understanding by design -...
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Understanding by DesignThomas Rye and Erik Powell, MAC
De La Salle North Catholic High School, Portland, OR
Introductions
Resources at: thomasrye.weebly.com
OutcomesDe La Salle North Catholic High School staff will
standardize their curriculum using the Understanding
by Design framework.
De La Salle North Catholic High School staff will teach
for understanding on a daily basis.
De La Salle North Catholic High School staff will align
their Corporate Work Study Program with their newly
developed standards.
Essential Questions:What does a UbD classroom look like?
How will UbD change my planning and
teaching?
To what extent is student understanding
impacted by UbD?
UnderstandingsUbD is way of thinking, not a recipe for unit design.
UbD is an effective and efficient tool for planning aligned, standards-based units of instruction.
UbD focuses on helping students come to understanding and transfer their learning to new situations.
High quality units require ongoing assessment and revision.
Pages 15-16
Understanding by Design is NOT
The panacea for the woes of education.
A formula for planning curriculum.
A rigid system.
A set of questions or statements posted on classroom
walls.
Understanding by Design is
A way of thinking about getting students to explore
the most important questions and concepts in their
subjects in school.
A flexible framework to help students transfer
knowledge and skills into new contexts that require
explanation, interpretation, application, empathy,
perspective, or self-knowledge.
Understanding by Design
Builds on best practices and approaches from
education.
Helps address the “So what?” question when (not if) it
comes up in class.
Reflect
Think about a unit you designed and taught that
worked out especially well. What made it work?
Think about a unit you designed and taught that did
NOT go so well. What didn’t work?
A timeline detailing the
early history of the Internet
How to evaluate the credibility of Internet sources
Emerging
technologies have
the power to change
the way we
understand our world
40-40-40
“Big ideas”
worth
exploring and
understanding
in depth
Foundational
knowledge & skill
Nice to know
Page 26
Understanding by Design is a tool.
Nothing New!“Let the main ideas which are introduced into
children’s education be few and important, and let
them be thrown into every combination possible.
Children should make them their own, and should
understand their application here and now in the circumstances of their actual lives.”
(Whitehead, The Aims of Education 1912).
Understanding by Design 101
Big Ideas
Backward Design
Transfer
Ngised Drawkcab
Identify Desired Results
Determine Sufficient Evidence
Plan Learning Experiences
Page 9
Why is this called “backward” design?
Reflect
Thinking about your most successful experiences in
the classroom, reflect on your process for planning
those successful experiences. What tended to go into
the preparation for them?
Transfer
“The appropriate and fruitful use of knowledge in
a new or different context from that which it was initially learned.”
--UbD Professional Development Workbook(292).
Assessment and Transfer
You teach certain skills, knowledge, concepts, and
standards in order to accomplish what?
Your students must be able to do or
know_________________ in order to
independently ______________. (transfer
goal)
Page 20
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction
Three stages of backward design
Big ideas:
Conflict, revolution, change
Essential Question:To what extent did the conflicts of the
Civil Rights movement create a platform for political change?
Page 29
Task
What are some of the Big Ideas that you
teach in your class during the course of
a year?
Jot down three or four
From Big Ideas to Essential Questions
Interpreting Functions
Why is it important for students to do this?
Designing with Essential Questions
More question-based, problem-based, and challenge-based design: as opposed to content-based design
Moving away from the textbook as syllabus: to the textbook as resource, in support of understanding-focused goals
More like athletics, art: complex performances of transfer that require the inferences and the content
Design Standards for
Essential Questions
Address Big Ideas
Provoke genuine inquiry
Encourage transfer
Sample essential questions
Matho How can you represent the same number in different
ways? How can that help you?
o What are the limits of this mathematical model?
Physical Educationo What makes this technique work? When (and who) is it
best for?
o What does an effective fitness plan look like?
Pages 34-35
Sample essential questions
Social Studieso What makes a community work?
o How do the stories we tell shape who we are?
o To what extent can one person change the world?
Photographyo How do I use technique to create a vision?
o What makes an image memorable?
Danceo Why does my mind need to know what my body is
doing?
Sample essential questions
Language Arts
o What does a reader bring to a text?
o What makes a story work?
Science
o Are we destined to become our parents?
o How do effective systems handle change?
Is this an Essential Question?
o What are the elements of writing?
o Define “scientific method.”
o To what extent can you lie with statistics?
o What are the dates of the Civil War?
o Conjugate “—er” verbs.
Task
Write 2-3 essential questions for your
unit.
