UbDDI+B2+Chapter+3

UbD/ DI Chapter 3: Abstract and Synthesis - Alyssa
Educators face many problems upon entering schools, but one of the biggest problems is time itself. For all teachers, state standards and textbooks offer a huge amount of content but not enough time to teach it. Some standards are too broad while others are too narrow, and it becomes an issue determining what are the most important standards to teach, and without this in mind time is likely to be wasted. To address this, is the idea of the [|backward design model] for planning curriculum. The design is composed of three major stages. Stage one, “Identifying Desired Results”, is where teachers establish the learning goals, desired understandings, knowledge and skills needed, and essential questions that they want to reach at the end of a unit. This stage is essentially where you decide what you want your students to know by making clear and effective goals that every student is aware of. Stage two, “Determining Acceptable Evidence”, is where teachers decide which forms of evidence are acceptable in assessing student progress and learning. This is the assessment stage where teachers need to think about how to get their students to succeed and what evidence will portray success. Distinguishing between performance tasks and evidence reviews are essential for student success. Stage three, “Planning Learning Experiences and Instruction”, is the stage where teachers will plan experiences and instruction that is engaging and effective so that necessary content will be covered and all student needs will be met. The instruction needs to be balanced between textbooks and hands on activities that are designed to meet different learning styles. Each activity that is planned must be goal focused (with stages one and two in mind), so that all time can be taken advantage of, and the necessary content will be covered. Chapter three of //Understanding by Design and Differentiated Instruction// offered a multitude of ideas and tips for planning a curriculum. The backwards design is something that all teachers now and in the future should implement in their classrooms. Not only is it a template for planning curriculum, but also it offers new ways to focus and balance goals that include both content and student needs. It is flexible enough to incorporate differentiation for different student learning styles and for different types of assessment. This process aids and maximizes both teacher and student success and understanding by preventing lost time, encouraging bigger thinking, and covering the most important parts of curriculum. The process is essentially a //roadmap// that allows teachers to plan in a way that can lead to more student understanding and in a way that ensures that goals are met. When teachers are actually planning out the experiences and methods of their instruction, the backward design model encourages [|creativity]. It allows the time to [|create experiences] that do not under or over challenge a certain student, and lets teachers create effective and differentiated learning experiences for a diverse classroom. This process forces teachers to think like students, because in order for this process to work teachers must truly understand and know their students. Although it may be impossible to know everything about a student, the backward design is flexible enough to be changed when new student information is acquired. The backward design model for curriculum is an impact on all teachers because it teaches them to look at the big ideas, future goals, and benefits of what they want their students to know when they leave their classroom.

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Emily McGee
Tomlinson and McTighe focus on the importance of backwards design in curriculum planning. The effectively describe each of the three stages of planning. According to the authors stage 1 seeks to identify the desired results by considering course goals in conjunction with content standards and curriculum expectations. Stage 1 focuses on clarifying content priorities by specifying desired understandings, essential questions, established learning goals, and specific knowledge and skills that should be acquired. Stage 2 focuses on determining acceptable evidence through assessment by distinguishing between performance tasks and other evidence reviews. Assessment evidence should ideally coincide with desired results of stage 1. Stage 3 is to plan experiences and instruction methods that are engaging and effective, keeping results and evidence in mind. Activities should be directed towards guiding all students towards reaching a comprehensive understanding of the essential questions.

As a pre-service teacher it is important for me to have a broad understanding of backwards design in order to implement it in my own curriculum planning. Using the progression stated by Tomlinson and McTighe, I hope to focus my teaching on what truly matters in my content, in order to effectively teach students the essential understandings they are expected to know. The authors offer content standards as a starting point for developing the essential questions, which I think is an important guideline to follow right of the bat. By formulating a concise planning template I may be able to offer better differentiation and flexibility in assessment because I will know more about what students really need to know.

Lauren Scheidegger
In chapter three of __Integrating Differentiated Instruction + Understanding by Design__ by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe the idea of “planning backwards” was explained and justified. The chapter went into detail about the three stages and how they create a successful lesson plan. The first stage is “Identifying Desired Results”. This means thinking about what the students should end up knowing and what they should walk away understanding. Goals should be considered during this step as well as an examination of content standards, either by state or national standards. Priorities should also be clarified. Step two goes into “Determining Acceptable Evidence”. This step brings up questions like, “How do I get students to reach desired results?” and “What sort of evidence of learning is acceptable?” The final step in backwards planning, step three, is “Planning Learning Experiences and Instruction”. During this step teachers should decide what students will need to perform effectively or what they need to do to succeed. Desired results should be clearly identified and instructional activities and projects should be considered.

