UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN
Overview as Related to
Wethersfield’s
Curriculum Template
3 STAGES OF
(“BACKWARD”) DESIGN
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction
WHY “BACKWARD”?
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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
THE “BIG IDEAS” OF EACH STAGE:
Unpack the content
standards and
‘content’, focus on
big ideas
Analyze multiple
sources of evidence,
aligned with Stage 1
Derive the implied
learning from
Stages 1 & 2
Standard(s):
Understandings
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Essential Questions
What are the big ideas?
Assessment Evidence
Performance Task(s):
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e
2
Other Evidence:
What’s the evidence?
Learning Activities
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3
How will we get there?
Essential Elements of
Wethersfield’s Template
COVER
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Course Name:
Department:
Grade(s):
Level(s):
Course Number(s):
Credits:
Course Description: This course description also appears in
the course catalogue.
Required Instructional Materials: Name, author, date.
(publisher and edition)
Revised/Approval Date:
Authors/Contributors:
STAGE 1
 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, and
suggest meaningful and provocative inquiry into
content?
 What should students know and be able to do?
(Objectives) (knowledge & skills)
 What content standards are addressed explicitly
by the unit?
STAGE 2&3

Instructional Support Materials
 Supplementary
(core listed on front page)
 Web sites, resources
 Reflect Best Practices
 Hands-on manipulatives
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Suggested Instructional Strategies
 Variety
 Reflect

Best Practices
Suggested Assessment Methods
 Variety
 Authentic
Assessments
ENDURING UNDERSTANDINGS
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An understanding is a “moral of the story”
about the big ideas
 What
specific insights will students take
away about the meaning of ‘content’ via
big ideas?
 Understandings
summarize the desired
insights we want students to realize
UNDERSTANDINGS: EXAMPLES...
 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 the “winners”
 Math models simplify physical relations – and even
sometimes distort relations – to deepen our
understanding of them
 The storyteller rarely tells the meaning
of the story
EXAMPLES OF ENDURING UNDERSTANDINGS
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Art
 One
gains insight into a culture by
studying its art forms.
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World Language
 Studying
other languages and cultures
offers insights into our own.
 Health
 Participation
in lifelong sports
promotes physical and mental
wellness.
 Music
 Musical
tastes vary. Your noise is
my music.
WHAT ARE THE COMMON ELEMENTS?
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One gains insight into a culture by
studying its art forms.
Musical tastes vary. Your noise is my
music.
Participation in lifelong sports promotes
physical and mental wellness.
Studying other languages and cultures
offers insights into our own.
UNDERSTANDING, DEFINED: THEY ARE...
 Specific
generalizations about the “big ideas.”
They summarize the key meanings, inferences,
and importance of the ‘content’
 Deliberately framed as a full sentence “moral
of the story” – “Students will understand
THAT…”
 Require “uncoverage” because they are not
“facts” to the novice, but unobvious inferences
drawn from facts - counter-intuitive & easily
misunderstood
KNOWLEDGE VS. UNDERSTANDING
 An
understanding is an unobvious and important
inference, needing “uncoverage” in the unit;
knowledge is a set of established “facts”.
 Understandings make sense of facts, skills, and
ideas: they tell us what our knowledge means; they
‘connect the dots’
 Any understandings are inherently fallible
“theories”; knowledge consists of the accepted
“facts” upon which a “theory” is based and the
“facts” which a “theory” yields.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Essential questions
help drive instruction
EXAMPLES OF ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

Art
 Do
artists have a responsibility to their
audience to produce work that does not
continue stereotypes or further prejudice?
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Foreign Language
 Do
people from different cultures tell stories in
a different fashion with different intentions?
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Health
 Is
the ability to make decisions
determined by nature or nurture?
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Music
 What
is the difference, if any, between
good music and great music?

