Understanding by Design Presented by Kevin Madeiras, Jonathan Ferrante, and Kristen Weinstein.

Understanding by Design

Presented by Kevin Madeiras, Jonathan Ferrante, and Kristen

Weinstein

Essential Questions of UBD

• When your students really “understand” they can do the following:

• How do we achieve understanding by design (vs. good fortune)?

What are our goals?21st Century Student Outcomes:

1. Core subjects and 21st Century Themes

2. Learning and Innovation Skills• Creativity and Innovation• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving• Communication and Collaboration

3. Information, Media, and Technology Skills• Information Literacy• Media Literacy• ICT Literacy

4. Life and Career Skills

New York State Standards

Analyze the development of the American culture, explaining how

ideas, values, beliefs, and traditions have changed over time and how they

unite all Americans.

Why “backward”?•The stages are logical but they go against habits

– We’re 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

Why UbD?

• A problem statement:– Few courses focus on transfer– Most local assessments are not higher- order– Lesson planning is done in isolation from long-

term goals and others

IN SUM: we say we want critical thinking and

understanding, but our approaches to planning )hence, teaching and assessment) undercut the aims.

The big ideas of UbD

UbD big idea Why important? If not…

‘Backward Design’ Plans need to be well aligned to be effective

Aimless activity and coverage

Understanding: Transfer

It is the essence of understanding and the

point of schooling

Students fail to apply poor results on tests

Understanding: Meaning making via

big ideas

That’s how transfer happens, makes

learning more connected

Learning is fragmented, more

difficult, less engaging

The key ‘understanding’

• You must design ‘backward’ from understanding to achieve it ‘by design’

• So: ‘what is understanding’?

Please refer to “Exercise: Essential Questions Reflection”

Example:Teacher 1

In late April, a history teacher begins to panicbecause he cannot finish the textbook unless he

averages 40 pages per day. He decides to eliminatea unit on Latin America and a few time-consuming

activities such as a mock UN debate and discussionsof how current international events impact the

world history topics they have been studying. Hispriority becomes moving to a fast-forward lecturemode to be sure his students are prepared for the

departmental final exam. Comment?

Example:Teacher 2

A third grade unit on apples features a readingabout Johnny Appleseed, the writing of a creative

story about an apple and the illustration of an appleusing tempura paints. Students collect leaves from

apple trees and make an apple leaf collage. Themusic teacher teaches songs about apples. In math,

the teacher shows students how to scale up anapplesauce recipe to make enough for the entirethird grade. The students take a trip to an apple

orchard where they go on a hayride and watch ciderbeing made. During the culminating “Apple Fest”

students do a number of activities including bob for apples make applesauce, do apple word searches and read their apple stories

to the whole group. Comment?

Twin Sins of Unit Design:“Coverage-focused” teaching“Activity-focused” teaching

Teacher 1 is focused on “getting through” thematerial; Teacher 2 is focused on keepingstudents active and engaged.

Neither method reveals any clear intellectualgoals. Any understanding that happens isessentially a piece of good luck.

Understanding is not a part of the design.

The Backward Design questions:

• The question is NOT: “Where can I get more time?”

• RATHER: what should I do with the time I have to accomplish my (few key) priority goals?

The ‘twin sins’ reflect this

• Cute, fun activities – but no bottom-line learning target.

• Aimless content coverage

The course is not the content

• Are you confusing inputs with outputs?– A survey of all possible cooking ingredients

and kitchen skills – with the ability to prepare a nice set of meals?

– Hundreds of sideline drills – with playing the game of soccer well?

The course is not the ‘activities’

• Are you confusing ‘activity’ with ‘learning from the activity’?– Learning does not occur by mere doing – you

have to require students to reflect upon, infer and generalize from the activity

– “Thoughtless doing” via isolated teaching and practicing is all too common: students learn discrete skill but not how to judge when to use it or why it works.

The course is not the textbook

• The textbook CANNOT be a complete course – it is a resource– It is a jam packed and incoherent resource, to

be sold in 50 states– Like an encyclopedia, it provides mostly

‘logically’ organized content – not an optimally-framed syllabus to achieve specific local goals and priorities

I taught spot to whistle.

I can’t hear him whistling.

I said I taught him. I didn’t say he learned it!

Please refer to your “Code/Edit Your Draft Unit” Handout

1. Identify desired results

2. Determine acceptable evidence

3. Plan learning experiences

& instruction

3 Stages of (“Backward”) Design

What should they have accomplished – and be ready for?

What counts as evidence of that accomplishment?

So, what should the learning be?