Page 36
Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings
Big Idea Enduring
Understandings
Essential Questions
Cultural
voice /
heritage
A group’s
identity is
defined by a
shared system
of beliefs and
practices.
•How does family
influence who we
are? Who we
become?
•What makes a group
powerful?
•What do we learn
about a
group/culture by the
stories they tell?
Overarching & Topical
Overarching Essential Questionso What does effective writing look like?
Topical Essential Questionso Why don’t all novels end with a clear resolution?
o To what extent can facts helps a persuasive essay?
Page 23-24
Overarching & Topical
Overarching Enduring Understandingso Effective writing includes strategies that
communicate ideas to readers as opposed to just using one formula or pattern.
Topical Enduring Understandingso The conclusion to a novel says a lot about the type of
narrative being crafted as well as the themes being explored.
o Facts give teeth to persuasion’s bite.
Design Standards for
Enduring Understandings
Address Big ideas at the heart of the discipline
Require “uncoverage” Have Lasting value beyond the
classroomAre Measurable
Remember the stem: “Students will understand that . . .”
Sample enduring understandings
Business Education:
A good planner knows why and when to make adjustments.
Success and failures are measured in every area of business.
Satisfying a customer at any cost is not always good for business.
Sample enduring understandings
Environmental Science:
Environmental awareness and stewardship are crucial toward developing civic responsibility.
Mathematics:
Math is a useful language for symbolically modeling and thus simplifying and analyzing our world.
Math can give visualization to what cannot be seen.
Sample enduring understandings
Social Studies
The government structure reflects the amount of faith the leaders have in its people.
World Language
Learning a new language is learning a new way of thinking.
Sample enduring understandings
Art
The context in which a piece is created impacts the audience’s perception of the piece.
o Writing involves many elements.
o In a free-market economy, price is a function of supply and demand.
o DNA
o Students will understand how to compare and order fractions, decimals, percents, and numbers written in scientific notation.
o Students will understand that there are numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number systems.
Which of the following are enduring understandings?
Task
Draft 3-4 Enduring Understandings
for your unit.
Knowledge and Skills
. . .assist students in gaining understanding
AND
in illustrating their understanding
Knowledge, Skills, and Understanding
Factual knowledge
vocabulary/ terminology
definitions
key factual information
critical details
important events and people
sequence/timeline
Skills
analyzing, decoding, drawing
listening, speaking, writing
research/inquiry/ skills
comparing, problem solving, decision
making
note taking, interpersonal, group skills
Identifying key knowledge and skills
Knowledge:
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
Skills:
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
• __________________
Given the targeted content standards and understandings,
what will students need to know and be able to do?
Task
Identify the Knowledge and Skills to be
acquired in the unit you’re designing.
Reflect
Given what we’ve worked on so far, consider one of
the two essential questions we posed this morning:
What would a UbD classroom look like in your
building?
How would UbD change your planning and teaching?
Are the understandings declarative statements that demand exploration?
To what extent will the essential questions engage students and guide them to understanding?
To what extent is stage one truly centered on understanding?
Are the knowledge and skills aligned with the understandings?
Self-assessment of Stage One:
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction
Three stages of backward design
Acceptable Evidence of Understanding
Desired Results for Stage Two
The purpose of assessment is to provide reliable and authentic evidence of understanding.
Assessment not only measures student performance, it motivates it.
If you value the desired result, learners deserve accessible opportunities to demonstrate learning.
Recognizing the limits of testing
“Evaluation is a complex, multi-faceted process. Different tests provide different information, and no single test can give a complete picture of a student’s academic development.”
-- from CTB/McGraw-Hill
Terra Nova Test Manual
Assessment
The snapshot.
Brainstorm a list of
adjectives describing this
student. What can you
infer?
AssessmentThe photo album versus the snapshot.
Stage 2: Assessment Plan
Stage 2 - Assessment Evidence
Transfer Task(s): Other Evidence:
Performance task
Products / Performances
Academic Prompts
All other forms of assessmentQuizzes, tests, prompts,
work samples
Observations
Student self-assessment
Worth beingfamiliar with
Important toknow & do
Big ideas &Enduring Understandings
“Big ideas”
worth
exploring and
understanding
in depth
Foundational knowledge & skill
Nice to know
Traditional quizzes & tests
Paper/pencil
Selected-response
Constructed response
Performance tasks & projects
Complex
Open ended
Authentic
40-40-40
Designing performance tasks
Goal
Role
Audience
Situation
Product/Performance
Standards
G
R
A
S
P
SPage 50, 53, & 64
Is the task relevant?