I found this chapter helpful because it helped me to fully understand backwards planning and to truly see the benefits of it. I have every intention of creating lessons plans using this method. It appears to not only aid the teacher but help aid in the student’s success. It also helps to prevent the meaning of a lesson from getting lost. If I make a class read “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I want to make sure that there is reasoning behind it and that it adds to the goals of the class or unit.

Lauren Breton
Chapter 3: What Really Matters in Learning? (Content) One of the major problems that has plagued education was discussed in this chapter: content. Often, educators have been required to make the difficult decision of what curriculum they cover completely in their classes (due to an overwhelming amount of curriculum), as well as how they are going to differentiate instruction for their students. Although I knew that both were important, before reading this chapter it seemed impossible to meet both the needs of the curriculum and standards as well as meet all of the needs of my students. Even as I read the text describing the planning template that was shown, I could not comprehend where Differentiated Instruction would play a role. Once I was able to view all of the planning templates that were provided within the chapter, though, I was able to better understand why planning backward would make sense and how instruction could be differentiated in order to meet the needs of all students. Also, this chapter made me realize that there isn’t a choice between curriculum and students’ needs but that a delicate balancing act has to happen to ensure that both requirements are met. In my classroom, I want to ensure that I am able to cover the curriculum that is necessary for my students to receive a quality education, but I also want to ensure that they are not under-challenged or over-challenged. The idea of planning backward will be utilized within my future classroom because it seems like a foolproof way to ensure that my curriculum goals are met and also that different levels of instruction are available based on my students’ needs.

Kevin Lind
This chapter has a fair amount of information on ways teaching is made difficult by standards and time. To be more specific, the chapter says that some standards are too broad, while others are too narrow. Also, there is simply not enough time in a semester to complete the standards. One way I plan on using this information in the classroom is to try to always stay on task. Deviating from the goal will mean that there will be that much more information I won’t be able to cover. The idea of planning backwards seems like the perfect way to deal with the short amount of time in each class. Essentially, a teacher will starts by looking at the intended goals for the course. This will allow the teacher which content is the most important to go over for the students to meet the goals. Then, the teacher will figure out which activities will be effective in teaching each of the major goals. This idea will aid me a lot in the classroom since there is so much involved with U.S. government. It will definitely help me narrow down the information I will have to cover. The only fear I have using backward design is that I will have to accommodate for the different learning styles of all my students. Even if I figure out the exact content in advance, the activities may not help certain learners understand the information. This means that in order for a teacher to be truly effective, they will have to know their students very well.

Samy Tracy
This chapter begins by explaining how many standards are out there and how to make sense of them all. I personally was having a hard time figuring out the standards because they seem to all mesh together to me. But even though these standards can get confusing, there are ways of breaking them down and analyzing what they exactly mean so you can become an effective teacher. Also, teachers should not just try to graze over these standards so it seems like they covered them, because that is not a good teacher at all, that is just trying to get things done.

The majority of this chapter focused on the Planning Backward technique for planning units in teaching. Since this section is very relevant to what we are learning in class, I got to see a sneak peek of what the next step is in the process. This next step deals with how teachers assess what the student has actually learned from the teacher and what we hope they all learn. If this step does not have the desired results for the teacher, then they should attempt to prolong the lesson even more so that the point does come across. There also has to be a certain balance between using the textbooks in class and doing hands-on activities. In elementary school, we were always doing activities and they were fun, but I really do not remember learning anything from it. In high school, we got rid of these activities almost completely and just went right through the book. It did not really teach me or other students much, unless we took the time to try to figure out ways that we could retain this information on our own. The balance between the two would be very helpful all through K-12 grades.

Alyssa Amari
Chapter three of //Understanding by Design, and Differentiated Instruction// starts with a problem facing many teachers today, not having enough time to teach all of the benchmarks that are a part of the state-level standards and text books. This means that instead teachers should teach so students can learn the big ideas and important processes within these standards and text books. These ideas should be framed around essential questions that can help to focus teaching and learning.

Through this, the chapter introduces the idea of the backward planning design for curriculum planning. The design is composed of three stages that are designed to help teachers focus on the end product first. Stage one is designed to identify desired results, this allows teachers to establish goals for the classroom and student learning as well as create essential questions that coincide with state standards. Stage two is designed for determining acceptable evidence, this allows teachers to think as assessors before designing the lessons, and this is where teachers identify what evidence (understandings) are needed for the desired results in stage one. Stage three is where the learning experiences and instruction is designed. This is done by deciding which methods of teaching and what types of engaging activities are needed to accomplish the previous two stages. Essentially these stages are designed thinking that teachers will also use differentiated instruction and assessment to reach end goals.