3 Stages of (“Backward”) Design

Content mastery = a means, shaped by goals

• If content mastery is the means, what is the desired end?

• What in the future should the students be able to achieve?

• Why is this worth learning?

Goal vs. Skill

• “I want students to learn to …..”

• “I want students to learn how to solve problems involving….”

• These are skills; what’s the goal?

Please refer to “The Logic of Backward Design” handout

Backward design from ‘content coverage’

• I want students to understand – – The constitution– The 3 branches of government

• No- not a learning goal- this just says what the content is

Backward Design from Understanding Sought

• I want students to leave my course having understood that-– The Constitution was a solution based on

compromise to real and pressing problems and disagreements in governance, not a ‘nice idea’ out of thin air.

– It was a brilliant balance and limit of powers – but grounded in a a long and sometime bitter history, with many fights that are with us and will always be with us

• I want students to transfer that understanding to – A modern relevant situation:

• The problem of designing a government for Iraq – or a system of governance for our school.

3 Useful Q’s to ask in class as kids work

• What are you doing?

• Why are we doing it?

• Why will it help us be able to understand/do (that matters)?

Please refer to your “My unit:

What’s the Point?”

Handout

What are the implicationsfor teachers?

Usually, teachers lose sight of long term goals for understanding as they focus on short term planning, teaching, and assessing.

We say we value critical thinking and genuine problem solving but focus almost exclusively on short term content mastery that runs counter to this belief.

The big ideas of UbD






point of schooling

Students fall to apply poor results on tests


big ideas





“Backward” Design

What should they leave able to do on their own?

What counts as evidence that they can transfer learning?

What follows from our goals for assessments?

• “If that is the goal, then our assessments must regularly find out if…”

– This is the essence of Backward Design: putting valid assessments in place BEFORE a full lesson is developed

Transfer defined and justified

• What is “transfer of learning”?– Transfer of learning is the use of knowledge and skills

in a new context. It occurs when a person’s learning in one situation influences that person’s learning and performance in other situations.

– When transfer of learning occurs, it is the form of meanings, expectations, generalizations, concepts, or insights that are developed in one learning situation being employed in others.

The Transfer Question

• What should the student be able to do effectively with a repertoire of knowledge and skill, increasingly on their own?

Transfer Tasks: different types

• Construct a valid story from multiple (incomplete and conflicting) primary sources

• Find a patter/relation/function in messy data

• Read and make meaning on your own

Transfer over time: increased-

• Autonomy: the student is lesson and less reliant on teacher-provided scaffolding

• Repertoire: the challenge demands greater control over a bigger repertoire

• Rask difficulty: the required tasks become more and more ‘realistically messy, noisy, complex’ – in contexts

Autonomy – ‘gradual release of responsibility’

• I do, you watch

• I do, you help

• You do, I help

• You do, I watch

Note how this goal changes our view of time use!

• What will we do to achieve the performance goal-given the very limited time we have?– We don’t say: sorry, no time for performance

based learning and assessment- there is too much information to cover!

Framing a course in world History by transfer tasks

• 1. The design of a tour of the world’s holy sites

• 2. The writing of a Bill of Rights for use in Afghanistan

• 3. Report on Latin America to the Sec. of state: policy analysis and background report on a Latin American country. What should our current policy be and how effective has a past policies been?

Transfer tasks

• 4. Collect and analyze media reports from the internet on other countries views of policies in the Middle East. Do we understand the issues?

• 5. Provide a briefing on the AIDs crisis in Africa and how American policy has helped or hurt the situation.

• 6. Take part in a model UN on the issue of terrorism: you will be part of a group representing a country, and you will try to pass a Security Council Resolution on terrorism.

Transfer tasks

• 7. Russia: friend or foe? Provide the Foreign Relations Committee with a briefing on the current state of Russia, the last century of Russian-American relations, and future worries and possibilities..

• 8. India and outsourcing : to what extent is the global economy a good thing for America? India? India’s neighbors?

• 9. Successfully conduct a debate: Did British success in the French an Indian war make the American revolution inevitable?

Please refer to “Clarifying Transfer Goals” Handout

We often confuse drills with the game

• Drills – test items– Short term objective– Out of context– Discrete, isolated

element– Set up and prompted

for initial simplified learning

– Doesn’t transfer to new situations

• The game – real task– The point of the drills– In context, with all its

messiness and interest value

– Requires a repertoire of skill

– Not prompted: you judge what top do, when

Irony: that’s what the difficult problems on state and AP exams are –transfer

problems• Unfamiliar reading passages and

writing prompts

• Unfamiliar looking versions of problems

• No obvious prompts or clues to which ‘content’ applies( since there is no teacher or textbook ‘heads up’ available)






point of schooling

Students fall to apply poor results on tests


big ideas





To make meaning is to ….

