UbD

=**UbD**=

Online articles from Big Ideas an online magazine focussing on things UbD!

[|Feedback: How Learning Occurs by Grant Wiggins]

[|A Conversation with Grant Wiggins by Grant Wiggins]

[|What Is an Essential Question? by Grant Wiggins]

[|UbD Related Websites]

[|A Conversation with Grant Wiggins: Habits of Mind by Grant Wiggins]

[|What Is a Big Idea? by Grant Wiggins]

[|Four Things Art Education Can Teach Other Educators]

In A Nutshell - UbD
=Stages of Backwards Design=

1. Identify desired results. 2. Determine acceptable evidence. 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.

=Establish Curricular Priorities=


 * Worth being Familiar with
 * Important to know and do
 * “Enduring” understanding

=Stage 1 - Identify Desired Results=

Enduring Understanding 1. Enduring. Value beyond the classroom. 2. At the heart of the discipline. 3. Needing UNcoverage. (abstract, counter-intuitive) 4.Potentially engaging. (inquiries, simulations, debates, questions, issues, or problems)
 * 4 Selection Filters
 * Authentic learning experiences shift a student from the role of a passive knowledge receiver into a more active role as a constructor of meaning.

=Stage 1: Be very clear about what we want - Results=
 * What do you want students to understand?
 * What is worthy of understanding
 * Why??? So what???? How so????
 * If your unit is a story; what is the “moral”?
 * What big idea, underlies __?__
 * __What do experts understand about__?
 * How do people outside of school make use of_
 * What problems does understanding_help us solve?
 * What questions does understanding _ help us answer?
 * What couldn't we do (as well) if we didn't understand?

=From a Skill or Process to Understandings=
 * Big Idea - Full sentence Generalization - like the moral of the story.
 * If the textbook contains the answers, then what were the questions?
 * Combine two or more concepts to form “big idea” understanding

=ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS=

Socrates - come to understand through questions

 * More than one correct answer, not discrete facts
 * Go to the heart of the topic
 * Provoke conversation - inquiry - more questions
 * Provide opportunities for cyclical learning (What makes a great book great?) all grade levels
 * Use factual knowledge

Essential Questions are doorways to important ideas!
 * Ask these when thinking about “Big Idea”!

=Understanding -=

=Stage 2: Evidence of Understanding=

Determine acceptable evidence. What evidence would show beyond a reasonable doubt that the student understands?

 * Assessment is collecting evidence - not one photo, but a photo album.
 * Present students with a new situation to see if they can apply. Blur the line between learning & assessment.
 * Anchor assessment around Performance tasks combined with variety of assessments.

=SIX Facets of Understanding=

1) Explanation (cognitive)

 * theories & support

2) Interpretation (emotional)

 * stories, translations

3) Application (psychomotor)

 * New situations - in context

4) Perspective

 * Points of view

6) Self-knowledge
=Characteristics of Performance Tasks=

· Inviting/ Engaging
=GRASPS=

· How to design performance tasks GRASPS

 * Goal
 * Role
 * Audience
 * Situation
 * Product; Performance and Purpose
 * Standards and Criteria for Success

=Stage 3: Plan Learning activities= Engaging Effective Engaging & Effective

=Gourmet Meals (units/lessons)=

Dealing with TIME constraints!

 * Not daily, but Special Units
 * (Cookbook) Research-based repertoire of learning and teaching strategies.
 * Don’t throw out engaging, fun activities, BUT make them purposeful and focused.

=W H E R E=

We have intelligence and experience and can now work smarter - publish, electronic searchable.
==· Only by framing our teaching around valued questions and worthy performances can we overcome activity-based and coverage-oriented instruction, and the resulting rote learning that produces formulaic answers and surface-level knowledge.==

Understanding by Design Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe 1998 p.27

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I have posted some great resources from a district in the US well known for its work with UbD here.

Go here to view a UbD wiki I joined a couple of months.

Some thoughts:

- Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions are posted in classes, online and in worksheets that pupils are doing - RGS has been doing this - See below for indicators of successful incorporation of UbD

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Some notes.