Connected to the classroom — demonstration /
extension of what was addressed in class
Connected to the real world — work that
professionals in the field would do
Connected to student’s life — self explanatory?
Do students have the ability to be successful?
Assess before teaching
Offer appropriate choices
Provide feedback early and often
Encourage self-assessment and goal setting
Allow new evidence of achievement to replace old evidence
Task
Brainstorm possible transfer
evidence for your unit.
Consider the transfer goals from
stage one
Page 67-68
60
TaskDesign a performance task for
your unit.
Identify the other evidence that
will round out your assessments
Rubrics
4 3 2 1
Understanding
Understanding
Knowledge & Skill
Knowledge & Skill
To what extent do your assessments
oassess the enduring understandings?
oassess the knowledge and skills?
Check for gaps and points of
emphasis.
Reflect
• Is there a range of assessments as opposed to a
single task/test (photo album vs. snapshot)?
• Could a student be successful on the assessment
package without truly understanding?
• Could the student understand and not be successful
on the assessment package?
Review Standards—Stage Two:
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction
Three stages of backward design
Questions
• What does a UbD classroom actually look like?
• What are the implications of Understanding by
Design for instruction?
A M ToAcquire Information
oConstructing Meaning
oTransfer
Learners must Acquire and Make Meaning out of information in the service of understanding andTransferring it.
A M T
A fact is a fact; a skill is a skill. We acquire each in
turn.
Acquisition does not yield understanding;
it is necessary but not sufficient.
If I have skills and facts, it does not mean that I
understand. I cannot, however, understand without
those skills and facts.
Acquire information
Most Common Acquisition Strategies
• Lectures
• Showing exemplars
• Modeling
• Questioning
• Readings
• Videos, Guest Speakers, Demonstrations
Learning Calculus
Acquisition vs. Meaning Making Start
2x3
3x5
2x5
5x7
4x10
3x8
Finish
6x2
15x4
10x4
35x6
40x9
24x7
What do these facts imply?
When would I use this skill (or not)?
What is their sense, import, value?
Constructing meaning
Instruction that supports active
construction of meaning:•Problem-Based Learning •Reciprocal Teaching•Questioning•Use of analogies•Understanding-reflection notebooks •Rethinking and revising prompts
How should I apply my prior facts, skills, and ideas
effectively in this particular situation?
The situation must be new and uncharted.
The goal is independent transfer.
Transfer
No thinking activated without ambiguity!!!
This demand runs counter to our instincts as teachers: we
work hard to make things easier and unambiguous (i.e.
when acquisition is the goal)
Learning to Transfer• Continually reference transfer goals
• Have students practice judgment in using different
skills
• Provide regular feedback
• Vary the settings / formats / contexts / modes /
language
• Have students regularly generalize
Typical Transfer Activities• Create a product or performance as an assessment
or activity that is authentic (as ‘real world’ as possible).
• Develop a hypothesis-Design an experimental inquiry to test it.
• Select and use problem-solving and decision making strategies previously learned in new and unique situations.
• Give a persuasive speech based on research on a specific topic and persuasion.
Action Verbs for AMTAcquisition:Define, Identify, Calculate,
Discern, Identify, Memorize,
Notice, Select, Paraphrase,
Plug in, Recall, State
Transfer:Adapt (based on feedback),
Adjust (based on results),
Apply, Create, Design,
Innovate, Self-Assess, Solve,
Trouble shoot
Meaning Making:Analyze, Compare, Contrast, Critique, Defend, Explain, Evaluate, Generalize, Interpret, Justify/Support, Prove, Summarize, Synthesize, Test, Translate, Verify
Some Examples of AMT• Students practice tying their shoes
• Students draw/speak the steps of lace
tying
• Students discuss the pros and cons of
laces vs. Velcro, and different methods
of tying
• Students teach others to tie rope or
ribbons
A
M
M
T
Where are we headed?
How will the student be ‘hooked’?
What opportunities will there be to be equipped, experienced, and explorekey ideas?
What will provide opportunities to rethink, rehearse, refine and revise?
How will students evaluate their work?
How will work be tailored to individual needs, interests, styles?
How will work be organized for maximal engagement and effectiveness?
WHE
E
R
T
O
Task:• Design a Stage Three learning plan for
your unit.
• Indicate order of activities
• Code activities with A-M-T
Summary and Reflection• How can Understanding by Design help students in
their academic development?
• How can Understanding by Design help articulate
and achieve counseling goals?
• What are your next steps?
Contact Information
Erik Powell
Thomas Rye