This impacts me greatly because it is a process that I must acquire in order to plan my Instruction effectively and so that I will capture the contents big ideas. It will most definitely affect my classroom because it will impact my students and their learning; it ill be the most affective way to teach the big ideas students need to know, reach different learning styles, and to assess each student accordingly.

Rachel Joiner
After reading this chapter, I gained a much better understanding of the backwards design system. Some of the important things I got out of this chapter were that it is extremely important to make standards clear and effective. If not, as we saw in this chapter it can delay the learning process and lose a lot of valuable teaching time. Sometimes clarification documents can be helpful in making standards clearer. These documents provide supplemental information on the intent of standards and specify benchmarks that need to be met. I learned from this chapter that an important piece to the backward design model is to identify the results that I want to get out of my lesson. By completing this backward design model, the chapter mentions this can help avoid doing activities that do not have a lot of meaning, it allows the teacher to focus in on the important deep understandings that students need to learn. After reading this chapter, I gained a much better understanding of how to create a backward design lesson. I think this is a great way to create lessons, because I think it really focuses attention on what needs to be addressed the most in the classroom. This information is helpful to me, because now that I am aware I can start to apply this to my own lessons. My classroom can benefit from this because, it will be more focused and the goals and understandings will be clearer. By having a greater understanding of the backwards design model, I can apply this in my classroom and provide my students with a better learning experience.

Matt Roy
This chapter focused on breaking down the reasoning behind planning backwards. The author discusses the issue that, oftentimes, it can be overwhelming to consider the content overloads presented by textbooks and standards. In chapter 3, we learn that planning backwards can help educators navigate the this issue and make sense of all the standards while creating a curriculum that benefits all students. The major theme behind planning backwards is focusing on the “big ideas”. This model encourages educators to “unpack” state (or common core) standards, identifying the big pictures that the standards are trying to get at. In practicing this technique, educators are then looking at much more manageable big ideas to form essential questions from and then continue on planning the unit.

For me, it was really beneficial to read this chapter in tandem with our Stage 1 assignment. This week has been the first week where I have been honestly challenged to think like a teacher, and it has been a learning period (to say the least). I feel that backward planning not only forces teachers to think about seemingly unexciting standards in terms of exciting and practical big pictures but it also forces teachers to think like students. Throughout this week (and I have no reason to believe that it will not continue into my career) I have found myself constantly asking “How should this material be presented to a 10th grader?” or “What about this information can seem pertinent and exciting to a Junior in high school?” Ultimately, I feel that, throughout my education, I have not been encouraged to think in this way but I am grateful to be learning and practicing it now.

Standards have been developed to attempt to narrow down the content being taught. They were designed to give more specifics of content that should be taught in order for teachers to teach as much of the required content as possible. Time has always been a major issue for teachers because there never seems to be enough of it to teach all the content desired. The standards were designed to reduce that. This is where the essential questions come in to play to help students understand the big ideas of the content. The primary way for developing strong essential questions is by planning backward. This is when you start by determining the desired results; basically what will the students know? I like the Maine Learning Results for health education. I have read them a few times and they provide a very good guideline for developing an effective unit. From what I have read from the Maine standards, they hit on the big ideas and allow the teachers to figure out how they are going to teach. It gives broad standards and makes it easy for the teacher to develop units and lesson plans. I have developed a lesson plan and just started to develop a unit and by using the standards and working backwards, it has been relatively easy. Once I determine what I want the students to learn and understand based on the standards, it is easy to develop essential questions. Once that is done, the fun part of developing how the material will be taught begins. This is where the teacher can use their own ideas and get creative.

Morgan Ware
Every teacher from pre-k to graduate school all have to same problem, they are too much content to teach in a small amount of time. This forces teachers to decide what is the most important content to teach and what is not. Each State came up with a set of standards to decide what needs to be included in the curriculum. Standards are used to focus teaching and lessons. Some states have published companion “clarification” documents to describe what the standards mean. There is a certain plan for teachers to help them create lessons. Its called the Backward plan. There are three stages. Stage 1 is when you identify desired results from your students. Teachers consider their goals and look at the standards. This calls for clarity about priorities. Stage 2 is when teachers determine acceptable evidence. This encourages teachers and curriculum planners to act like assessors before creating a lesson or units. Stage 3 is when teachers plan learning experiences and instruction. Each Student can get involved with the backward plan. This will impact my classroom because it directly affects the learning of my students. I will use this when I become a teacher to create lessons and units.

