Understanding By Design Developing Standards-based Curriculum The Problem “Even good students don’t always display a deep understanding of what is taught

Understanding By DesignDeveloping Standards-based Curriculum

The Problem

“Even good students don’t always display a deep understanding of what is taught even when conventional tests certify success.” (Wiggins & McTighe)

A Curriculum Fable

One time the animals had a school. The curriculum consisted of running, climbing, flying and swimming, and all the animals took all the subjects. The duck was good in swimming; better in fact than his instructor, and he made passing grades in flying, but he was practically hopeless in running. Because he was low in this subject, he was made to stay after school and drop his swimming class in order to practice running. He kept this up until he was only average in swimming. But average is acceptable, so nobody worried about that except the duck. The eagle was considered a problem pupil and disciplined severely. He beat all the others to the top of the tree in the climbing class, but he used his own way of getting there. The rabbit started out at the top of the class in running, but he had a nervous breakdown and had to drop out of school on account of so much make-up work in swimming. The squirrel led the climbing class, but his flying teacher made him start flying lessons from the ground instead of the top of the tree down, and he developed "charley horses" from over-exertion at the take-off and began getting C's in climbing and D's in running. The practical prairie dogs apprenticed their offspring to a badger when the school authorities refused to add digging to the curriculum. At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim well, run, climb, and fly a little, was made valedictorian.

Stating a Concept vs. Developing a Concept

AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF TOPICS CONTAINING CONCEPTS THAT WERE DEVELOPED OR ONLY STATED

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Germany Japan U.S.

Percentage of Topics

Stated Developed

Seatwork Time Spent in Three Kinds of Tasks

AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF SEATWORK TIME SPENT IN THREE KINDS OF TASKS

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Germany Japan U.S.

Percentage of

Seatwork Time

Practice procedure

Apply concept

Invent/ think

The Question

•So, the question is: •“How do your courses contribute to academic achievement in your school?”

Curriculum is a Means to an End

•Focus on a topic that matters•Use instructional methods that engage•Cause deep and enduring learning related to an important standard•Is it important enough to remember when the student is 50 years old?

What is Backward Design

•BD Begins with the end in mind•Starting with a clear understanding of the destination

•Making sure that you are taking steps in the right direction (Stephen Covey)

•Is justifiable and reliable

Unfortunately, Many Teachers:

•Begin with a favored lesson, time-honored activities (or the next page in the text)

Backward design starts with the end (the desired results).

What would I accept as evidence that students have attained the desired understandings and/or abilities?

Backwards Design•We begin BD with the following question:•What would I accept as evidence that students have attained the desired understandings/abilities?

The Backward Design Process

Identify desired results.

Stages in the Backward Design Process

Determine acceptable evidence

Plan learning experiences and instruction

STAGE ONE: Backward Design

Key Design Questions

Design Considerations Filters (Design Criteria)

What the Final Design Accomplishes

Stage 1. What is worthy and requiring of understanding?

National standards.State standards.District standards.Regional topic opportunities.Teacher expertise and interest

Enduring ideas.Opportunities for authentic, discipline-based work.Uncoverage.Engaging.

Unit framed around enduring understandings and essential questions.

Stage 2. What is evidence of understanding?

Six facets of understanding.

Continuum of assessment types.

Valid.Reliable.Sufficient.Authentic work.Feasible.Student friendly.

Unit anchored in credible and educationally vital evidence of the desired understandings.

Stage 3. What learning experiences and teaching promote understanding, interest, and excellence?

Research-based repertoire of learning and teaching strategies.

Essential and enabling knowledge and skill.

WHEREWhere is it going?Hook the students.Explore and equip.Rethink and revise.Exhibit and evaluate.

Coherent learning experiences and teaching that will evoke and develop the desired understandings, promote interest, and make excellent performance more likely.

Establishing Curricular Priorities

“Enduring understandin

g”

Important to know and do

Worth being familiar with

Determining Worthiness

Represents a big idea having enduring value beyond the classroom

Reside at the heart of the discipline (involve “doing” the subject).

“Enduring” understanding

Require uncoverage (of abstract or often misunderstood ideas).

Offer potential for engaging students.