 * Are the Best Curricular Designs "Backward"?**

We use curriculum as a means to an end. We focus on a particular topic (e.g., racial prejudice), use a particular resource (e.g., To Kill a Mockingbird), and choose specific instructional methods (e.g., Socratic seminar to discuss the book and cooperative groups to analyze stereotypical images in films and on television) to cause learning to meet a given standard (e.g., the student will understand the nature of prejudice, and the difference between generalizations and stereotypes). Why do we describe the most effective curricular designs as "backward"? We do so because many teachers begin with textbooks, favored lessons, and time-honored activities rather than deriving those tools from targeted goals or standards. We are advocating the reverse: One starts with the end—the desired results (goals or standards)—and then derives the curriculum from the evidence of learning (performances) called for by the standard and the teaching needed to equip students to perform. This view is hardly radical. Ralph Tyler (1949) described the logic of backward design clearly and succinctly about 50 years ago. __Backward design may be thought of as purposeful task analysis:__ Given a task to be accomplished, how do we get there? Or one might call it __planned coaching__: What kinds of lessons and practices are needed to master key performances? The approach to curricular design we are advocating is logically forward and commonsensical but backward in terms of conventional habits, whereby teachers typically think in terms of a series of activities (as in the apples unit presented in the Introduction) or how best to cover a topic. This backward approach to curricular design also departs from another common practice: thinking about assessment as something we do at the end, once teaching is completed. Rather than creating assessments near the conclusion of a unit of study (or relying on the tests provided by textbook publishers, which may not completely or appropriately assess our standards), backward design calls for us to __operationalize our goals or standards in terms of assessment evidence as we begin to plan a unit or course__. It reminds us to begin with the question, __What would we accept as evidence that students have attained the desired understandings and proficiencies—before proceeding to plan teaching and learning experiences?__ Many teachers who have adopted this design approach report that the process of "thinking like an assessor" about evidence of learning not only helps them to clarify their goals but also results in a more sharply defined teaching and learning target, so that students perform better knowing their goal. Greater coherence among desired results, key performances, and teaching and learning experiences leads to better student performance—the purpose of design.

The logic of backward design suggests a planning sequence for curriculum with three stages—Identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning experiences and instruction.
 * The Backward Design Process**

What should students know, understand, and be able to do? What is worthy of understanding? What enduring understandings are desired? In this first stage, we consider our goals, examine established content standards (national, state, and district), and review curriculum expectations. Given that there typically is more content than can reasonably be addressed, we are obliged to make choices. A useful framework for establishing curricular priorities may be depicted using the three nested rings shown in Figure 1.2 (see p. 10).
 * Stage 1. Identify Desired Results**

Figure 1.2. Establishing Curricular Priorities

In the middle ring, we sharpen our choices by specifying important knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (processes, strategies, and methods). We would say that student learning is incomplete if the unit or course concluded without mastery of these essentials. For instance, the characteristics of, and distinctions between, norm- and criterion-referenced assessments would be considered essential knowledge in the assessment course, and some use of that knowledge would properly be expected. Here is another way to think about the middle ring: It specifies the prerequisite knowledge and skills needed by students for them to successfully accomplish key performances. The smallest ring represents finer-grain choices—selecting the "enduring" understandings that will anchor the unit or course. The term enduring refers to the big ideas, the important understandings, that we want students to "get inside of" and retain after they've forgotten many of the details. For the assessment course, students probably should be immersed in the principles of validity and reliability through extensive investigation, design work, and critique of sample tests, if they are to understand valid and reliable assessments.

How will we know if students have achieved the desired results and met the standards? What will we accept as evidence of student understanding and proficiency? The backward design approach encourages us to think about a unit or course in terms of the collected assessment evidence needed to document and validate that the desired learning has been achieved, so that the course is not just content to be covered or a series of learning activities. This backward approach encourages teachers and curriculum planners to first think like an assessor before designing specific units and lessons, and thus to consider up front how they will determine whether students have attained the desired understandings. When planning to collect evidence of understanding, teachers should consider a range of assessment methods, depicted in Figure 1.3. This continuum of assessment methods includes checks of understanding (such as oral questions, observations, and informal dialogues); traditional quizzes, tests, and open-ended prompts; and performance tasks and projects. They vary in scope (from simple to complex), time frame (from short-term to long-term), setting (from decontextualized to authentic contexts), and structure (from highly to nonstructured). Because understanding develops as a result of ongoing inquiry and rethinking, the assessment of understanding should be thought of in terms of a collection of evidence over time instead of an event—a single moment-in-time test at the end of instruction—as so often happens in current practice.
 * Stage 2. Determine Acceptable Evidence**

With clearly identified results (enduring understandings) and appropriate evidence of understanding in mind, educators can now plan instructional activities. Several key questions must be considered at this stage of backward design: • What enabling knowledge (facts, concepts, and principles) and skills (procedures) will students need to perform effectively and achieve desired results? • What activities will equip students with the needed knowledge and skills? • What will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals? • What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals? • Is the overall design coherent and effective? Note that the teacher will address the specifics of instructional planning—choices about teaching methods, sequence of lessons, and resource materials—after identifying the desired results and assessments. Teaching is a means to an end. Having a clear goal helps us as educators to focus our planning and guide purposeful action toward the intended results.
 * Stage 3. Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction**


 * Current UbD Big Idea: Understandings**

An understanding in UbD is a specific inference the teacher wants students to draw, realize, or grasp, based on the teaching and learning. It is an insight that links the particular facts and skills to "big ideas" in meaningful and transferable ways. An understanding is thus a specific generalization, a full-sentence statement that summarizes an insight that a student is expected to take away from the work.

