1. Understanding by Design
In Social Studies
in Social Studies
Refresher Training
Jennifer Rauscher, Angie Strick & Paul Aleckson
March 2, 2009

2. To sum up …
Big ideas go beyond discrete facts or skills to focus on larger concepts, principles, or processes. These are applicable to new situations within or beyond the subject.
Wiggins & McTighe, Understanding
by Design 2e, 2005

3. Economics Sociology Education Sports Family Life Texas History
Concepts:
Rules/Laws Values
Conflict Interdependence
Fairness Diversity
Power Rights
Adaptation Movement
Diffusion Democracy
Region Self Interest
Government Cooperation
Compromise Aggression
Innovation Leadership
Family Life
Texas History
U.S. History
Political Science
Geography
Movies
World History
Understanding concepts is ultimately what enables students to transfer understandings learned in one time/place setting to a new time and place – even a setting with which they have no previous acquaintance. When we teach concepts we allow our students to transcend the settings that we have taught.
-John Hergesheimer

4. Concepts and Generalizations: Teaching for Understanding in Social Studies
Using BIG IDEAS to Teach History

5. Points to consider
Both models value foundation of specific fact-based knowledge and skills
Difference is in culminating focal point of instruction
Topic-based: learning specific facts about a given topic
Concept-based: learning conceptual understandings drawn from the facts
Learning WHY things happen rather than WHAT HAPPENED in the past.

6. be able to list all of the compromises made at the Constitutional ConventionOR
be able to explain the role of compromise and conflict throughout history using examples from the Constitutional Convention?

7. Would you rather your students…
be able to tell you the populations, natural resources, and climates found in Latin America OR
be able to explain the impact of population, natural resources, and climate on Latin America’s role in the contemporary world?
Concepts include:
Global connections
People, places, and environment
Production, distribution, and consumption

8. You’ve got to go
below the surface...

9. 3 Stages of (“Backward”) Design
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction

10. 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

11. to uncover the
really ‘big ideas.’

12. Establishing Priorities
Knowledge that is worth being familiar with
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
“Enduring” understanding
Worth being familiar with
Important to know and do
“Enduring” understanding
Knowledge and skills that are important to know and do
Understandings that are enduring

13. Taking a Closer Look at Understandings: They are...
specific generalizations about the “big ideas.” They summarize the key meanings, inferences, and importance of the ‘content’
Require “uncoverage” because they are not “facts” to the novice, but unobvious inferences drawn from facts - counter-intuitive & easily misunderstood
deliberately framed as a full sentence “moral of the story” – “Students will understand THAT…”