• Connect the dots

• Make sense of experiences or facts

• Identify the point, gist, purpose, significance

• Draw appropriate inferences

A big idea, framed as an Essential question

• Provides a clear priority for teaching and learning of content

• Makes clear that the goal is inquiry not passive learning of knowledge

• Enhances transfer by making clear the kinds of connections sought to other content studied.

Examples:

• How much power should the federal government have?

• What are the most pressing social problems and how should they be addressed by government?

• When should America go to war?• What is the proper balance between free

enterprise and government regulation?• What is America's role in the world? • What is the proper balance between national

security and civil liberties?

Whenever there is …

• A burning question

• A difficult decision

• A generalization

• An intelligent adjustment

…There is a big idea

Please refer back to Exercise #1

i.e. why do…

• Business and law use the case method?

• Philosophy and College English use Socratic method?

• Medicine and engineering use Problem-based learning?

• Artists and Actors rehearse

• Athletic teams scrimmage (instead of just drill)

No learner need for understanding without-

• Real problems

• Real questions with no easy or obvious answers

• Real tasks that require meeting varied challenges

What we typically do:

Identify content

Brainstorm activities and methods

Come up with an assessment

Key: 3 stages of “Backward” design

Identify desired accomplishments

Determine acceptable evidence

Plan learning experiences and instruction

Then, and only then

Refer to Template Sheets in your binder

Stage 1Design Questions

What are the Long Term transfer Goals? GIn the end, students should be able, on their own, to …

What are the desired Understandings? UStudents will understand that…

What are the essential Questions to becontinually explored? QWhat Knowledge & Skills should studentsLeave with? K S

Stage 1: Enduring Understandings

What are they? EU

• Sentences that specify what we want students to come to understand about the unit.

• Have enduring value beyond the classroom.• The anchors of the unit and establish the rationale for

teaching it.• Give meaning and importance to facts.

How Enduring Understandings are Written?

• Build the understandings from the Big Ideas. • Write them as statements that the learner will

come to understand as the unit unfolds.• Write understandings that summarize the insights

we want students to come to realize; the “ah-hahs” of the unit or content.

Things to keep in mind…

• Enduring understandings are written for the designer, not the learner.

• Don’t state the obvious. (Triangles have 3 sides) Facts go into the knowledge box

• Think of it as “the moral of the story”. (Kind of like the moral of the lesson)

• Sometimes the understanding is that there is no single, agreed upon understanding. (Ex. Historians disagree about the causes of the civil war.)

Most Importantly…

• The understandings require “uncoverage” because they are not obvious facts!

• Since it requires uncoverage the understanding should not be understood simply by being stated.

• Anticipate the misunderstandings!

Framing the understandings…

• Each understanding should begin with the statement:

The student will understand that… (This format prevents fact statements from being

generated!)

Group Activity Time

• Let’s see some examples.

• Brainstorm with your content area and develop 2-4 enduring understandings for your selected unit.

• Share with all!

Stage 1: Essential Questions EQ

What do you know?

Time for a short pre-assessment quiz…

(in the binder)

Essential Questions

“Essential Questions provide a focus for the lessonor the unit of study. They pull together skills andencourage teachers and students to go much deeperin to the content. Continually posing these guidedquestions provides opportunities for students tothink out of the box and encourages their naturalcuriosity to surface. This type of inquiry helpsstudents to think about how they personally relateto the topic.”

Wiggins and McTighe (1998)

Essential QuestionsSee Binder• 2 examples• Grade level examples (Chapter 10)

All focus on pages 85&86Primary focus on pages 88, 89, and 93Elementary/Intermediate pages 89, 90, and 93Middle School focus on pages 90, 91, and 93High School focus on 91, 92, and 93

Essential Questions(continued)

See Binder• Partner Activity• More Examples (David Jakes)• Essential Question samples (Wiggins)• Review of quiz• Group Activity

E.Q. Group Activity

At your table, develop a set (3-5) ofessential questions. Please include thefollowing:• Course• Unit• Grade Level• 3-5 questions• Be prepared to share with all!

Enduring Understandings Vs. Essential Questions

• “An enduring understanding is a big idea that resides at the heart of a discipline and has lasting value outside the classroom. An essential question is a question that can be answered when the enduring understanding is achieved. “

(http://www.montclair.edu/Detectives/project/EQandEUSummary.htm)

Enduring Understandingsvs Essential Questions

There does not need to be an essential question for each identified understanding, BUT, there should be a clear connection between the Essential Question and the Enduring Understanding.