Here are some pointers about framing and working with understandings, cast in frequently-asked-questions form:

Q: Should we tell students the understandings we want them to have?

A: It really depends on the desired understandings. Any understanding, by definition, is not obvious to students. Understandings must be "uncovered," not "covered" -- that is, inferred, grasped, discovered, and constructed by students, with the aid of the teacher and well-designed learning experiences.

In fact, many understandings are counterintuitive and prone to constant misunderstanding. The more the understanding is unobvious, counterintuitive, complex, or abstract, the greater the likelihood of misunderstanding if the understanding is treated as a fact.

The point of the UbD template is to help the designer be more explicit about ends and means: The audience for the template is yourself and your teaching colleagues -- not the learner. If you want students to discover or realize a conclusion or an interpretation on their own, then you will subvert your goals by telling them what you want them to discover or realize. Even if you decide that it's OK for students to hear the desired understandings and consider them as they work (as we might do in a performance area, e.g., "Creating space and exploiting it leads to more goals being scored"), you cannot just state a desired insight and expect students to get it. The point would merely be to alert them to something they will gradually understand and know how to do based on the learning activities and their analysis of them.

Q: But isn't the whole point of the W in WHERE to help students know where they are headed?

A: Well, yes, but it does not follow that you should tell them in advance what you have written in Stage 1. (Why would you tell students the key issues and meanings in a book before they read it?) The plan for teaching, outlined in Stage 3, is where you specify just what your teaching role will and will not be when with students. Students are usually better served by fewer speeches about learning goals and more concrete information in handouts about how the unit's purposes are to be realized (i.e., knowledge of the performance requirements, rubrics, anchor papers, etc.).

Q: Isn't it counter to the whole idea of understanding that the teacher states what the particular understandings are supposed to end up being? Does that mean that student-generated ideas have no place?

A: Your point is well taken, but consider the reality of teaching and curriculum frameworks. As teachers, there are particular understandings that we want the novice learner to come to. We want them to understand that the Civil War was not primarily about the evils of slavery and that the phases of the moon do not represent unending eclipses, even though common sense says so. Our job as professionals is, in part, to help students move toward expert understanding -- when such consensus exists -- or toward more sophisticated opinions when there is no expert consensus.

If the essential questions have been well framed and linked to the understandings, and if the assessments make our intent to generate inquiry clear, there should be no mixed message. Indeed, part of our job is to help students grasp that understandings are not facts but arguable and defensible inferences from analysis of facts or actions.

Q: What if the aim of the unit is to help students see that there is no right answer where they expect one, that there are many different understandings of the same facts, and that the whole point is to come to that realization -- and to arrive at their own defensible understanding?

A:Then, the understandings should be stated that way on the template, in Box U, Stage 1

Examples:
 * "Historians still disagree about the key causes and effects of the Civil War, and students will understand that not only are there plausible alternatives but also that one's views are often affected by one's place of origin and local culture."
 * "Determining which number system and degree of precision to use in a particular context is a matter of judgment in terms of efficient and effective problem solving, not the mechanical application of some rule."

Q: What are some tips on writing robust understandings that take writing them beyond onerous chore to helpful insight?

A: Ask yourself, What is the "moral of the story" of my unit? Given the topic and the unfolding of the content, what specific priority insights do I expect students to leave with?

The moral of the story is a useful analogy. The writer of a story doesn't broadcast or didactically state the most vital meanings. We as teachers ask the question to push readers to interpret the text and justify an interpretation. It's the same thing here: We are pushing you to be more explicit about the intellectual point of the unit and your reading of the content you teach.

Here are some other tips:


 * Avoid vague generalities (e.g., "America is a complex country" or "Writing involves many different elements"). Surely, the point of the unit is more intellectually interesting and pointed than such phrases. What is noteworthy about that complexity? What are the key but often overlooked elements of writing? The paradoxical requirement is that you need to be as specific as you can be about the transferable generalizations you want to offer on the topic (e.g., "Successful writers have great control over language and its impact, and they really know their audiences and what makes them tick").