Four Filters

STAGE TWO: Backward Design




Stage 1. What is worthy and requiring of understand?












WHEREWhere is it going?Hook the students.Explore and equip.Rethink and revise.Exhibit and evaluate.


Curricular Priorities and Assessments

Assessment Types

Traditional quizzes and tests• Paper/pencil

• Selected-response• Constructed response

Performance tasks and projects• Open-ended• Complex• Authentic “Enduring

understanding”

Important to know and do

Worth being familiar with

Continuum of Assessment Methods

Info

rmal

che

cks

for

unde

rsta

ndin

g

Obs

erva

tion/

Dia

logu

es

Qui

z/

Test Aca

dem

ic p

rom

pt

Perfor

man

ce

task

/pro

ject

TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES

Thinking Like an Assessor Thinking Like an Activity Designer

What would be sufficient and revealing evidence of understanding?

What would be interesting and engaging activities on this topic?

What performance tasks must anchor the unit and focus the instructional work?

What resources and materials are available on this topic?

How will I be able to distinguish between those who really understand and those who don’t (though they may seem to) ?

What will students be doing in and out of class?What assignments will be given?

Against what criteria will I distinguish work?

How will I give students a grade (and justify it to their parents)?

What misunderstandings are likely? How will I check for those?

Did the activities work? Why or why not?

Thinking Like an Assessor

•Does not come naturally to most teachers•We unconsciously jump to the activity once we have a target

•Backwards design demands that we short-circuit the natural instinct that leads most of to developing the activity first

Six Facets of Understanding

Facet 1:• A student who really understands, can explain.

• Can provide complex, insightful and credible reasons.• Can make distinctions, argue for and justify central ideas• Can avoid common misunderstandings• Can personalize the information

Facet 2:• A student who really understands, can interpret.

• Can make powerful, meaningful interpretations and translations• Can read between the lines• Can use historical and biographical information to make ideas more relevant


Facet 3:• A student who really understands, can apply.

• Can extend what he/she knows to realistic, hands-on situations• Can make adjustments along the way• Can apply knowledge in a variety of settings

Facet 4:• A student who really understands, sees in perspective.

• Can critique and justify a position• Understanding the history of an idea• Know the limits as well as the power of an idea• Can see through biased arguments


Facet 5:• A student who really understands, demonstrates empathy.

• Can appreciates another’s situation• Can see when even flawed ideas are plausible• Can describe how an idea could be misunderstood by others• Can listen and hear what others often do not

Facet 6:• A student who really understands, reveals self-knowledge.

• Can recognize own prejudices and style• Can think about thinking• Can question his/her own convictions• Can self-assess• Can accept feedback/criticism without defensiveness

STAGE THREE: Backward Design




Stage 1. What is worthy and requiring of understand?












Where is it going?Hook the students.Explore and equip.Rethink and revise.Exhibit and evaluate.


KEY QUESTIONS: Instructional Design

•What facts, concepts, principles and skills will students need to achieve in lessons?

•What activities will equip students with needed knowledge/skills?

•What materials/resources are available?

How Will You:

•Bring abstract ideas and far-away facts to life?

•Students must see knowledge and skill as building blocks—not just isolated lessons

How Will You Blend Breadth & Depth?

____For Depth__________Unearth it

• Make assumptions explicit.• Make points of view clear• Bring to the surface and bring to light the misunderstood, the

subtle, the non-obvious, the problematic, the controversial, the obscure, the missing, and the lost.

Analyze it• Inspect and examine.• Dissect, refine, and qualify.

Question it• Test.• Challenge.• Doubt.• Critique.

Prove it• Argue.• Support.• Verify.• Justify.

Generalize it• Subsume it under a more encompassing idea.• Compare and contrast.

_____For Breadth________Connect it

• Link discrete and diverse ideas, facts, and experiences.

Picture it• Make it concrete and simple.• Represent or model the idea in different ways.

Extend it• Go beyond the given to implications• Imagine “what if?”

