SED 625
Issue Paper
Dean Papadakis
December 6, 2006
"Understanding by Design"
Introduction:
I have selected this topic because my school district has chosen Understanding by
Design as a teaching tool that they want all teachers to use. We have been given
information about this but most teachers at my school district have not "gotten on
board" yet, and so I wanted to find out more information about this topic because
it will help me in my particular teaching situation at South Pasadena High School.
Understanding by Design has been written about mostly in the form of texts or
workbooks, and not so much in the form of articles. Another name for UbD as it
is also referred to, is backwards design or backwards planning. The way I was
taught to teach and the way I have been teaching for many years is to select the
particular chapter from the textbook that I want to teach to my students and then I
would select the concepts or topics in that chapter and then just begin teaching
them along with the use of worksheets, and quizes, etc. When we were done with
the chapter, I would put together a test that tests the knowledge of my students
based on what they have been taught. Backwards planning is different in that you
do your planning of a chapter with the end in mind. That is to say you begin with
looking at the main objectives and desired results first, then you plan your
activities etc. around them. With the assessment already planned, you build
around it and do your teaching with that in mind.
Two of the big ideas from UbD are developing Essential Questions and
Enduring Understandings. Essential questions are open-ended questions that do
not have a single, correct answer. They are meant to stimulate inquiry, debate and
further questions and can be re-examined over time. They are designed to be
thought provoking to students, engaging them in discussions, etc. Of course, this
is probably easier in certain subjects. In physics or chemistry for example, if I
were teaching the topic of ions and precipitates, historically I would just start
introducing terms to my students and say that the objective is to learn about
preicipitates. If I start out though by introducing them to an essential question, I
might pose to them the following essential question: Why does a precipitate form
for certain ionic compounds but not for other ionic compounds? Another
essential question might be, How do you recognize a precipitate has formed?
Now, as they are learning about precipitates, they are always thinking about these
two essential questions and looking for answers and how their activities or
laboratroy investigations will help them to learn about this question.
Another important aspect to UbD is identifying and developing enduring
understandings. This refers to the important ideas or core processes that I think
the studentss should remember years after they have left my classroom and left
the school. In other words, what do I want my students to remember and
understand and be able to use, years from now, after they have forgotten the
specific facts or details? For example, the fact that the compound silver chloride
is a precipitate is something that students will forget and they can find that
information by simply looking it up in a table of solubilities. However, lets say
that years from now, they are at home and want to know if the purified or distilled
water they are purchasing from the store is really much cleaner than tap water. So
the enduring understanding that I would want my students to remember is that
there is a simple way to test water by adding a chemical to it to see if it forms a
precipitate, and if it does then that means the water has ions in it and is not very
purified. This has been really hard for me to do because it takes more planning
and preparation and thinking in a different way than I am used to doing. For
example, instead of just focusing on the details and facts, I need to look at the big
picture. This is essentially what understanding by design is about. I know of very
good and successful teachers at my school who don't yet do this. These teachers
are typically AP teachers who have so much content to teach by the time the AP
exam comes in May, that they dont' make the time to even think about the big
picture and what are the enduring understandings they want their students to have.
Now, lets go into more detail about what understanding by design is about. There
are three stages of UbD. They are, Stage 1: Identify desired results. Stage 2:
Determine acceptable evidence and Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and
instruction.
In stage 1, you focus on establishing the major goals of the unit. You follow this
by identifying the essential questions and the enduring understandings, that is,
what do you want students to understand and remember, after they leave your
classroom. You can form this in the form of . . . Students will know . . . and
Students will be able to . .
