: I’ve written at least one UbD unit, but I’d like to gain more knowledge and experience with it. Advanced: I already have a lot of experience with UbD, and I’m here to fine-tune my understanding of it and to support my team, school, and/or district.

4. *Our Agenda at a Glance • Introductions and Agenda Setting • What Is Understanding? (Including the Research and Learning Theory Underlying UbD and the Six Facets of Understanding) • The Backward-Design Process: Why Should We Design Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction with the “End in Mind”? • Stage One: Desired Results (Including Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions) • Stage Two: Assessment Evidence • Stage Three: Teaching-Learning Sequence and Activities

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6. Essential Questions for This Workshop • What does it mean to understand? How does understanding differ from knowing or being able to do something? • How can we support our students to understand what they are learning with depth and rigor? • How can we design curriculum, assessment, instruction, and professional development to promote understanding, rather than knowledge-recall learning? • How can we help all learners move from initial acquisition and integration of new knowledge and skills toward growing levels of constructed meaning and conceptual transfer? • How can we maximize students’ understanding by addressing their varying readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles?

7. Established Goals for this Institute By the end of this workshop, you should be able to: 1. Explain the research principles and learning theory underlying Understanding by Design (UbD). 2. Describe and facilitate six ways your students can demonstrate understanding, rather than just knowledge-recall learning. 3. Apply the principles of backward design to your professional role(s) involving student achievement. 4. Collaborate with your peers to develop an action plan for using UbD principles and strategies in schools, districts, and/or other learning organizations.

8. Our Guarantee to You… By the end of this institute, you will have: • At least 10 professional development activities you can use to promote staff understanding of research-based strategies related to teaching for understanding. • A minimum of 7 handouts you can use to share key institute ideas and strategies with others. • At least 7 reflective questions you can explore with other staff as part of a study group or inquiry team investigating ways to increase student understanding and achievement.

9. As a Starting Point… • THINK: What are your personal objectives for this workshop? • PAIR: As a table group, determine one to two objectives that you all share. • SHARE: Next, appoint a table presenter who will (1) introduce table members and (2) present your group’s objectives for the workshop.

10. Reviewing Units That Use the Backward-Design Process (I) • To understand the backward-design process, it is useful to examine actual units that make use of it. • Review the examples of “before-backward design” units on pages 6-7 and 10. What is flawed or problematic about the “before” versions of “Westward Movement and Pioneer Life” and “Geometry”?

11. Reviewing Units That Use the Backward-Design Process (II) • Next, examine the “after” versions of each unit on pages 8-9 and 11. • How does the “after” version of each unit reflect the principles of the backward-design process? • How do the revised units eliminate the problem of activity-based, coverage approaches to curriculum design?

12. Workbook tour Template section = blank templates and completed units pp.30-51 Coding system = circles with letters to correspond with Q=Questions, U=Understandings, T=performance task, etc. Tabbing system to show where you are (use post it notes) Worksheets and examples to help with each of the 3 stages Frequently asked questions for each stage Helpful pages: Design questions – pg. 14 Design standards-pg. 24, 6 facets – pg. 155 Roadmap – pg. 275

13. What Is Understanding? What does it mean to understand? Why is this the great essential question for educators today?

14. As you start this workshop… How do you define the term “understanding”? What’s so important about understanding? Why should we be concerned with it?

15. You’ve got to go below the surface... b

16. To Uncover Really ‘Big Ideas, and Deeper Understanding ’

17. *Video Clip:“Understanding by Design” In this clip, educators and authors McTighe and Wiggins discuss their views on UbD and its long-range goals. As you begin this journey, what are your initial reactions to the ideas presented by the authors of UbD?

18. *According to Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe: “Understanding by Design is not a prescriptive program, nor is it a philosophy of education…It is a way of thinking more purposefully and carefully about the nature of any design that has understanding as its goal…”

19. Transfer defined and justified What is ‘transfer of learning’? ‘Transfer of learning’ is the use of knowledge and skills (acquired in an earlier context) in a new context. It occurs when a person’s learning in one situation influences that person’s learning and performance in other situations. When transfer of learning occurs, it is in the form of meanings, expectations, generalizations, concepts, or insights that are developed in one learning situation being employed in others Bigge & Shermis, 1992. 21

20. *According to Grant Wiggins: Learning goals can be thought of as being composed of three interrelated elements: • Acquisition of new information and skill (apprehension) • Make meaning of that content (comprehension); and • Transferof one’s learning to novel and important situations, issues, and problems (application).

