Understanding by Design

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Understanding by Design
the big ideas of UbD

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3 Stages of (Backward) Design
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Why backward?

• The stages are logical but they go against habits
• Were used to jumping to lesson and activity
  ideas - before clarifying our performance goals
  for students
• By thinking through the assessments upfront, we
  ensure greater alignment of our goals and means,
  and that teaching is focused on desired results

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Understanding by Design Template the basis of
Exchange

• The ubd template embodies the 3 stages of
  Backward Design
• The template provides an easy mechanism for
  exchange of ideas

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The big ideas of each stage
What are the big ideas?
Whats the evidence?
How will we get there?
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Each element is found behind a menu tab when
designing units
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
L
Learning Plan
T
U
Understandings
Task(s)
R
Questions
Rubric(s)
Q
Content Standards
OE
Other Evidence
CS
Knowledge Skill
K
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Not necessary to fill in the template in order

• There are many doorways into successful design
  you can start with...
• Content standards
• Performance goals
• A key resource or activity
• A required assessment
• A big idea, often misunderstood
• An important skill or process
• An existing unit or lesson to edit

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Exchange featrues provide other entry points

• You can
• Search for, find, and attach other designers
  essential questions and understandings to your
  own unit
• Use the web links provided to find ideas on
  relevant sites for each design element
• Study exemplary units and adapt them to your own
  needs and interests

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Misconception Alertthe work is non-linear

• It doesnt matter where you start as long as the
  final design is coherent (all elements aligned)
• Clarifying one element or Stage often forces
  changes to another element or Stage
• The template blueprint is logical but the
  process is non-linear (think home improvement!)

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The big ideas provide a way to connect and recall
knowledge
A2 B2 C2
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Big Ideas are typically revealed via

• Core concepts
• Focusing themes
• On-going debates/issues
• Insightful perspectives
• Illuminating paradox/problem
• Organizing theory
• Overarching principle
• Underlying assumption
• (Key questions)
• (Insightful inferences from facts)

Q
U
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Big Ideas in Literacy Examples

• Rational persuasion (vs. manipulation)
• audience and purpose in writing
• A story, as opposed to merely a list of events
  linked by and then
• reading between the lines
• writing as revision
• a non-rhyming poem vs. prose
• fiction as a window into truth
• A critical yet empathetic reader
• A writers voice

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Some questions for identifying truly big ideas

• Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious
  to the naïve or inexperienced person?
• Can it yield great depth and breadth of insight
  into the subject? Can it be used throughout K-12?
  
• Do you have to dig deep to really understand its
  subtle meanings and implications even if anyone
  can have a surface grasp of it?
• Is it (therefore) prone to misunderstanding as
  well as disagreement?
• Are you likely to change your mind about its
  meaning and importance over a lifetime?
• Does it reflect the core ideas as judged by
  experts?

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Youve got to go below the surface...
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to uncover the really big ideas.
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3 Stages of Design, elaborated
2. Determine acceptable evidence
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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, and suggest meaningful and provocative
  inquiry into content?
• What should students know and be able to do?
• What content standards are addressed explicitly
  by the unit?

U
Q
K
CS
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The big idea of Stage 1

• There is a clear focus in the unit
• on the big ideas
• Implications
• Organize content around key concepts
• Show how the big ideas offer a purpose and
  rationale for the student
• You will need to unpack Content standards in
  many cases to make the implied big ideas clear

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From Big Ideas to Understandings about them
U

• An understanding is a
• moral of the story about the big ideas
• What specific insights will students take away
  about the the meaning of content via big ideas?
  
• Understandings summarize the desired insights we
  want students to realize

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Understanding, defined They are...

• specific generalizations about the big ideas.
  They summarize the key meanings, inferences, and
  importance of the content
• deliberately framed as a full sentence moral of
  the story Students will understand THAT
• Require uncoverage because they are not facts
  to the novice, but unobvious inferences drawn
  from facts - counter-intuitive easily
  misunderstood

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Understandings examples...
U

• 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 the winners
• F ma (weight is not mass)
• Math models simplify physical relations and
  even sometimes distort relations to deepen our
  understanding of them
• The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the
  story

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Knowledge vs. Understanding

• An understanding is an unobvious and important
  inference, needing uncoverage in the unit
  knowledge is a set of established facts.
• Understandings make sense of facts, skills, and
  ideas they tell us what our knowledge means
  they connect the dots
• Any understandings are inherently fallible
  theories knowledge consists of the accepted
  facts upon which a theory is based and the
  facts which a theory yields.

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Essential Questions
Q

• What 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 organizing purpose for meaningful
  connected learning?

