Backward Design

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Backward Design

• Christina FritzAssessment Managerfritz_c_at_aps.edu

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Stephen Covey

• To begin with the end in mind means to start with
  a clear understanding of your destination. It
  means to know where youre going so that you
  better understand where you are now so that the
  steps you take are always in the right direction.

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Essential Question

• Why are the best curriculums designed backwards?
• What is good design?
• How does backward design support effective
  curriculum design?

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K-W-L on Backward Design
K W L
What do you know about backward design What do you want to learn about backward design? What did you learn about backward design?
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Moving Forward
Adapted from Karen Greenham, Thames Valley
District School Board, Ontario, Canada
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Two Approaches
Assessor Activity Designer
What would be sufficient revealing evidence of understanding? What would be interesting engaging activities on this topic?
What performance tasks must anchor the unit focus the instructional work? What resources materials are available on the topic?
How will I be able to distinguish between those who really understand those who dont (but seem to)? What will students be doing in out of class? What assignments will be given?
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Two Approaches
Assessor Activity Designer
Against what criteria will I distinguish work? How will I give students a grade ( justify it to their parents)?
What misunderstandings are likely? How will I check for these? Did the activities work? Why or why not?
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3 Stages of Backward Design

• Stage 1 Identify desired results
• Stage 2 Determine acceptable evidence
• Stage 3 Plan learning experiences and
  instruction

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3 Stages of Backward Design
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Stage 1 Identify desired results

• Are the targeted understandings
• Enduring, based on transferable, big ideas at the
  heart of the discipline and in need of
  un-coverage.
• Questions that spark connections, provoke genuine
  inquiry and encourage transfer
• Appropriate goals
• Valid knowledge and skills identified

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Stage 1 Key Design Elements
BIG IDEA
TOPIC or CONTENT STANDARD
UNDERSTANDING
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
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Big Ideas

• Central and organizing notion
• Core idea in a subject
• Provides a conceptual lens for prioritizing
  content
• Serves as an organizer for connecting important
  facts, skills, and actions
• Transfers to other contexts
• Manifests itself in a variety of ways within
  disciplines
• Requires uncoverage because its an abstraction

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Transferable Big Ideas - samples

• Abundance or scarcity
• Adaptation
• Friendship
• Communities
• Defense or protection
• Courage

• Harmony
• Honor
• Patterns
• Symbol
• Technology
• Wealth
• Evolution
• Democracy

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Content Priorities
Worth Being Familiar With
Important to Know and Do
Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings
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Statistics Sample
History of the bell curve Key contributors to the
development of statistics (Pascal)
Measures of Central Tendency Statistical
Terminology Data Displays Statistical Formulas
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Statistics Sample
Big Ideas Sampling, Correlation, Patterns,
Predictions, Confidence Interval Understandings
Statistical analysis and data displays reveal
patterns enabling predictions Statistics can lie
as well as reveal
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BREAK
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Essential Questions

• Guide the student inquiry and focus instruction
  for uncovering the important ideas of the content
• What specifically about the idea or topic do you
  want student to come to understand?

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Essential Questions

• Have no right answer and are meant to be argued
• Designed to provoke sustain student inquiry,
  while focusing learning performances
• Address the conceptual or philosophical
  foundations of a discipline
• Raise other important questions
• Naturally and appropriately recur
• Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas,
  assumptions and prior lessons

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Sample Essential Questions

• How does art reflect, as well as shape, culture?
• How does where we live influence how we live?
• What are the limits of mathematical
  representation and modeling?
• What makes a great story?

• What is a number?
• How should we balance the rights of individuals
  with the common good?
• Can microeconomics inform macroeconomics?
• What can we learn from the past?

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Tips for Using EQs

• Organize the unit of study around the questions
  make the content answer the question
• Tasks are linked to the question
• Make less be more
• Share your questions with the faculty to promote
  school wide questions
• Publish the questions to students and parents

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Enduring Understandings

• Based on transferable big ideas that give the
  content meaning and connect the facts and skills

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Comparing Enduring Understandings

• IMPROPERLY FRAMED
• Students will understand that
• That the price of long distance calls has
  declined over the past decade
• How to calculate mean, median and mode

• PROPERLY FRAMED
• Students will understand that
• In a free-market economy, price is a function of
  supply and demand
• Statistical analysis data display often reveal
  patterns that may not be obvious

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Knowledge and Skills

• Discrete objectives that we want students to know
  and be able to do
• Three kinds
• Building blocks for the desired understanding
• Knowledge and skills stated or implied in the
  goals
• Enabling knowledge and skills needed to perform
  the complex assessment tasks identified in stage 2

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Stage 2 Determine acceptable evidence

• Consider the evidence of learning
• Students exhibit understanding through authentic
  performance tasks
• Appropriate criterion-based scoring tools are
  used to evaluate student outcomes
• A variety of assessment formats
• Assessments are used as feedback
• Students self assess

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Jay McTighe

• The primary purpose of classroom assessment is to
  inform teaching and improving student learning,
  not to sort and select students or to justify a
  grade

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3 Stages of Backward Design
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ALIGNMENT
Stage 1
If the desired result is for the learner to
Stage 2 Stage 2
Then, you need evidence of the students ability to So, the assessments need to include something like
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3 Types of Classroom Assessment

