1. Understanding by Design
Using Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units
Welcome! We’re glad you’re here…

2. Lunch Break is anticipated at 11:00-12:00
Today’s Objectives
Learn and apply Understanding by Design (UbD) elements and principles
Draw connections between UbD elements and Rigorous Curriculum Design (RCD)
Reflect upon potential expectations for you as an Instructional Coach
Lunch Break is anticipated at 11:00-12:00

3. Text Rendering Knowing Your Learning Target Big Ideas: Know: (Vocab)
Connie M. Moss, Susan M. Brookhart and Beverly A. Long (2011). Educational Leadership. ASCD: 68(6).
Big Ideas:
Know:
(Vocab)
Do:

4. Alpha Boxes A B C

5. Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
Prepare to be Blended

6. Sync Thinking with Rigorous Curriculum Design Map
Big Ideas:
Know:
(Vocab)
Do:

7. Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
Where do some of your Big Ideas fit on the RCD map?

8. Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
From your perspective where is your building on the START process right now?

9. Quick Infomercial April 18 – Elementary Math/Literacy Priorities
April 27 – Middle School Priorities
May 24/25 – Elem Standards Alignment
May 31-June 2 – MS Math/Lit Mapping Inst.
TEN Week Monday Standards Part II
August 31 – High School Course Alignment

10. Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
Given where we are headed, what are some of the implications for you as a coach? In your role as leader?

11. Parking Lot
Lingering Questions
Thoughts & Ideas

12. Break

13. Return from Break

14. Setting the Purpose
Frontloading what you need to know and be able to do
Developing a strong understanding of the intentional focus on Design
Building your confidence with the varied literature connected to Standards-Based work

15. Deconstructing a Model
Co-Facilitator Groups
Please move to your pre- assigned groups

16. Deconstructing a Model
Review Sample Spanish UbD Unit
What do you notice about the structure?
How do the Standards compare to the Understandings and the Essential Questions?
How do the students “will know” and “be able to do” add depth to understanding the Desired Results?
In what ways does the Learning Plan scaffold student understanding?

17. Deconstructing a Model
Co-Facilitator Shares a level specific example
What similarities do you notice?
What differences do you see?

18. Deconstructing a Model
Whole Group Share
What are you noticing?
What are the Big Ideas?
What are the implications for you as a coach?

19. Parking Lot
Lingering Questions
Thoughts & Ideas

20. Lunch

21. Return from Lunch

22. The 3 Stages of Design 1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan Learning Experiences

23. Stage 1 – Identify Desired Results
KEY: Focus on Big Ideas
Enduring Understandings: What specific insights about Big Ideas do we want students to leave with?
What Essential Questions will frame the teaching and learning, pointing toward key issues and ideas, suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into content?
What knowledge and skills need to be acquired to understand the Big Ideas?

24. Why would brother fight brother?
Stage 1: Big Ideas
“States Rights”
Big Ideas
Topic:
The Civil War
Standards:
Understandings
Misunderstandings:
Essential Questions:
Why would brother fight brother?

25. Stage 1: Establishing Priorities around Big Ideas
worth being familiar with
important to know and do
Big Ideas
Nice to Know
Foundational Knowledge and skill
Big Ideas worth exploring and understanding in depth

26. Understandings and Essential Questions involve Big Ideas
Is it a Big Idea? Does it:
Have lasting value/transfer to other inquiries?
Serve as a key concept for making important facts, skills, and actions more connected and useful?
Summarize key findings/expert insights in a subject or discipline?
Require “uncoverage” (since it is an abstract and/or often misunderstood idea?)

27. Big Ideas are typically revealed via…
Key concepts
Focusing themes
On-going debates/issues
Insightful perspectives
Illuminating paradox/problem
Organizing theory
Overarching principle
Underlying assumption
Provocative questions

28. Some Big Ideas by Type Concepts: migration, function, equity, text
Themes: “Good triumph over evil”
Debates: “Nature vs. Nurture”
Perspective: “youth” as wise or immature
Paradox: freedom involves responsibility
Theory: you are what you eat
Principle: free markets are self-regulating
Assumption: History is written by the “winner”

29. Some questions for identifying Big Ideas
Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious to the naïve or inexperienced?
Do you have to dig deep to really understand its meanings and implications even if you have a surface grasp of it?
Is it prone to misunderstanding as well as disagreement?
Are you likely to change your mind about its meaning an importance over a lifetime?
Does it yield optimal depth and breadth of insight into the subject?
Does it reflect the core ideas as judged by experts?