 * Avoid truisms. Truisms are statements true by definition (e.g., "Triangles have three sides") or obvious implications of an idea (e.g., "Wars disrupt normal patterns of living" or "Musicians work with sounds to create music"). Try to summarize the particular insights you are after in studying such content (e.g., "All congruent triangles are similar but not all similar triangles are congruent" or "War rarely disrupts the lives of those who wage it as much as the citizen who must cope within it" or "The silence is as important as the notes in making music come alive"). Proposing a truism as an understanding is like only offering a definition of a word instead of a statement suggesting the importance of the concept represented by the word.


 * State all of your desired understandings as "Students will understand that ... . . ". Because the understanding is a particular insight, it should be stated that way. Most curricular frameworks, standards documents, and teacher lesson plans, however, make the mistake of framing understandings as broad topics to be taught (e.g., "Students will understand gravitational force") rather than as the learnings that should result from the topic being studied (e.g., "Students will understand that gravity is not a physical property but a description of how matter, large and small, behaves, based on Newton's Laws").

"Students will understand - Why the Civil War was fought. (Why was it fought?) - How the war was won and lost. (How was it won?) - Which side had the most to gain and the most to lose from war. (Which side and why?) - How to analyze primary source documents on the Civil War. (What understandings does this lead to about research and the topic?)"
 * Consider the questions begged by writing the understanding differently. Instead of saying, "The students will understand that the Civil War was fought initially over states' rights issues and regional economic politics, not the morality of slavery," the designer often unwittingly ends up merely restating the topic:


 * Avoid using the word understand when you really mean knowledge or skill (e.g., "Students will understand how to multiply two-digit numbers"). If the desired learning only requires the doing of the activity or the recall of the facts, then avoid using the word understand as a goal. Reserve it for those learnings that involve the more inferential, abstract, and questionable ideas and issues deriving from facts and skills.

Note that there are important understandings in the use of skill, something we tend to overlook in skill development. You don't become a successful writer by only knowing how to write five-paragraph essays. You learn to write when you understand that most so-called rules of writing are merely tips or scaffolds meant to be discarded when you really know your audience and your purpose. (That last sentence is such an understanding about the skill of writing five-paragraph essays.)

Put differently, intellectual power and creativity with knowledge can only arise when the learner grasps the principle or reason behind the training in technique, rule, or format -- whether we are talking writing, reading, sports, or the arts.

So, state the desired knowledge and skills in Box K and the understandings about the use of such knowledge and skill in Box U.

December 1997 December 1997 | Volume 39 | Number 8 Conference Report
 * Understanding by Design**

When planning a course or unit of study, educators should __"think like an assessor,"__ Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe advised their audience. Once educators know their learning objectives, the first thing they should do is ask: __"How will we know if students have achieved the desired results?"__ Curriculum planners should first decide what they will accept as evidence of student understanding and proficiency, Wiggins and McTighe contended. Only then should they turn their attention to designing lessons. This approach "turns curriculum planning on its head," said McTighe, who directs the Maryland Assessment Consortium. Assume the goal is for students to understand important concepts about diet and nutrition, and to be able to plan healthy menus. A curriculum planner should first consider what evidence needs to be collected to prove that students have met this goal. "The student should be considered innocent of understanding until proven guilty by a preponderance of the evidence," said Wiggins, who is president of the Center on Learning, Assessment, and School Structure (CLASS) in Princeton, N.J. In this case, the means of gathering evidence might include a quiz on the food groups, an essay test that asks students to describe health problems that stem from poor nutrition, a performance task that requires students to develop a brochure about good nutrition, and a culminating project that requires students to plan "tasty but nutritious" menus for a three-day camping trip. The next step in the planning process is to specify the knowledge and skills that will enable students to provide the evidence of understanding required, Wiggins and McTighe said. Then the curriculum planner should design a sequence of lessons, activities, and learning experiences to help students master that body of knowledge and skills. The last step in the planning process is to specify apt teaching and coaching strategies, such as direct instruction and cooperative learning. Designing "backwards" from assessment to curriculum and instruction has "a powerful logic," these presenters said. "We need to think of assessment reform as central to instructional reform, not just as making better assessments," Wiggins emphasized. What Is Understanding'? To gather evidence of students' understanding, educators need to know what understanding looks like. Wiggins and McTighe described a number of "indicators" of understanding. Students really understand something, they said, when they can • explain it • predict it • apply or adapt it to novel situations • demonstrate its importance • verify, defend, justify, or critique it • make qualified and precise judgments • make connections with other ideas and facts • avoid common misconceptions, biases, or simplistic views. Assessing students' understanding is difficult, Wiggins and McTighe conceded, because understanding is student-constructed, and hence not standard. Teachers may also have difficulty distinguishing understanding from accurate recall. Moreover, educators cannot easily prompt for what must often be a spontaneously made connection or use of knowledge. According to Wiggins and McTighe, key questions that educators can use to probe for understanding include: • What should we make of this? • What are the causes or reasons? • From whose point of view? • What is this an instance of? • How should this be qualified? • So what? What is the significance? Educators should "deliberately design work that requires and reveals understanding," Wiggins said. In addition, "you must be able to predict students' misunderstandings, and design work to ferret them out and try to change them."