21. Transfer = gradual release of responsibility Consider in primary language arts I do, you watch I do, you help You do, I help You do, I watch 23

22. Research on transfer and misunderstanding The research is sobering: Transfer of learning is widely considered to be a fundamental goal of education. When students cannot perform tasks only slightly different from those learned in class, or when they fail to appropriately apply their classroom learning in settings outside of school, then education is deemed to have failed. Unfortunately, achieving significant transfer of learning has proven to be a difficult chore. Dating back to the beginning of [last] century, the research literature on transfer is replete with reports of failure. McKeough et al Teaching for Transfer 24

23. Commonly-cited deficits by educators Inability to analyze/interpret texts and events; students end up just retelling Inability to see how today’s problem in math requires the same skills we have been working on, though the content or wording of the problem is different Inability to use the new foreign language in a simulated situation that calls for what was just taught Failure to use the writing process if not prompted to do so Not answering the test question asked; failure to stop and consider: what does this question/task/problem demand? What have you experienced? Given what you teach, when do students typically fail to transfer? 25

24. NAEP 8th-grade test item, constructed response How many buses does the army need to transport 1,128 soldiers if each bus holds 36 soldiers? 26

25. Answer from 30% : Remainder 12 bus “31, remainder 12”!! 27

26. *Suggestions for Follow-Up and Related Resources • Use one or more of the following print resources to introduce UbD to your staff: (a) P. 272 (“Self-Assessment for UbD”); (b) Pp. 273-274 (“Participant Self-Assessment, Part 1 and 2”); and (c) P. 275 (“The UbD Workshop Roadmap”).

27. *Action Planning • Think: Based on this section of our institute, what is a specific action step you might take when you return to your school or district? • Pair: Share your action step with another participant. • Share: Share each of your action steps with your entire table group.

28. …So How Are We Doing? • What do student achievement data tell us about levels of student understanding? • What can these data reveal about curriculum design, development, and implementation in public education today?

29. Place Your Bets! • How much do you think you know about student understanding as reflected in current educational trends? • IMAGINE that you have $100.00 to start. • Decide if each of the following statements is true or false. Depending upon how certain you are, bet the full amount you have or a part of it.

30. Place Your Bets ONE… • TRUE OR FALSE? United States students are generally showing significant gains in understanding, based upon standardized test performance.

31. False! (I) • During the past 25 years, no major gains have occurred in higher-order thinking performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). • NAEP: Only 6% of students are competent in Algebra, and 15% in U.S. History, despite most students having passed courses by those titles.

32. False! (II) • Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and James Stigler’s UCLA Meta-Study of Teacher Behaviors (“The Teaching Gap” and “The Learning Gap”): a. U.S. students outperformed students in only six countries out of the 46 tested. b. Unlike high-performing countries, U.S. schools tend to emphasize practice and skill development, not thinking, inventing, and problem solving.

33. *Place Your Bets TWO… • TRUE OR FALSE? United States students are taking more advanced courses and graduating with higher grade point averages despite decreases in NAEP and other standardized test scores.

34. *True! (I) • “Test Scores at Odds with Rising High School Grades”:The Washington Post, February 23, 2007 • “High school students are performing worse overall on some national tests than they did in the previous decade, even though they are receiving significantly higher grades and taking what seem to be more rigorous courses, according to government data released recently.”

35. *True! (II) • “The mismatch between stronger transcripts and weak test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the nation’s report card, resonated in the Washington area and elsewhere. Some seized upon the findings as evidence of grade inflation and the dumbing-down of courses. The findings also prompted renewed calls for tough national standards and the expansion of the federal No Child Left Behind law.”

36. *True! (III) • “About 35 percent of 12th-graders tested in 2005 scored proficient or better in reading—the lowest percentage since the test was launched in 1992, the new data showed.” • “Less than a quarter of seniors scored at least proficient on a new version of the math test…In addition, a previous report found that 18 percent of seniors in 2005 scored at least proficient in science, down from 21 percent in 1996.”

37. *True! (IV) • “At the same time, the average high school grade-point average rose from 2.68 in 1990to 2.98 in 2005, according to a study of transcripts from graduating seniors. The study also found that the percentage of graduating seniors who completed a standard or mid-level course of study rose from 35 to 58 percent in that time.” • “Meanwhile, the percentage who took the highest-level curriculum doubled, to 10 percent.”