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Essential vs. leading Qs used in teaching
(Stage 3)

• Essential - STAGE 1
• Asked to be argued
• Designed to uncover new ideas, views, lines of
  argument
• Set up inquiry, heading to new understandings

• Leading - STAGE 3
• Asked as a reminder, to prompt recall
• Designed to cover knowledge
• Point to a single, straightforward fact - a
  rhetorical question

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Sample Essential Questions
Q

• Who are my true friends - and how do I know for
  sure?
• How rational is the market?
• Does a good read differ from a great book? Why
  are some books fads, and others classics?
• To what extent is geography destiny?
• Should an axiom be obvious?
• How different is a scientific theory from a
  plausible belief?
• What is the governments proper role?

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3 Stages of Design Stage 2
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Stage 2 Assessment Evidence

• Template fields ask
• What are key complex performance tasks indicative
  of understanding?
• What other evidence will be collected to build
  the case for understanding, knowledge, and skill?
• What rubrics will be used to assess complex
  performance?

T
OE
R
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The big ideafor Stage 2

• The evidence should be credible helpful.
• Implications the assessments should
• Be grounded in real-world applications,
  supplemented as needed by more traditional school
  evidence
• Provide useful feedback to the learner, be
  transparent, and minimize secrecy
• Be valid, reliable - aligned with the desired
  results of Stage 1 (and fair)

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Just because the student knows it

• Evidence of understanding is a greater challenge
  than evidence that the student knows a correct or
  valid answer
• Understanding is inferred, not seen
• It can only be inferred if we see evidence that
  the student knows why (it works) so what? (why it
  matters), how (to apply it) not just knowing
  that specific inference

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Assessment of Understanding via the 6 facets

• i.e. You really understand when you can
• explain, connect, systematize, predict it
• show its meaning, importance
• apply or adapt it to novel situations
• see it as one plausible perspective among
  others, question its assumptions
• see it as its author/speaker saw it
• avoid and point out common misconceptions,
  biases, or simplistic views

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Scenarios for Authentic Tasks
T

• Build assessments anchored in authentic tasks
  using GRASPS
• What is the Goal in the scenario?
• What is the Role?
• Who is the Audience?
• What is your Situation (context)?
• What is the Performance challenge?
• By what Standards will work be judged in the
  scenario?

G
R
A
S
P
S
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Reliability Snapshot vs. Photo Album

• We need patterns that overcome inherent
  measurement error
• Sound assessment (particularly of State
  Standards) requires multiple evidence over time -
  a photo album vs. a single snapshot

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For Reliability SufficiencyUse a Variety of
Assessments

• Varied types, over time
• authentic tasks and projects
• academic exam questions, prompts, and problems
• quizzes and test items
• informal checks for understanding
• student self-assessments

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Some key understandings about assessment

• The local assessment is direct the state
  assessment is indirect (an audit of local work)
• It is therefore always unwise to merely mimic the
  states assessment approaches
• The only way to assess for understanding is via
  contextualized performance - applying in the
  broadest sense our knowledge and skill, wisely
  and effectively
• Performance is more than the sum of the drills
  using only conventional quizzes and tests is
  insufficient and as misleading as relying only
  on sideline drills to judge athletic performance
  ability

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3 Stages of Design Stage 3
2. Determine acceptable evidence
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Stage 3 big idea
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Stage 3 Plan Learning Experiences Instruction

• A focus on engaging and effective learning,
  designed in
• What learning experiences and instruction will
  promote the desired understanding, knowledge and
  skill of Stage 1?
• How will the design ensure that all students are
  maximally engaged and effective at meeting the
  goals?

L
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Think of your obligations via W. H. E. R. E. T.
O.
L
W

• Where are we headed? (the students Q!)
• How will the student be hooked?
• What opportunities will there be to be equipped,
  and to experience and explore key ideas?
• What will provide opportunities to rethink,
  rehearse, refine and revise?
• How will students evaluate their work?
• How will the work be tailored to individual
  needs, interests, styles?
• How will the work be organized for maximal
  engagement and effectiveness?

H
E
R
E
T
O
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Note that some fields require you to enter one
idea at a time

• One idea per box allows for more powerful
  searching, selecting, and attaching to units when
  you browse
• Essential questions
• Enduring understandings
• Tasks of complex performance
• Rubrics
• Also makes expert reviewer assignment of blue
  ribbons more precise

Q
U
T
R
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Help in the Exchange about all template design
elements

• Get to know the icons!
• A summary of each field
• Examples for each field
• A self-test of your understanding for that field
• FAQs and Glossary
• A special unit in which each field is explained
  click the icon for UBD TEMPLATE
• Web links to resources for that field

Q
v
?
Ubd template
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for further information...

• Contact us
• Grant Wiggins, co-author grant_at_ubdexchange.org
• Jay McTighe, co-author jmctigh_at_aol.com
• Steve Petti, webmaster steve_at_newimagemedia.com