If the hypothesis…introduced is true - that any subject can be taught to any child in some

honest form - then it should follow that a

curriculum ought to be built around the great issues, principles, and values that a society

deems worthy of the continual concern of it’s

members.

Jerome Bruner, The Process of

Education, 1960, p. 52

Think about a unit that you

teach.

What standards frame the

unit?

What do you want your

students to know and

understand at the completion

of the unit?

New thinking around curriculum development

New template built by Standards Leaders

Backwards design thinking

Grounded in Enduring Understandings and

Essential Questions

Common summative assessments

Authentic performance tasks

Require critical thinking, “doing the work”,

demonstration of understanding, ability to frame

original response(s) to essential questions

What specifically do we want students to understand by unit’s end?

What exactly are we trying to get students to

realize that is not obvious but important?

As a teacher,

how do you

determine what

knowledge is

worth

understanding?

Help to address the common student questions:

“Why do we have to learn this?”

“So what?”

Can be thought of as the moral of the unit

“story” as opposed to the details

Help us to clarify the “why” of what we are

teaching

Examples of Understandings Nonexamples of Understandings

An effective story engages the

reader by setting up tensions about

what will happen next.

A president is not above the law.

Correlation does not ensure

causality.

Decoding is necessary but not

sufficient in reading for meaning.

Examples of understandings Nonexamples of understandings

An effective story engages the

reader by setting up tensions about

what will happen next.

Audience and purpose

A president is not above the law.

The president is part of the

executive branch of the US

government.

Correlation does not ensure

causality.

Things are always changing.

Decoding is necessary but not

sufficient in reading for meaning.

Sounding out, looking at pictures

Inference drawn from facts, stated as a specific and useful generalization

Refer to transferable, big ideas having enduring

value beyond a specific topic

Involve abstract, counterintuitive, and easily

misunderstood ideas

Are best acquired by “uncovering” and “doing” the subject

Summarize important strategic principles in skill

areas

Enduring Understandings_mov - YouTube3.mht

Enduring Understandings MUST be connected to our Learning Standards

Unpacking the standards leads you to

Enduring Understandings

• Some examples…

Focus standards for the unit:

RI 6.2 Determine a central idea of a text and how

it is conveyed through particular details; provide

a summary of the text distinct from personal

opinions or judgments.

RI6.6 Determine an author’s point of view or

purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed

in the text.

RH 6-8.8 Distinguish among fact, opinion, and

reasoned judgment in a text.

W6.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to

examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts,

and information through the selection,

organization, and analysis of relevant content.

An author conveys or explains a central idea by providing details and relevant content.

An effective summary of informational text is free of personal opinions and judgments.

An author of informational text tries to convey a particular point of view through relevant facts

without bias.

6.G.1 Find the area of right triangles, other

triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing

into triangles and other shapes; apply these

techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

6.G.2 Find the volume of a right rectangular

prism with fractional edge lengths by packing it with unit cubes of the appropriate unit fraction

edge lengths, and show that the volume is the

same as would be found by multiplying the edge lengths of the prism. Apply the formulas

V= l w h and V = b h to find volumes…

The area of a polygon can be determined by composing rectangles or decomposing it into

triangles.

Area is a measure of covering a two-dimensional shape expressed in square units.

The area formula comes from the perpendicular

relationship of base and height.

Volume is a measure of the size of a three-

dimensional space enclosed within or occupied

by an object. The volume formula comes from the relationship between the 2-D area of the

base and the height of the object.

Thinking about the unit you

identified at the start of the

session, frame one or two

Enduring Understandings that

would set the purpose for the

unit.

How is thinking about and planning

around Enduring Understandings

DIFFERENT than planning strictly based

on standards or objectives?

How would the resulting lessons/units

differ?

Teaching will entail uncovering the

understanding - not merely

covering it – if the student is to be

more than merely familiar with a

claim and have insight into it’s

meaning and importance.

