Transcript UbD1Day - TSDCurriculum

Understanding by Design
Using Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units
Welcome!
We’re glad you’re here…

Today’s Objectives
 Learn and apply Understanding by Design
(UbD) elements and principles
 Draw connections between UbD elements
and Rigorous Curriculum Design (RCD)
 Reflect upon potential expectations for you
as an Instructional Coach
Lunch Break is anticipated at 11:00-12:00
Text Rendering
 Knowing Your Learning Target

Connie M. Moss, Susan M. Brookhart and Beverly A. Long (2011).
Educational Leadership. ASCD: 68(6).
Big Ideas:
Know:
(Vocab)
Do:
Alpha Boxes
A
B
C
Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
Prepare to
be Blended

Sync Thinking with Rigorous
Curriculum Design Map
Big Ideas:
Know:
(Vocab)
Do:
Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
Where do some of
your Big Ideas fit on
the RCD map?
Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
 From your perspective
where is your building on
the START process right
now?
Quick Infomercial
 April 18 – Elementary Math/Literacy
Priorities
 April 27 – Middle School Priorities
 May 24/25 – Elem Standards Alignment
 May 31-June 2 – MS Math/Lit Mapping Inst.
 TEN Week Monday Standards Part II
 August 31 – High School Course Alignment
Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
 Given where we are
headed, what are some of
the implications for you as
a coach? In your role as
leader?
Parking Lot
Lingering
Questions
Thoughts
& Ideas
Break
Return from Break
Setting the Purpose
 Frontloading what you need to know
and be able to do
 Developing a strong understanding of
the intentional focus on Design
 Building your confidence with the
varied literature connected to
Standards-Based work
Deconstructing a Model
 Co-Facilitator Groups
 Please move to your preassigned groups
Deconstructing a Model
 Review Sample Spanish UbD Unit
 What do you notice about the structure?
 How do the Standards compare to the
Understandings and the Essential Questions?
 How do the students “will know” and “be able to
do” add depth to understanding the Desired
Results?
 In what ways does the Learning Plan scaffold
student understanding?
Deconstructing a Model
 Co-Facilitator Shares a level
specific example
 What similarities do you notice?
 What differences do you see?
Deconstructing a Model
 Whole Group Share
 What are you noticing?
 What are the Big Ideas?
 What are the implications for
you as a coach?
Parking Lot
Lingering
Questions
Thoughts
& Ideas
Lunch
Return from Lunch
The 3 Stages of Design
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan Learning Experiences
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,
suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into
content?
 What knowledge and skills need to be acquired to
understand the Big Ideas?
Stage 1: Big Ideas
Standards:
Topic:
The Civil War
Big Ideas
“States
Rights”
Understandings
Essential
Questions:
Misunderstandings:
Why would brother fight
brother?
Stage 1: Establishing Priorities
around Big Ideas
worth being
familiar
with
important
to know and
do
Big
Ideas
Nice to Know
Foundational Knowledge and skill
Big Ideas worth exploring and
understanding in depth
Understandings and Essential Questions
involve Big Ideas
Is it a Big Idea? Does it:
 Have lasting value/transfer to other inquiries?
 Serve as a key concept for making important facts, skills,
and actions more connected and useful?
 Summarize key findings/expert insights in a subject or
discipline?
 Require “uncoverage” (since it is an abstract and/or often
misunderstood idea?)
Big Ideas are typically revealed via…
 Key concepts
 Focusing themes
 On-going debates/issues
 Insightful perspectives
 Illuminating paradox/problem
 Organizing theory
 Overarching principle
Some Big Ideas by Type
 Concepts: migration, function, equity, text
 Themes: “Good triumph over evil”
 Debates: “Nature vs. Nurture”
 Perspective: “youth” as wise or immature
 Paradox: freedom involves responsibility
 Theory: you are what you eat
 Principle: free markets are self-regulating
 Assumption: History is written by the “winner”
Some questions for identifying Big Ideas
 Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious to the naïve
or inexperienced?
 Do you have to dig deep to really understand its meanings and
implications even if you have a surface grasp of it?
 Is it prone to misunderstanding as well as disagreement?
 Are you likely to change your mind about its meaning an
importance over a lifetime?
 Does it yield optimal depth and breadth of insight into the
subject?
 Does it reflect the core ideas as judged by experts?
Big Idea Work Time
 Regroup with Co-Facilitator by Level
 Using Social Studies Placemats
 5th Grade Topic: the Colombian Exchange
 8th Grade Topic: the Civil War
 11th Grade Topic: the Great Depression
 Using Poster-size UbD Templates
 Established Goals (Standards)
 Big Ideas
 Alpha Chart Check
Break
Back from Break
Stage 1: Big Ideas to Understandings
An understanding is a “moral of
the story” about the big ideas:
 State understandings as full-sentence
generalizations about the desired learning
 Ask yourself: What specific insights will students
take away about the Big Idea?
Understandings
 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 winners
 F≠ms (weight is not mass)
 Math models simplify physical relations and even sometimes
distort relationships to deepen our understanding of them
 The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story
Understandings
Avoid truisms, definitions, and
vague generalizations
 What genuine, unobvious, and important insights
do you want students to leave with about the
subject – it’s big ideas and key knowledge and
skills?
Mutual Respect Goes
What goes up,
Both Ways
must come down.
War is hell.
Scope of Understandings
Overarching Course (Program) Understanding
 Artists constantly break rules to help us see and feel
anew.
Topical (Unit) Understanding
 The Impressionists broke the rules of the Academy to
make us see the real play of light on objects and people.
 Hip hop music rip song melodies to make the words
more rhythmic and memorable.
Misconception Alert
“Objectives” “Evidence Outcomes”
“Standards” are rarely stated as
Understandings