30. Big Idea Work Time Regroup with Co-Facilitator by Level
Using Social Studies Placemats
5th Grade Topic: the Colombian Exchange
8th Grade Topic: the Civil War
11th Grade Topic: the Great Depression
Using Poster-size UbD Templates
Established Goals (Standards)
Big Ideas
Alpha Chart Check

31. Break

32. Back from Break

33. Stage 1: Big Ideas to Understandings
An understanding is a “moral of the story” about the big ideas:
State understandings as full-sentence generalizations about the desired learning
Ask yourself: What specific insights will students take away about the Big Idea?

34. Understandings
Great artists often break with conventions to better express what they see and feel
Price is a function of supply and demand
Friendships can be deepened or undone by hard times
History is the story told by winners
F≠ms (weight is not mass)
Math models simplify physical relations and even sometimes distort relationships to deepen our understanding of them
The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story

35. Understandings Avoid truisms, definitions, and vague generalizations
What genuine, unobvious, and important insights do you want students to leave with about the subject – it’s big ideas and key knowledge and skills?
Mutual Respect Goes Both Ways
What goes up, must come down.
War is hell.

36. Scope of Understandings
Overarching Course (Program) Understanding
Artists constantly break rules to help us see and feel anew.
Topical (Unit) Understanding
The Impressionists broke the rules of the Academy to make us see the real play of light on objects and people.
Hip hop music rip song melodies to make the words more rhythmic and memorable.

37. Misconception Alert
“Objectives” “Evidence Outcomes” “Standards” are rarely stated as Understandings
Typical learning objectives and goals are written to covey the specific insights we expect students to know and comprehend
The following are NOT Understandings
Students will understand the Civil War and its causes
Students will understand ratios and proportions
Students will understand and read a variety of materials

38. Skills to Understandings
Skill – Swimming
Students will understand that:
The most effective and efficient stroke mechanics involve pulling and pushing the maximum amount of water directly backward
A flat (vs. cupped) palm offers the maximum surface area.

39. Design Tips - Understandings
Most units will contain a mixture of topical and conceptual understandings
Sometimes the understandings is that there is no one understanding 
Declarative knowledge concerns facts, statements that are true/unproblematic/sensible on the face of it, but understandings are not really meaningful until played with and understood

40. Check for Understanding on Understandings
Buzz with a neighbor…
Articulate the meaning you have constructed relative to the idea of Understandings in this framework

41. Essential Questions Are arguable – and important to argue about?
Are at the heart of the subject?
Recur – and should recur – in professional work, adult life, as well as in classroom inquiry?
Raise more questions, provoking and sustaining engaged inquiry?
Often raise important conceptual or philosophical issues?
Can provide purpose for learning?

42. Sample Essential Questions
Is the market “rational”?
Does a good read differ from a Great Book?
To what extent is geography destiny?
How important is the past?
Is a scientific theory more than a plausible opinion?
What is the government’s proper role?

43. Scope of Essential Questions
Overarching (Program)
In nature, do only the strong survive?
Why leave home?
Topical (Unit)
How strong are insects?
Why did the easterners leave their homes for the West?

44. Provoking vs. Guiding
A provoking question looks for opening up thinking, varied and divergent answers – “uncoverage” of important issues
The question is more important than any answer
A guiding question focuses inquiry and may coverage on an unobvious understanding
A guiding question ≠ a leading question: a leading question points to an unarguable fact

45. Types of Essential Questions
Technical
Philosophical
How precise must the math be here?
What constitutes “appropriate supporting evidence”?
What strategy is best when you are winning a game early?
Is an author or artist a privileged interpreter of his/her own work?
Is it fair to let the market dictate the costs of all vital goods and services?
What shall be our ultimate goal: efficiency or excellence?

46. Design Tips
Most units will contain a mixture of topical and overarching questions
Most units will contain a mixture of provoking and guiding questions
Don’t try to edit questions while developing them. Work on maximal provocative value and kid-friendly language after you clarify the question from the teacher’s perspective
Student questions belong in Stage 3 (and perhaps Stage 2) after you have clarified the point of the unit.

47. Understandings & Essential Learning Design Time
Use Poster-sized Templates
Develop Unit Understandings
Develop Unit Essential Questions

48. Know and Be Able to Do Specific Knowledge Specific Skills
Including vocabulary
Specific Skills
These are often found in the Grade Level Expectations and Evidence Outcomes of the new Colorado Standards
Continue working with Groups –

49. Stage 2 – Assessment Evidence
Judicial Analogy
What “preponderance of evidence” would show that students have achieved the desired understanding, knowledge and skill?