UBD Handbook, p. 86

Overarching Understandings

Tend to be general

Point to transferable

knowledge

Appropriate at

multiple grade levels,

various content areas

Provide a link to the

big ideas

“So what?”

Topical Understandings

Tend to be more

specific to a unit

Identify the particular

understandings we

hope to cultivate

about specific topics

Can be “nested”

under Overarching

Understandings

Art

Art often reflects the

controversial,

overlooked, or taboo

aspects of a culture;

or novel techniques

and media

Unit on Impressionism

Impressionist artists

departed from

traditional painting

forms by using color,

light, and shadow to

convey the

impression of

reflected light at a

particular moment

Literature

The modern novel

overturns many

traditional story

elements and norms

to provide a more

authentic and

engaging narrative.

Unit using Catcher in the Rye

Holden Caulfield is an

alienated antihero,

not simply a weird kid

who mistrusts adults.

History/Government

Democracy requires

a free and

courageous press,

wiling to question

and investigate

authority.

Unit on the U.S. Constitution

The Watergate

incident, exposed by

the press,

represented a major

constitutional crisis.

Mathematics

Mathematics allows

us to see patterns

that might otherwise

have remained

unseen.

Unit on statistics

Measures of central

tendency enable us

to find the right

“average”.

We should eat right and live healthy lives.

We are what we eat.

The three branches of government.

Our founders believed in limited and divided

government, in order to ensure that absolute

power could never occur in government.

Different countries have different cultures.

Cultures develop unique traditions and norms

around universal human needs (e.g. food and

housing) and experiences (e.g. celebrations and

mourning)

Factoring and regrouping are ways to simplify.

Solving problems requires simplifying expressions

by finding useful equivalent statements by which

unknowns and unwieldy expressions are easier to

work with.

Artists are always working to be creative.

“Creativity is 10 percent inspiration and 90

percent perspiration.” (Pasteur)

Many linear relationships can be found in the world.

If you find a relationship in which two variables

are related to each other in a constant ratio, the

relationship can be represented graphically by a

straight line

What are the

implications for your

planning and your

practice?

(Break… 10 minutes!)

Given particular subject matter or a

particular concept, it is easy to ask

trivial questions…. It is also easy to ask

impossibly difficult questions. The trick is

to find the medium questions that can

be answered and that take you

somewhere.

Jerome Burner

The Process of Education, 1960

Definition:

A question that lies at the heart of a subject or a

curriculum (as opposed to being either trivial or

leading), and promotes inquiry and uncoverage

of a subject. Essential questions thus do not yield

a single straightforward answer (as a leading

question does) but produce different plausible

responses, about which thoughtful and

knowledgeable people may disagree.

Understanding by Design, 2nd Edition

…have no one obvious right answer.

…are meant to be argued.

…are designed to provoke and sustain student

inquiry, while focusing learning and final performances.

…often address the conceptual or philosophical

foundations of a discipline.

…raise other important questions

…naturally and appropriately recur.

…stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions and prior lessons.

... be framed for maximal simplicity.

… be worded in student-friendly language.

… provoke discussion.

… lead to larger essential and unit ideas.

Are derived from Enduring Understandings

Are NOT your daily lesson objective turned into a

question format

May be overarching or topical

The creation of quality Essential Questions should

form the basis of developing quality assessments

of learning

What makes essential questions

important in designing meaningful,

engaging learning environments?

How could dealing with essential

questions change the way your students

approach learning?

Are there any benefits from the deforestation of the rain forests?

Do the benefits of deforestation outweigh the

costs?

What is nonfiction?

How much license does a writer of nonfiction

have to make a point?

What is a life-changing experience?

Is there a pattern to life-changing experiences?

What distinguishes impressionism art?

Why and how do artists break with tradition?

What types of exercises will improve fitness?

“No pain – no gain” – agree?

How does this diet match up with the USDA

nutrition recommendations?

What should we eat?

Craft one or two Essential

Questions that would guide

the learning for your unit.

Given the question, what is the

learning?

If answers to

Essential Questions

cannot be found,

why bother to ask

them?

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