Understanding by Design

1
Understanding by Design

• Highlights of the Work of
• Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
• by
• Sandy Stuart-Bayer
• Lees Summit High School Library

2
Understanding by Design

• Backward Design focus
• Clarify results and evidence of them before
  designing lessons.
• Teaching for understanding is the goal of
  teaching and compatible with standards-based
  curricula.
• UbD is a way of thinking more carefully about
  design, not a program.

3
Understanding by Design

• Thinking like an assessor, not only an activity
  designer, is key to effective design.
• Overcoming the twin sins of aimless activity
  and superficial coverage.
• The work is only coverage or nice activity
  unless focused on questions and big ideas,
  related to the Standards.

4
3 Stages of Backward Design

• Identify desired results
• Determine acceptable evidence
• Plan learning experiences instruction.

Then and only then
5
The Understanding

• Insightful use of knowledge and skill, observable
  in performance
• Revealed via the six facets
• (Think Blume-See handout)
• Essential for maximal recall and apt transfer of
  content to new situations
• Reflective, recursive spiral
• Conventional linear textbook-driven scope and
  sequence is a major impediment to developing
  understanding.

6
3 Stages of Backward Design

• Identify desired results
• Determine acceptable evidence
• Plan learning experiences instruction.

Then and only then
7
Stage 1 Identify desired results

• Consists of four components
• Content standards
• Understandings
• Essential questions
• Knowledge and skills
• Key Focus on Big Ideas!

8
Some questions for identifying truly big ideas

• Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious
  to the naïve or inexperienced person?
• Does it yield optimal depth and breadth of
  insight into the subject?
• Do you have to dig deep to really understand its
  meanings and implications even if you have a
  surface grasp of it?

9
Some questions for identifying truly big ideas
cont.

• 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?

10
The Big Ideas

• To determine the Big Ideas for your unit or
  course, ask yourself
• Why? So what?
• What is the moral of the story?
• How is _____ applied in the world beyond the
  classroom?
• What couldnt we do if we didnt understand
  _____?
• Avoid truisms, facts, definitions!

11
Example Bill of Rights Redux

• Content Standards
• Understandings (The Big Ideas)
• Students will understand that

12
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 the classroom inquiry.
• Raise more questions-provoking and sustaining
  engaged inquiry.
• Often raise important conceptual or philosophical
  issues.
• Can provide purpose for learning.

13
Essential vs. leading Qs

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

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

14
Tips for Using Essential Qs

• use E.Q.s to organize programs, courses, and
  units of study.
• less is more
• edit to make them kid friendly
• post the questions

15
Knowledge and Skill

• Students will know
• Students will be able to
• Example Bill of Rights

16
3 Stages of Backward Design

• Identify desired results
• Determine acceptable evidence
• Plan learning experiences instruction.

Then and only then
17
Stage 2 - Assessment Evidence

• What are key complex performance tasks indicative
  of understanding?
• What other evidence will be collected to build
  the case for understanding, knowledge, and skill.
• How will students self-assess?

18
Stage 2 is the essence of backward design
alignment

• Measure what we value value and act on what we
  measure.
• Link assessment types to curricular priorities

19
Assessment types

• Traditional
• quizzes tests
• paper/pencil
• selected-response
• constructed response
• Performance tasks
• projects
• open-ended
• complex
• authentic

Worth being Familiar with
Important to know do
Big Ideas Worth understanding
20
2 Questions for a practical test of performance
tasks

• Could the performance be accomplished (or the
  test be passed) without in-depth understanding?
• Could the specific performance be poor, but the
  student still understand the ideas in question?
• The goal is to answer NO to both!

21
Scenarios for Authentic Tasks

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

22
Example Bill of Rights Redux

• Lees Summit High School Library Bill of Rights
  Redux
• Example performance task as a Webquest.
• Key Criteria and Other Evidence, including
  self-assessment

23
3 Stages of Backward Design

• Identify desired results
• Determine acceptable evidence
• Plan learning experiences instruction.

Then and only then
24
Stage 3-Plan learning experience and instruction

• A focus on engaging and effective learning,
  designed in
• What learning experiences and instruction will
  promote the desired understanding, knowledge and
  skill?
• How will you best promote the deepening of
  insight and interest?
• How will you prepare students for the
  performance(s)?

25
Organize by W.H.E.R.E.

• W Where are we headed? and why? (from the
  students perspective)
• H How will the student 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?

26
For More Information

• Wiggins, Grant McTighe, Jay. Understanding by
  Design. New York Prentice Hall. 2000.
• McKenzie, Jamie. Learning to Question, to Wonder,
  to Learn. New York Linworth Publishing.2004.