In stage 2, you focus on the performance tasks that students will be doing. For
example, you may design a problem that incorporates many skills and if students
can solve this big problem, using all of the skills that they are learning, you have a
way of providing evidence that the students have learned something. In
geometry, you could ask the following: As a consultant to the United Nations,
propose the least controversial 2-dimensional map of the world and explain your
mathematical reasoning. Now this may sound more like a big project, but if
students can do this, you know that they have learned the skills you wanted them
to learn. Other kinds of evidence of assessment may take the form of homework
problems from their textbook and you collect this homework and see if they can
do these problems. Of course, one of the biggest problems to this is that you
never know if students are doing these problems on their own. That is why, you
also need to assess them in the form of in class quizes. This issue was one of the
panel discussions and was very interesting hearing both sides of the issue, should
homework assignments be used as a part of their grade. You can of course simply
take homework questions from the text book and use them directly on a quiz in
class.
The third stage is the Learning Plan. This is where you identify what will actually
take place in the classroom in terms of activities, lectures, laboratory
investigations, group assignments, etc. In other words, in order to make the
learning both engaging and effective for the students, given the goals and needed
evidence as described above, what activities and lessons will be used in order
accomplish this. An acronym used as part of this stage is WHERETO, which I
will describe next.
The "W" stands for Where are we going with this unit and what is expected and
why? In other words, why is this worth learning? This can be a very hard
question to answer but when an effort is made to answer it, the learning becomes
more meaningful to the students.
The "H" stands for How will we hook and hold the students' interest? This is
very important for getting the students engaged in their learning. With science,
like physics and chemistry, this is not that hard because there are so many
demonstrations that can be done in these classes. However, it is important that the
students actually learn something from a demonstration, and not just be
entertained by the demonstration. Other hooks can include sharing some personal
experience that relates to the topic or having some kind of mystery problem to
solve, ect.
The "E" stands for experiential and inductive learning. This is very challenging
with today's students because I believe their experiences are more limited than
they were for students of many years ago. I say this because I think that many
students are into more technology today like ipods and computers, etc. and this
limits the experiences they have with other people and with their world.
Therefore, it is important for a teacher to provide experiences in the classroom
that help students to build their storehouse of experiential examples. This can be
done by projects or posters or things that allow the students to be creative while at
the same time, learning about the experience you are trying to provide.
The "R" stands for Rethink Revise or Refine and Reflect. This can be done by
having students engage in playing the devil's advocated in a certain debate or by
having them apply concepts they have learned to producing some product.
The "E" stands for Encouraging Self-Evaluation. This is done by questions or
prompts that guide the students in reflecting about what they have learned. For
example, how difficult was this, or what was least effective in, or what are your
strengths in . . etc.
The "T" stands for Tailoring the Design for Diverse Learners. This means it is
important to assess the prior knowledge and skills of the learners. Maybe
providing students with options for demonstrating their understanding in different
ways, like an oral quiz instead of a written quiz.
The "O" stands for Organizing the learning. What sequence of learning activities
will be best for the students? How will the learning activities be organized?
What is the logic of the sequence?
In conclusion, I have learned that these techniques of understanding by design are
very useful, but I believe that there is just too much for a teacher to practically do
for any unit that is taught. I would be in favor of trying one of these techniques
for each different unit until all of them can be incorporated easily. I also realize
that the techniques that I have been using, do need to be modified and it will be
difficult to do that. Slowly though, I think that I can incorporate these ideas into
my teaching and hopefully become a better teacher.
References
Wang, D., & Allen, M. (2003). Understanding by Design Meets Integrated Science. Science Teacher,
70(7), 37-41. Retrieved Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Nelson, K. (2001). Teaching in the Cyberage: Linking the Internet and Brain Theory. [Grades] 3-12. . U.S.
Retrieved Wednesday, December 06, 2006
McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (1999). The Understanding by Design Handbook. Retrieved Wednesday,
December 06, 2006
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Retrieved Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Wilson, B. (1997). Understanding the Design and Use of Learning Technologies. Retrieved Wednesday,
December 06, 2006
Perkins, D., & Others, A. (1994). Thinking Connections: Learning To Think and Thinking To Learn.
Retrieved Wednesday, December 06, 2006