38. Place Your Bets THREE… • TRUE OR FALSE? Generally, curriculum in the United States tends to emphasize critical and creative thinking rather than knowledge-recall learning…

39. False! • In the U.S., schools tend to emphasize coverage of material with many topic segments, rather than a limited set taught in depth. • The U.S. curriculum tends to be a “mile-wide, inch-deep.” • U.S. education tends to emphasize subjects and content rather than the learner as the center of the learning process.

40. Place Your Bets FOUR… • TRUE OR FALSE? According to Robert Marzano, author of What Works in Schools, American teachers generally have sufficient time to address the standards for which they are responsible.

41. False! • Robert Marzano (McRel):“If teachers are expected to get students to learn all of the [K-12] standards identified by their district, on average we need to expand students’ time in school by a minimum of 6,000 hours.”

42. Place Your Bets FIVE… • TRUE OR FALSE? One of the most effective ways to boost and maintain standardized test scores is to ensure that you cover every standard in your curriculum in case it is on the test.

43. False! (I) • TIMSS, Stigler, Marzano, and others report a test preparation paradox: We seem to feel the obligation to “cover” and “touch on” lots of things in case they are “on the test.” Results confirm, however, that superficial coverage of material causes poorer,not better, test results.

44. False! (II) • “What an extensive research literature now documents is that an ordinary degree of understanding is routinely missing in many, perhaps most students. If, when the circumstances of testing are slightly altered, the sought-after competence can no longer be documented, then understanding—in any reasonable sense of the term—has simply not been achieved.” Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind

45. *Suggestions for Follow-Up and Related Resources • Engage staff members in a discussion of 21st Century “basics”: What are the life skills and habits of mind our graduates should exit with? • Use the training activities in this section to introduce the six facets of understanding to your staff: How well do your students demonstrate proficiency in these six cognitive behaviors? • Collaborate with other educators to create a philosophy of learning for your school or district. • Analyze achievement data from your grade level, content area, school, and/or district to investigate areas of alignment with research-based conclusions (e.g., TIMSS, NAEP, Stigler’s “Teaching and Learning Gap”). • Use the resources on P. 253(“Thinking About Understanding and Design” and P. 254(“Thinking About Understanding”) to frame a faculty meeting discussion.

46. Backward Design at a Glance (P. 12) • Stage One: Identify Desired Results: a. Long-Range Goals (Power Standards) b. Enduring Understandings & Essential Questions c. Enabling Knowledge Objectives • Stage Two: Assess Desired Results: a. Use a Photo Album, Not Snapshot, Approach b. Integrate Tests, Quizzes, Reflections and Self-Evaluations with Academic Prompts and Projects • Stage Three: Design Teaching and Learning Activities to Promote Desired Results: a. W.H.E.R.E.T.O. Design Principles b. Organizing Learning So That Students Move Toward Independent Application and Deep Understanding Using Research-Based Strategies

47. *Stage 1—Desired Results“Design Questions” • Established Goals:What content standards, course, or program objectives, etc., will be emphasized? What are the desired long-term accomplishments? • Enduring Understandings:What specific understandings about the content and work of the unit are desired? What big ideas enable such connections and transfer? What misunderstandings are predictable? • Essential Questions: What questions must be continually addressed to ensure in-depth understanding? What thought-provoking questions link this unit to other units and to student lives? • Know: What knowledge (e.g., facts, concepts, generalizations, rules, principles) questions will students be able to answer as a result of this unit? • Do: What key skills and procedures will students acquire as a result of this unit?

48. *Stage 2—Assessment Evidence“Design Questions” • Performance Tasks: Through what authentic performance task(s) will students demonstrate transfer and meaning-making of the desired results? By what criteria will performance be judged to be valid evidence of the desired learnings? • Other Evidence: Through what other evidence (e.g., quizzes, tests, academic prompts, observations, homework, journals, etc.) will students demonstrate achievement of the desired results?

49. *Stage 3—Learning Plan“Design Questions” Learning Activities: • What acquisition of knowledge and skill is required if the goals for the unit are to be met and if the understandings are to be achieved? • What meaning-making (inferences, connections, judgments) and challenges to thinking must the activities require if learners are to really understand on their own? • What practice and feedback will learners need to achieve the transfer goals of the unit, as reflected in the performance tasks?

50. UbD Instructional Design Standards (P. 24) • Before we explore each of the stages of the backward-design process in detail, take some time to consider the “UbD Design Standards” on Page 24. • To what extent are these standards aligned with current practices and programs in your school or district? • In your opinion, which of these standards need greater emphasis?