 * Indicators of Teaching for Understanding**

by Jay McTighe and Eliot Seif

I have **bolded** and __underlined__ the points which I think we must use as indicators of whether our programmes/modules are successful manifestations of UbD.

What does "teaching for understanding" look like? What would we expect to see in an Understanding by Design classroom? The following list of observable indicators includes items developed by Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, and Elliott Seif, as well as items suggested by participants in an October 23 workshop on Teaching for Understanding offered by Jay McTighe and Elliott Seif at the 2000 ASCD Teaching and Learning Conference in Tampa, Fla.

Feel free to use or adapt the list as needed to guide classroom observation, coaching or mentoring, peer visitation, self-assessment, and professional development.

The unit or course design  __**Reflects a coherent design**__ -- __**big ideas and essential questions clearly guide the design of, and are aligned with, assessments and teaching and learning activities.**__  Makes clear distinctions between big ideas and essential questions, and the knowledge and skills necessary for learning the ideas and answering the questions.  __**Uses multiple forms of assessment to let students demonstrate their understanding in various ways.**__  __**Incorporates instruction and assessment that reflects the six facets of understanding -- the design provides opportunities for students to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathize, and self-assess.**__  __**Anchors assessment of understanding with authentic performance tasks calling for students to demonstrate their understanding and apply knowledge and skills.**__  __**Uses clear criteria and performance standards for teacher, peer, and self-evaluations of student products and performances.**__  Enables students to revisit and rethink important ideas to deepen their understanding.  __**Incorporates a variety of resources. The textbook is only one resource among many (rather than serving as the syllabus).**__

The teacher  I__**nforms students of the big ideas and essential questions, performance requirements, and evaluative criteria at the beginning of the unit or course.**__  Hooks and holds students' interest while they examine and explore big ideas and essential questions.  Uses a variety of strategies to promote deeper understanding of subject matter.  __**Facilitates students' active construction of meaning (rather than simply telling).**__  __**Promotes opportunities for students to "unpack their thinking" -- to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathize, or self-assess (incorporates the six facets of understanding).**__  Uses questioning, probing, and feedback to stimulate student reflection and rethinking.  __**Teaches basic knowledge and skills in the context of big ideas and explores essential questions.**__  __**Uses information from ongoing assessments as feedback to adjust instruction.  Uses information from ongoing assessments to check for student understanding and misconceptions along the way.**__  Uses a variety of resources (beyond the textbook) to promote understanding.

The learners  __**Can describe the goals (big ideas and essential questions) and performance requirements of the unit or course.  Can explain what they are doing and why (i.e., how today's work relates to the larger unit or course goals).**__  Are hooked at the beginning and remain engaged throughout the unit or course.  __**Can describe the criteria by which their work will be evaluated.**__  Are engaged in activities that help them to learn the big ideas and answer the essential questions.  Are engaged in activities that promote explanation, interpretation, application, perspective taking, empathy, and self-assessment (the six facets).  Demonstrate that they are learning the background knowledge and skills that support the big ideas and essential questions.  Have opportunities to generate relevant questions.  __**Are able to explain and justify their work and their answers.  Are involved in self- or peer-assessment based on established criteria and performance standards.**__  Use the criteria or rubrics to guide and revise their work.  Set relevant goals based on feedback.

In the classroom environment  The big ideas and essential questions are central to the work of the students, the classroom activity, and the norms and culture of the classroom.  There are high expectations and incentives for all students to come to understand the big ideas and answer the essential questions.  All students and their ideas are treated with dignity and respect.  __**Big ideas, essential questions, and criteria or scoring rubrics are posted.**__  __**Samples or models of student work are made visible.**__  __**Exploration of big ideas and essential questions is differentiated, so some students are able to delve more deeply into the subject matter than others.**__