Understanding By Design at IslandWood

1. Understanding By Designat IslandWood

2. Why UBD?? • Challenges educators to focus on concepts, ideas and understandings in addition to skills and knowledge • Provides template that is adaptable to a variety of contexts including IW SOP and EEC. • Allows assessment to be central to the curriculum design process and encourages multiple types of assessment. • Aligns with Graduate Class on Curriculum and Instruction

3. Results to Evidence to Learning Plan Desired Results Assessment Evidence Learning Plan

4. Results Identify Desired Results Before Lesson Planning……

5. Desired Results • Big Ideas • Enduring Understandings • Essential Questions • Knowledge and Skills

6. Big Idea:Stewardship • Stewardship is action that arises from caring and informed relationships in one’s natural and cultural communities • Big idea – yes! • Enduring – yes! • Transferable – yes! • Requires uncoverage – yes!

7. Enduring Understandings • These are at the heart of everything you plan and teach. • Instructors must be mindful of the enduring understandings throughout the teaching and learning: during lessons, games, discussions, meals, and adventures. • They will empower students to apply what they have learned beyond the current context.

8. Understandings in the SOP Curriculum • U1 – Learning can be joyful, empowering, and inspire a sense of wonder. • U2 - Environment & community require many interconnected systems • U3 – Choices people make can have positive impacts on their environment & community. • U4 – Working well together enhances stewardship & a sense of community.

9. Essential Questions • What questions are you helping your students to pursue? • How can you guide them in an inquiry that enables them to construct their own understanding of the enduring understandings? • How can you connect these with student-generated questions, which are also essential?

10. Essential QuestionsHelp students explore and develop understandings • Q1 How are the parts of environments connected? • Q2 How do people and places affect one another? • Q3 How can people care for themselves, their communities and environments in ways that enhance sustainability?

11. Knowledge and Skills • The stuff that much curriculum is focused on.. • We live in an information age where there is more knowledge than we can know… • Most important as tools to enable learners to grapple with enduring understandings and essential questions.

12. Knowledge in SOP Curriculum K1 Students will know that living things need food, water, air. K2 Students will know that in a given place some organisms thrive and some don’t. K3 Students will know that organisms interact in various ways K4 Students will know that changes in an organism’s habitat are sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful. K5 Students will know that systems are made up of subsystems and have inputs and outputs. K6 Students will know that cultures throughout history have changed and have been changed by their environments. K7 Students will know that kids’ choices and actions make a difference.

13. Skills in SOP Curriculum • S1 OBSERVING: using their five senses and emotional perspectives • S2 COLLECTING & RECORDING quantitative & qualitative data, using varied tools • S3 PREDICTING, ANALYZING, INTERPRETING and REPRESENTING information using creative, scientific, and verbal approaches • S4 DEVELOPING & EXPRESSING perspective, empathy, & self-knowledge • S5 APPLYING what has been learned to new situations

14. Results to Evidence Desired Results Assessment Evidence

15. How will you know they are “getting it?” • Journals: • Completed portions, amount of writing • Discussions: • Questions they ask, responses, focus • Behaviors: • Enthusiasm for learning, curiosity • Treating one another with respect Be aware of varied individual responses!

16. FORMATIVE: SUMMATIVE: Assessment

17. Why is assessment important? • To evaluate what parts of our curriculum work best to meet our goals • To help instructors assess their effectiveness and improve • To show the effectiveness of our programs to funders and the larger educational arena

18. The Design Process • Identify Desired Results • Enduring Understandings • Essential Questions • Skills and Knowledge • Determine acceptable evidence • Embedded assessment • Formative and Summative • Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction Desired Results Assessment Evidence Learning Plan

19. Planning the Lessons/Experiences • People • Place • Progression • Pace • Priorities

20. Matters of Understanding • Big ideas or core processes at the heart of a discipline • “Enduring” – lasting value beyond the classroom • Transferable to other topics and inquiries • Requires “uncoverage” • Challenges educators to explore multiple facets of understanding including explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy and self-knowledge

21. Six Facets of Understanding • Explanation: sophisticated explanations and theories • Interpretation: narratives and translations. • Application: uses knowledge in new situations and contexts • Perspective: critical and insightful points of view • Empathy: ability to get inside another person's feelings • Self-Knowledge: to know one's ignorance, prejudice, and understanding

22. Types of Evidence/Assessment • Embedded Assessment – Part of the Learning Experience. Kids are learning and illustrating understandings at the same time • Formative – In each lesson, instructors have informal opportunities to assess understanding. • Summative – Each day concludes w/ an activity that can be used as an assessment tool…we emphasize tools that are creative, project based rather than traditional “test” type tools.

23. Good evidence gives instructor the ability to assess students’ understanding

24. Learning Plans at IslandWood • A general framework exists that aligns lessons and activities w/ “GUQKS” • The flow for each field group shifts based on group needs, instructor passions, weather

25. Solutions for planning a day? • Go to question, understandings, skills and knowledge you hope to teach • Look at assessment tool that will be used to evaluate students’ learning • Plan core lessons, first (before locations or fun stuff)

26. Ecosystems Curriculum • IslandWood School Overnight Program • Summary: Using IslandWood’s ecosystems as a context for learning, this curriculum helps students understand how they can become better stewards of themselves, their community, and the environment. By learning about the ecology of diverse ecosystems and about human impacts on ecosystems, students learn about the ways that their choices affect the health of their own communities. • Stage One: Desired Results • Established Goal: Through joyful exploration, students will develop an understanding of ecosystems, their importance, and how people and ecosystems are interconnected. Through this improved understanding, students will be inspired and empowered to make a difference in their own communities. • What understandings are desired? • Students will understand…. • What essential questions will be considered? • Q1 What is an ecosystem? • Q2 What does an ecosystem need to be a healthy system? • Q3 How do people and ecosystems change one another? • Q4 What can I teach others about ecosystems? • What key knowledge and skills will students acquire as a result of this unit? • Students will know… • K1 Nature’s ABC’s • K2 Ecological concepts such as habitats, adaptations • K3 History of human impact on IW Ecosystems • K4 The importance of both ecological and cultural diversity • Students will be able to… • S1 Identify and share ethnobotanical uses of many IW Plants • S2 Brainstorm potential consequences of human actions • S3 Problem solve as a group

27. Evidence of Understanding in Ecosystems Curriculum

28. EEC Enduring Understandings • People learn best through immersion in meaningful experiences, with reflection and transference facilitated by dedicated, thoughtful educators. • People learn by struggling to reconcile new ideas and experiences with their prior world views. • Respectful, compassionate interactions with others empowers everyone to take risks and meet challenges. • The teacher is a servant-leader facilitating students’ engagement, inquiry, and construction of knowledge and understanding. • The interconnected systems of environment and community provide a meaningful, integrative context for learning. • Being an outstanding educator is a lifelong pursuit.

29. Q2 – What does an ecosystem need to be a healthy system? K2 – Ecological Concepts K4 – Importance of Diversity S1 – Plant ID/Uses Summative tool – Solo Walk Writing activity (In process, test period, future rubric?) Formative tools – Questions after Owls, Mice and Seeds Soil Sleuth Journal macroinvertebrate drawing and questions. Ecosystems Assessment Acceptable Evidence Desired Results

30. Think about…Where? • W- Where are we heading and Why? (from the student’s perspective) • H – How will the students be Hooked? • E – What opportunities will there be to be Equipped and Explore key ideas? • R – How will we provide opportunities to Rethink, Rehearse, Refine and Revise? • E – How will students evaluate (so as to improve) their own performance?