 Typical learning objectives and goals are written to covey
the specific insights we expect students to know and
comprehend
 The following are NOT Understandings
 Students will understand the Civil War and its causes
 Students will understand ratios and proportions
 Students will understand and read a variety of materials
Skills to Understandings
Skill – Swimming
Students will understand that:
 The most effective and efficient stroke mechanics
involve pulling and pushing the maximum amount
of water directly backward
 A flat (vs. cupped) palm offers the maximum
surface area.
Design Tips - Understandings
 Most units will contain a mixture of topical and
conceptual understandings
 Sometimes the understandings is that there is no
one understanding 
 Declarative knowledge concerns facts, statements
that are true/unproblematic/sensible on the face of
it, but understandings are not really meaningful
until played with and understood
Check for Understanding on
Understandings
Buzz with a neighbor…
 Articulate the meaning you
have constructed relative to
the idea of Understandings in
this framework
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 classroom inquiry?
 Raise more questions, provoking and sustaining engaged
inquiry?
 Often raise important conceptual or philosophical issues?
 Can provide purpose for learning?
Sample Essential Questions
 Is the market “rational”?
 Does a good read differ from a Great Book?
 To what extent is geography destiny?
 How important is the past?
 Is a scientific theory more than a plausible opinion?
 What is the government’s proper role?
Scope of Essential Questions
Overarching (Program)
 In nature, do only the strong survive?
 Why leave home?
Topical (Unit)
 How strong are insects?
 Why did the easterners leave their homes for the West?
Provoking vs. Guiding
 A provoking question looks for opening up
thinking, varied and divergent answers –
“uncoverage” of important issues
 The question is more important than any
answer
 A guiding question focuses inquiry and may
coverage on an unobvious understanding
 A guiding question ≠ a leading question: a
leading question points to an unarguable fact
Types of Essential Questions
Technical
 How precise must the math
be here?
 What constitutes
“appropriate supporting
evidence”?
 What strategy is best when
you are winning a game
early?
Philosophical
 Is an author or artist a
privileged interpreter of
his/her own work?
 Is it fair to let the market
dictate the costs of all vital
goods and services?
 What shall be our ultimate
goal: efficiency or
excellence?
Design Tips
 Most units will contain a mixture of topical and
overarching questions
 Most units will contain a mixture of provoking and
guiding questions
 Don’t try to edit questions while developing them. Work
on maximal provocative value and kid-friendly language
after you clarify the question from the teacher’s
perspective
 Student questions belong in Stage 3 (and perhaps Stage
2) after you have clarified the point of the unit.
Understandings & Essential Learning
Design Time
 Use Poster-sized Templates
 Develop Unit Understandings
 Develop Unit Essential
Questions
Know and Be Able to Do
 Specific Knowledge
 Including vocabulary
 Specific Skills
 These are often found in the Grade Level
Expectations and Evidence Outcomes of the
new Colorado Standards
 Continue working with Groups –
Stage 2 – Assessment Evidence
Judicial Analogy
 What “preponderance of
evidence” would show that
students have achieved the
desired understanding,
knowledge and skill?
Backwards Design
A mantra:
“Think like an assessor, not an
activity designer.”
The goal is valid and reliable evidence for
Stage 1: What do the standards and
desired results imply for evidence?
Validity is Key to
“Thinking like an Assessor”
Validity involves asking:
 Can we infer from the evidence provided
by the assessment to the standard(s)? Is
this the right kind of evidence for making
inferences needed?
 How far can we generalize from the
(inherently implied sample of evidence?)
Key Validity Question
1. Could the performance be accomplished (or the
test be passed) without in-depth
understanding?
2. Could specific performance be poor, but the
student still understand the ideas in question?
The goal is to answer NO to both.
Building Confidence with the
“Understanding” Literature
 UbD’s Six Facets of Understanding
 Bloom’s Taxonomy (Old and New)
 Depth of Knowledge (DOK)
 NOT Paul and Elder
 this is NOT Critical Thinking; Paul and Elder
literatures supports the scaffolding/teaching
the critical thinking skills
Depth of Knowledge
• Use DOK Sheet to
highlight/underline knowledge and
skills in your unit
Stage 3 – Learning Activities
WHERETO
 W - Where are we headed?
 H - How will the student be Hooked?
 E – How will students Explore key ideas?
 R – How will students Rethink, Rehearse, Refine and Revise?
 E – How will students Evaluate their own work?
 T - How will the work be Tailored to individual needs, interests,
styles?
 O - How will the work be Organized for maximal engagement
and effectiveness?
Summary of Good Design
Expectations and Opportunities
 Clear goals, models given up front
 On-going feedback provided with opportunities to
use it
 A genuine challenge, a problem frames work
 Real-world requirements
 Trial and error, reflection and adjustment expected
Summary of Good Design
Instruction
 Teacher as facilitator/coach
 Active/experiential learning
 Problem-based, important questions
 Small group and individual work
 Student choice, personalization
 Attention to student differences in design
 Variety in work, methods
Summary of Good Design
Assessment
 Genuine, meaningful, performance goal; real
audience
 On-going assessment, timely feedback
 Self-assessment expected
 No secrets or mystery to performance goal
standards
 Realistic application
Summary of Good Design
Sequence
 Start with a Hook
 Move back and forth from whole to part with
increasing complexity
 Doable increments
 Teach as needed, don’t over-teach first
 Flexibility: respond to student questions and needs,
revise plan to achieve goals
Level Sample Jigsaw
 Use Unit Review Checklist
 Jigsaw three Stages
 Share out at group level –
feedback on sample unit
Closure – Ticket out the Door
 Big Ideas
 Lingering Questions