K

Stage 1:Knowledge

• Knowledge Box - key facts and details students will know at the end of the unit

• Preface this box with the sentence: What we want students to know:

• Examples (see sample units)

Stage 1:Skills S

• These are the actions students will take to uncover the understandings and arrive at answering the questions

• Think of these as the action verbs (ie. decode, write, analyze, compare..)

• Preface this box with the sentence: Students will be able to…

• Examples (see sample units)

Stage 1 Design questions

• What are the long term transfer goals? In the end, students should be able, on their own, to….

• What are the desired understandings?

• What are the essential questions to be continually explored?

• What knowledge and skill they leave with ?

Stage 2 Design Questions

• What evidence for assessment is required by our stage 1 goals?

• What performances are indicative of understanding – transfer of learning and understanding of content via big ideas?

• What other evidence is required by the goals?• What scoring rubrics/criteria/indicators will be

used to assess student work against the goals?

Stage 3 – Design Questions

• If those are the desired results in Stage 1 and the tasks of Stage 2- – What do they need to acquire?– What inquiries and meaning making must

they actively be made to engage in?– What transfer must they practice and get

feedback on?– What sequence is optimal for engagement

and success?

Backward design from EQs

• Stage 1: The Essential Questions• Stage 2: what is the evidence that a

student has thought hard, learned a lot about, and provided a defensible answer to the EQ?

• Stage 3: what has to happen via instruction and work to prepare students to address the Questions and produce evidence?




& instruction

3 Stages of Design: Stage 2

Stage 2:Assessment Evidence

Given the essential questions, what evidence would show that the learner had deeply considered them?

Given the understandings, what would show that the learner “got it”.

(Wiggins & McTighe 2005)

Just because the student “knows it” …

Evidence of understanding is a greaterchallenge than evidence that the studentknows a correct or valid answer.

Stage 2 Design Questions

•What authentic evidence/task for assessment is required by our Stage 1 goals? T

•What performances are indicative of understanding - transfer of learning and understanding of content via big ideas?

•What other evidence is required by the goals?

OE•What scoring rubrics/criteria/indicators will be used to assess student work against the goals?

Not the format that mattersbut what we are looking for!

Regardless of the type of test (quiz, essay, observation)

– what should we look for?– where should we look?

in order to say - they got it (or didn’t)?

We often confuse the drillswith the game

‘Drills’ - test items– Short-term objective– Out of context– Discrete, isolated

element– set up and prompted

for initial simplified learning

– Doesn’t transfer to new situations on its

own

The ‘game’ - real task– The point of the drills– In context, with all its

messiness and interest value

– Requires a repertoire, used wisely

– Not prompted: you judge what to do, when

Refer to Examplesin your binder

It only assesses transfer if...

• The student must draw from a repertoire for a task requiring multiple skills and an array of knowledge

• The test-giver provides minimal cues, prompts, graphic organizers, etc.

• The learner must navigate a context - this particular setting, audience, purpose, ‘noise’, etc.

Scenarios forAuthentic 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?

T

Refer to Examplein your binder

2 validity questions for a practical ‘test of the test’

1. Could the test be passed but without deep understanding?

2. Could the specific test performance be poor but the student still reveal understanding in various ways before, during, and after?

The goal is to answer NO to both.!

04/19/23

Reliability:Snapshot vs. Photo Album

We need patterns that overcome

inherent measurement error.Sound assessment requires multiple evidence over time - a photo album vs. a single snapshot

For Reliability & Sufficiency:Use 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

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)

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

Scenarios for Authentic Tasks•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?

SPS

GRA

T




& instruction

3 Stages of Design: Stage 3

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

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

• “Where are we headed?” (the student’s 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?

WHE

E

R

L

TO

The “big ideas” of each stage:

Assessment Evidence

Learning Activities

Understandings Essential Questions

stage

2

stage

3

Standard(s):

stage

1

Performance Task(s): Other Evidence:

Unpack the content standards and ‘content’, focus on big ideas Analyze multiple

sources of evidence, aligned with Stage 1Derive the implied learning from Stages 1 & 2

What are the big ideas?

What’s the evidence?

How will we get there?

Understanding by Design Presented by Kevin Madeiras, Jonathan Ferrante, and Kristen Weinstein.

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Transcript of Understanding by Design Presented by Kevin Madeiras, Jonathan Ferrante, and Kristen Weinstein.