Teaching Types

What the Teacher Uses What Students Need to Do

Didactic/Direct InstructionDemonstration/modelingLectureQuestions/convergent

CoachingFeedback/conferencingGuided practice

Facilitative/Constructivist/ReflectiveConcept attainmentCooperative learningDiscussionExperimental inquiryGraphic representationProblem-based learningQuestions (open ended)Reciprocal teachingSimulation (e.g., mock trial)Socratic seminarWriting process

Receive, take in, respond:Observe, attempt, practice, refineListen, watch, take notes, questionAnswer, give responses

Refine skills, deepen understanding:Listen, consider, practice, retry, refineRevise, reflect, refine, recycle through

Construct, examine, extend meaning:Compare, induce, define, generalizeCollaborate, support others, teachListen, question, consider, explainHypothesize, gather data, analyzeVisualize, connect, map relationshipsQuestions, research, conclude, supportPose/define problems, solve, evaluateAnswer and explain, reflect, rethinkClarify, question, predict, teachExamine, consider, challenge, debateConsider, explain, challenge, justifyBrainstorm, organize, draft, revise

Teaching in an UBD Environment

More LearningThrough

Less Teaching

• Suspends instructional planning• Specific lessons are not developed until the

last phase. This runs counter to the habits of many

• BD demands that we set goals and establish assessments first

Wisdom Can’t be Told!

•Understanding is more stimulated than learned

•It grows from questioning oneself and being questioned by others

•Students must figure things out, not simply wait to be told!•This requires the teacher to alter their curriculum and teaching style

Teaching for Understanding Requires:

•Routinely using teaching methods from all three general types•Didactic: Direct instruction (used to dispense factual information)

•Coaching: Teachers providing feedback and guidance to students as they work

•Constructivist: Allowing the student to “construct their own learning” by solving their own problems.

Direct or Indirect Teaching Approaches

•It is not an either-or proposition•As a teacher:

•When should we present the facts we that know?

•When should we force to students to discover the information on their own?

•When should we allow practice while we coach?

•These are the key questions for teachers of understanding

We Should…

•Use direct instruction and focused coaching for discrete, unproblematic, and enabling knowledge and skill

•Use indirect teaching for those ideas that are subtle, easily misunderstood, and those ideas that need some personal inquiry, testing and verification

Guidelines forStudent Autonomous Learning

•Engage students in inquiry and inventive work as soon as possible

•Use the text as a reference—not a syllabus

•Ask more questions/answer fewer•Make it clear that there are no stupid questions

Guidelines forStudent Autonomous Learning

•Ask naïve questions and let the students correct you

•Raise questions with many possible answers and push students to answer in multiple ways

•Demand final performances (speech, presentation, project demonstration)

•Continually assess for understanding

Introducing STEM – Narrative

What is Narrative Curriculum?•Consider Curriculum as a story•Stories rarely lay out all the facts and ideas in a step- by- step fashion•Although sometimes illogical and incomplete, stories are likely to engage the reader•Storytellers are great teachers•Instead of presenting a straightforward sequence of events, the storyteller deliberately raises questions and delays answering them •We do not easily remember what other people have said if they do not tell it in the form of a story•PBL thrusts students into problem situations immediately, much like a reader is thrust into the middle of a story

3 Questions answered in all Narrative Curricula

• What do we know?• What do we need to know?• How can we find out?

Key Features of Narrative Curriculum

1.The presence of a mystery, dilemma, or oddity is essential• The most basic feature of all compelling stories (or problems)• We are placed into an environment that has to be figured out or understood

2.Think of a course designed to provide drama, to offer surprises, twists, and turns

• What drives a story? What makes it worth telling?• TROUBLE• Some misfit between the characters, their actions, the goals of the story, the setting,

and the means

3.A good story centers on what is essential• A big idea

5 Essential Elements of a Narrative Curriculum

1.Identifying importance• What is most important about this topic?• Why should it matter to students?• What is engaging about it?

2.Finding binary opposites• What opposing forces are found in the story? How might these best

capture the importance of the topic?

3.Organizing content into story form• What content most dramatically embodies the opposites

4.Conclusion• What is the best way of resolving the conflicts between the

opposites/solve the conflict

5.Evaluation• How will we determine whether they have learned?