50. “Think like an assessor, not an activity designer.”
Backwards Design
A mantra:
“Think like an assessor, not an activity designer.”
The goal is valid and reliable evidence for Stage 1: What do the standards and desired results imply for evidence?

51. Validity is Key to “Thinking like an Assessor”
Validity involves asking:
Can we infer from the evidence provided by the assessment to the standard(s)? Is this the right kind of evidence for making inferences needed?
How far can we generalize from the (inherently implied sample of evidence?)

52. Key Validity Question
Could the performance be accomplished (or the test be passed) without in-depth understanding?
Could specific performance be poor, but the student still understand the ideas in question?
The goal is to answer NO to both.

53. Understanding “Understanding”
Assessment requires seeing student knowledge in use, with justification
Application – contextualized, not prompted/cued, performance is key
Expression (show your work/say why)
Multiple choice tests alone cannot adequately reveal understanding; correct answers may hide misunderstandings or mere accurate recall.

54. Understanding “Understanding”
Evidence of understanding is a greater challenge than evidence that the student knows a correct or valid answer
Understanding can only be inferred if we see evidence that the student knows why it works, is important, knows how to apply it, and knows how inferences are constructed

55. Building Confidence with the “Understanding” Literature
UbD’s Six Facets of Understanding
Bloom’s Taxonomy (Old and New)
Depth of Knowledge (DOK)
NOT Paul and Elder
this is NOT Critical Thinking; Paul and Elder literatures supports the scaffolding/teaching the critical thinking skills

56. Depth of Knowledge
Use DOK Sheet to highlight/underline knowledge and skills in your unit

57. Stage 2: What follows for assessment?
The analytic challenge is to identify the ULTIMATE tasks that embody the Standard – reflecting the kind of accomplishment the Standard envisions.
What real-world important tasks epitomize this Standard?
What projects should a student who has met the Standard be able to do well?
What challenges in the world should students be prepared to handle and accomplish?

58. Deconstructing a Flawed Model
Which elements are not aligned?
What might be some ways to improve the validity of this design?

59. The Purpose of Rubrics and Success Criteria
The scoring criteria link the specifics of the task (Stage 2) to the Desired Results (Stage 1)
The rubrics should link task specifics to desired general transfer
Use indicators for the task specifics, under more general descriptors that relate to the desired results

60. Implications for Rubrics
Include at least 2 traits to distinguish between:
Content Understanding
Product/Performance Quality

61. Rubrics as Feedback Make self-assessment part of each unit
Train the student the way we train teachers: make them reliable scorers that have developed inter-rater calibration
Students should have practice in not only using rubrics but designing them, too!

62. Develop a Performance Task Develop Other Evidence
Assessment Work Time
Develop a Performance Task
Develop Other Evidence

63. Stage 3 – Learning Activities

64. WHERETO W - Where are we headed? H - How will the student be Hooked?
E – How will students Explore key ideas?
R – How will students Rethink, Rehearse, Refine and Revise?
E – How will students Evaluate their own work?
T - How will the work be Tailored to individual needs, interests, styles?
O - How will the work be Organized for maximal engagement and effectiveness?

65. Summary of Good Design Expectations and Opportunities
Clear goals, models given up front
On-going feedback provided with opportunities to use it
A genuine challenge, a problem frames work
Real-world requirements
Trial and error, reflection and adjustment expected

66. Summary of Good Design Instruction Teacher as facilitator/coach
Active/experiential learning
Problem-based, important questions
Small group and individual work
Student choice, personalization
Attention to student differences in design
Variety in work, methods

67. Summary of Good Design Assessment
Genuine, meaningful, performance goal; real audience
On-going assessment, timely feedback
Self-assessment expected
No secrets or mystery to performance goal standards
Realistic application

68. Summary of Good Design Sequence Start with a Hook
Move back and forth from whole to part with increasing complexity
Doable increments
Teach as needed, don’t over-teach first
Flexibility: respond to student questions and needs, revise plan to achieve goals

69. Level Sample Jigsaw Use Unit Review Checklist Jigsaw three Stages
Share out at group level – feedback on sample unit

70. Closure – Ticket out the Door
Big Ideas
Lingering Questions