Patrick Hurley
There is an information overload problem in many fields, which causes problems because it is near impossible to teach the students everything if there is already too much information. The addition of standards, which was supposed to help with the overload problem, may have made it worse. The use of essential questions helps eliminate the problem of content overload; this makes the focus on the big picture. Then there are questions that address the smaller topics within that essential question, making it easier for the teacher to actually teach all the information. Planning backwards is a good way to ensure you teach all the information. First you identify the desired results, then determine evidence, and then plan the learning experiences and instructions. You need to make sure you change the way you teach for different intelligences not the context of what you teach. Stage one should not be differentiated. Stage two may be differentiated. Stage three should be differentiated. This will affect me because I will have to be making the lesson plans, and I will have to be able to include all of the information the students need to know. I also have to be able to teach it in many different ways to accommodate the different learning styles of the people with different intelligences. This will affect my classroom because I will have a more narrow set of criteria to meet, so it will be easier to teach my students all of the information.

Megan Millette
In DI and Ubd Chapter 3, Tomlinson and McTighe discuss how educators have “too much content to teach given the available time” (24). They discuss how in means of trying to fix this problem a list of content standards was established to help let educators know what students need to learn. Later, a new plan was created in hopes to improve this even more with a three-stage backward design made up of desired results, acceptable evidence for the results, and learning experiences and instructions that will help bring students to the results. When doing this, the use of local standards makes it easier to plan. One part of this I found an interesting way to find the important information with in the standards was “unpacking.” This method seems helpful to get main points out of it all while also giving educators a base of what big ideas are found. As an educator it is important to have a curriculum. When making your curriculum it is crucial to follow standards laid out by areas you teach in. I personally find using the three-stage backward design is key in coming up with good reflective lesson plans for your curriculum. It allows you a basic template and makes you think of all options when planning a lesson. I believe using this helps make a basic road map that will make it easier for teaching students. This will give you time to make sure you get everything you need your students to learn while also being flexible enough to change and cater to students when they need a better understanding. Through this all I was able to grasp backward design. It helped me understand the aspects of it all while getting a clear idea of how it helps.

Simone Thiry
Understanding by Design uses the concept of Backward Design to promote student understanding. Backward Design is the process of designing a unit, lesson plan, or other piece of curriculum by working backwards. In this chapter I learned the about essential components of backward design. The pivotal piece in the first stage of backward design is content. If the content is not clear, and the expectations for student understanding are not clear, the lesson will be less effective. Additionally, if a teacher attempts to differentiate instruction without first establishing precisely what students should understand as a result of the lesson, it is likely that the different modes of assessment and instruction can vary from the core meaning of the unit. In the first stage of backward design, the teacher determines content, and defines it by creating essential questions that each student must be able to answer as a result of the lessons; these essential questions should be rooted in national or state standards for the subject. In the second stage, teachers determine how they will assess student learning, including what performance tasks will demonstrate student learning as well as other evidence that may also show student learning. The final stage, teachers then develop a lesson plan that cultivates the skills necessary to demonstrate student understanding of content in the methods of assessment chosen. The process of backward design matters to me because I now understand how designing lessons around the content is imperative to a lesson that maximizes student understanding while maintaining a smooth flow and fair process of assessment. In my future classroom, I hope to utilize the concept of backward design in order to prioritize my students’ success.

Mike Kahler
Meeting standard and writing lessons to assist students learn what they want is covered in chapter 3, and the best way to do it effectively is found within backwards design planning. This three stage backward design process for curriculum planning is the est way to establish your goals for meeting standards then moving backwards to the specific lesson plans that will be thought provoking to your specific students. By moving from back to front while planning you do not lose sight of the established goals and essential questions that you are trying to teach your students, but you can also pick the right content to get your students to the established goals in the best way possible. By figuring out overall goals before assessment methods and individual lessons you never lose sight of what you are doing and eventually become a much more effective teacher. I find all of this to be very true as writing lessons before figuring out where you want to go is like leaving for a trip without a road map or set destination and then deciding that you want to go to Washington D.C. After hours of travel. It wastes time and valuable resources which cannot be made up. I will use the three step backward design process because I know that my lessons need to complement my overall goals to be effective. I want to be effective. Before I decide to start planing lessons, or assessments I will need to establish the goals of a unit so that I know what they will need to understand for their assessments. Then I can finally start working on the lessons that will get them to where they need to be.