• DIAGNOSTIC
• FORMATIVE
• SUMMATIVE

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DIAGNOSTIC

• Assessment that precedes instruction, checks
  students prior knowledge and identifies
  misconceptions, interests, and learning style
  preferences
• Provide information to assist planning and guide
  differentiated instruction
• Pretests, student survey, skills check, K-W-L

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FORMATIVE

• On-going assessments provide information to guide
  teaching and learning for improving learning and
  performance
• Formal and Informal
• Quiz, oral questioning, observation, draft work,
  think aloud, dress rehearsal, portfolio review

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SUMMATIVE

• Culminating assessments are conducted at the end
  of a unit, course or grade level to determine the
  degree of mastery or proficiency according to
  identified achievement targets
• Evaluative in nature resulting in a score or a
  grade
• Test, performance task, final exam, culminating
  project or performance, work portfolio

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Assessment Methods

• Traditional quizzes and tests
• Paper and pencil
• Selected response
• Constructed response

• Performance tasks and projects
• Complex
• Open-ended
• Authentic

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Collecting Evidence

• Effective evidence requires multiple sources of
  evidence a photo album not a single snapshot
• Performance tasks
• Academic prompts
• Quiz and test items
• Informal checks

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Tips for Effective Scoring Goals

• Includes the most important traits, given the
  purpose of the assessment and the qualities of
  effective performance
• Score the quality not quantity
• Focus on content, substance and effect rather
  than on mechanics
• Look at the overall result

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Assessors Questions

• Where should we look and what should we look for
  to determine the extent of student understanding?
• What kind of assessment tasks and evidence needs
  will anchor our curricular units and thus guide
  our instruction?

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Assessors Questions

• Given our account of the facets, what follows for
  assessment?
• What evidence of in-depth understanding as
  opposed of superficial or naïve understanding?

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Think like an assessor

• Where should we look to find hallmarks of
  understanding?
• Consider the necessary evidence
• Kinds of performance or behavior indicative of
  understanding

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Think like an assessor

• What should we look for in determining and
  distinguishing degrees of understanding?
• Focus on the most salient and revealing criteria
  for identifying and differentiating levels or
  degrees of understanding using criteria and
  rubrics to sort work by quality along a continuum

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Six Facets of UnderstandingGrant Wiggins

• Explanation
• Interpretation
• Application
• Perspective
• Empathy
• Self-Knowledge

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Howard Gardner

• Understanding the capacity to apply facts,
  concepts and skills in the new situations in
  appropriate ways.

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Facet 1 Explanation

• Provide thorough, supported, and justifiable
  accounts of phenomena, facts, and data

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Facet 2 Interpretation

• Tell meaningful stories offer apt translations
  provide a revealing historical or personal
  dimension to ideas and events make it personal
  or accessible through images, anecdotes,
  analogies and models

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Facet 3 Application

• Effectively use and adapt what we know in diverse
  contexts

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Facet 4 Perspective

• See and hear points of view through critical eyes
  and ears see the big picture

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Facet 5 Empathy

• Find value in what others might find odd, alien,
  or implausible perceive sensitively on the basis
  of prior direct experience

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Facet 6 Self-Knowledge

• Perceive the personal style, prejudices,
  projections, and habits of mind that both shape
  and impede our own understanding we are aware of
  what we do not understand and why understanding
  is so hard

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Thinking about Understanding

• Men dont understand women
• Does anyone here understand French?
• She knows the answer but does not understand why
  it is correct

• I now understand that I was mistaken
• I didnt really understand it until I had to use
  it
• Although I disagree, I can understand the
  oppositions point of view

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Understanding Misconceptions
Facet 1 Explanation If the student gives a correct answer to a complex and demanding question, s/he must have an in-depth understanding.
Facet 1 Explanation If the student cannot write an explanation of his/her views, she lacks understanding.
Facet 2 Interpretation If the student offers an engaged and rich response to literature, he understands that work of literature.
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Understanding Misconceptions
Facet 3 Applications Any effective performance with knowledge indicates understanding of that knowledge.
Facet 3 Applications Any ineffective performance with knowledge indicates a lack of understanding of that knowledge.
Facet 3 Applications Application means that the student can correctly answer teacher-assigned problems based on what was taught.
Facet 4 Perspective Having an opinion equals having perspective.
Facet 4 Perspective Perspective implies relativism.
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Understanding Misconceptions
Facet 5 Empathy Empathy is affect, synonymous with sympathy or heartfelt rapport. Empathy requires agreement with the point of view in question.
Facet 6 Self-Knowledge Self-knowledge equal self-centeredness.
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Stage 3 Plan learning experiences and instruction

• Will the students
• Know where they are going with their learning
  goals
• Know why the materials are important
• What is required of them
• Be hooked engaged
• Have opportunities to explore and experience big
  ideas and receive instruction to equip them for
  the required performances
• Have opportunities to rethink, rehearse, revise
  and refine
• Have an opportunity to evaluate their work and
  reflect on their learning

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WHERETO
W Students know WHERE theyre going, WHY and WHAT is required of them
H HOOKED engaged in the big idea
E Opportunities to EXPLORE and EXPERIENCE
R Opportunities to RETHINK,REHEARSE, and REFINE
E Opportunity to EVALUATE their work
T TAILORED and flexible for all students
O ORGANIZED for engagement and effectiveness
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Chinese Proverb

• I hear, I forget
• I See, I remember
• I do, I understand