A Narrative Curriculum Design Challenge

Narrative/Informational Text Design Challenge

Informational TextThe Common Core State Standards ask teachers and students to:

• Build knowledge through content-rich nonfiction and informational texts, in addition to literature

• Produce reading and writing grounded in evidence from the text, both literary and informational

• Regularly practice with complex text and its academic vocabulary

Informational Text Characteristics Colorful Fun Engaging Rich content

Learning standards Not boring Ample opportunities for learning Foundation for future learning

Benefits of Informational TextWhen should informational text be used?Exposure within early grades leads to:

• Kindergarten and ELL students have better grasp on language when read informational text

• Increased writing and comprehension• Positive attitudes toward reading

What learning standards can be addressed?• Expository Text: includes definitions/explanations, compare/contrast, graphics• Persuasive Text: states position supported by evidence, strong language to incite

action• Procedural Text: includes material list, shows steps for directions, measures of

specificity, has an end result• Nonfiction Narrative: chronological order, presents problem and solution, uses

artifacts

Examples of Informational Text Design Challenges

Wile E. CoyoteDesign Challenges

STEM Challenge – Spring Forward

Assessing Student Performance

• Performance-based Assessments • Concept of performance assessments is not new• Based in the “real world” = authentic assessment• Must be linked to instructional objectives/standards• Assessments, by themselves, are meaningful learning activities• Specific behaviors/capabilities should be observed• Measure complex capabilities/skills that can’t be measured with pencil-and-paper tests• Must focus on teachable processes• Can specifically target procedures used by students to solve problems• Results in tangible outcome or product

Example AssessmentsEngineering Journal

Creating STEM Lessons7 Elements of a Good STEM Lesson/Project1.Purpose and Relevance: Is it personally relevant to the students? Does it provide a certain level of intrigue? Does it cause the student to want to invest time and effort?2.Time: Projects can last one class period or an entire term, but time must be provided to research, plan, build, test, debug, retest, and communicate.3.Complexity: The best STEM projects include content from all disciplines in STEM and the connections between these content areas.4.Intensity: Tap into that natural intensity that children exhibit when mastering a video game, reading a new book from a series, etc.5.Connection: Great projects or prompts force students to connect with other students, people, and ideas (think Internet) with whom they might not naturally connect.6.Communication: The big idea of PBL is the concept that the final solution must be shared and defended. This provides a great deal of motivation and a sense of satisfaction.7.Novelty: Perhaps the most important consideration in STEM. Few project ideas are so profound that they can be used year after year with the same level of success with students (think egg drop activity). If the teacher is bored with the idea, students will be bored with the idea.

Creating STEM Lessons - PBL

Six essential features for Problem-based task:1. Have a clear purpose that specifies the decision that will be made resulting from

the assessment.

2. Focus be on process, product, or both.

3. No simple right or wrong answers; they must be assessed along some sort of continuum.

4. Focus on degrees (e.g., quality, proficiency, understanding, etc.).

5. Try to reduce potential subjectivity in scoring.

6. Share scoring information with students early—as a guide.

Creating STEM Lessons

Backwards Design

Stages in the Backward Design Process

Identify desired results

Determine acceptable evidence

Plan learning experiences and instruction

Creating STEM LessonsWriting a Design Brief1.Make sure it delivers something important (standards, big ideas, extension of a lesson or unit)

• But remember, it’s not something fun to do after the lesson—it is the lesson

2. Make sure it captures a big idea and answers an essential question (think assessment)

Big idea filters• Is it important enough to remember when the child is 30?• Does it have the potential to engage to child?• Is it central to understanding the STEM content?

Creating STEM Lessons3. Develop a problem scenario

• Craft an engaging scenario that both captures the attention of the child and engages them in solving an authentic problem

4. Develop content information.• Using the standards and big ideas for the problem, develop

content information that promotes learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

5. Develop boundaries for the problem (materials/resources, parameters, deliverables)6. Develop an authentic, performance-based assessment7. Force students to use the Design Loop

From Content Standards to CurriculumUsing Engineering Design to Deliver Lessons

Documents

Understanding By Design Developing Standards-based Curriculum The Problem “Even good students don’t always display a deep understanding of what is taught