Art
Do artists have a responsibility to their audience to
produce work that does not continue stereotypes or
further prejudice?
World Language
 Do people from different cultures tell stories in a
different fashion with different intentions?
Health
 Is the ability to make decisions determined by nature or
nurture?
Music
 What is the difference, if any, between good music and
great music?
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What
are the common
elements of Essential
Questions?
WHAT ARE THE COMMON ELEMENTS?
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Have no simple, right answer
Raise other important questions,
often cross subject boundaries
Often address philosophical or
conceptual foundations of a
discipline
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Naturally and appropriately recur
to highlight big ideas and issues
Can effectively provoke and
sustain student inquiry
Can be overarching and topical,
guiding, or provoking
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
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What 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 organizing purpose for meaningful &
connected learning?
I have examples of
Essential Questions and
Enduring Understandings
OBJECTIVES
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Need to be measurable (link to assessments)
No – Fractions, types of energy
Yes - Describe how different types of stored (potential)
energy can be used to make Objects move (kinetic
energy). (C14)
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Link Standards after objective (or paste
standard below)
UNIT OBJECTIVES
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3.1 Identify the basic parts and functions of a simple compound
microscope. (CINQ 5)
3.2 Apply appropriate microscope techniques when observing specimens
(creating wet and dry slides, focusing, switching powers, calculate
magnification, cleaning, etc.). (CINQ 5)
3.3 Describe the basic structures of an animal cell, including nucleus,
cytoplasm, mitochondria, and cell membrane, and how
they function to support life. (C15)
3.4 Compare and contrast plant, animal, and bacterial cells.
3.5 Explain the structure and function of the chromosomes found in the
nucleus. (C15)
OVERARCHING SKILLS
This section includes 21st Century skills and
discipline focused skills such as inquiry skills,
problem solving skills, research skills, etc.
These objectives should be taught and
assessed through the integration of the other
units. This unit is not meant to be taught in
isolation as a separate unit.
SKILLS – SCIENCE EXAMPLE INQUIRY
Objectives:
 S.1 Identify questions that can be answered through
scientific investigation.
 S.2 Examine the credibility of scientific claims in different
sources.
 S.3 Design and conduct appropriate types of scientific
investigations to answer different questions.
 S.4 Formulate a hypothesis in the ‘If…., then…because…’
format.
 S.5 Identify independent and dependent variables, as well
as those variables that are kept constant.
3 STAGES OF UBD
STAGE 2
1. Identify desired results
2. Determine acceptable evidence
3. Plan learning experiences
& instruction
Instructional Support Materials
 Supplementary
(core listed on front page)
 Web sites, resources
 Reflect Best Practices
 Hands-on manipulatives
 What would be helpful to teacher teaching course for
the first time?
 Budget implications
Sample Instructional Support Materials
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Microscopes, prepared slides of skin, nerve, muscle, sperm, and other
animal and plant cells
Microworlds sciece kit, STC
Blank slides, cover slips, iodine, methylene blue, bleach, alcohol, lens paper,
Anacharis
TV and video scope
Plant and animal cell models
Color pictures of cells
Salt, balances, potatoes
www.cellsalive.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/virtualcell/index.htm (Virtual cell.com)
Suggested Instructional Strategies
 Reflect
Best Practices
 Varied
 Tied
to other parts of template
 See large handout
Sample Instructional Strategies
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Performance tasks
Inquiry investigations
Modeling
WebQuest
Guest speaker – doctor/nurse, lab technician, etc.
Use the microscope to observe animal and plant cells and
organelles such as cell walls, membranes, nucleus, &
chloroplasts
Observe the Elodea/Anacharis (plant) under the microscope
and prepared cheek cells (animal)
Make to-scale labeled drawings of preserved and live slides
Assess accuracy of labeled microscope
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Make a diagram/concept map that illustrates the
connections between processes that occur in the cell to
the same processes that occur in the larger human body
(ex. Brain and nucleus control the body, mitochondria and
stomach, circulatory system and ER, etc.)
Cell analogies - compare the structure and function of the
cell organelles to a town, school, factories
Edible cell models or three dimensional model
Illustrate a selectively permeable membrane and the
movement of materials such as water, waste, CO2, H20,
and nutrients from a high to low concentration
Demonstrate osmosis using a dialysis tubing, soak celery
in colored water, soak raisins in water
Suggested Assessment Methods
 Variety
 Authentic
tasks and projects
 Tied to other parts of template
 academic exam questions, prompts, and problems
 quizzes and test items
 informal checks for understanding
 student self-assessments
 See large handout
Sample Assessment Methods
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Lab reports
• Open-ended questions
• Teacher observations
• Essays and/or compositions
• Models
• Projects and presentations
• Illustrations of structure and function, osmosis, etc
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**Could have more specific details.
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NOT NECESSARY TO FILL IN THE TEMPLATE “IN
ORDER”
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There are many ‘doorways’ into successful
design – you can start with...
There is an alignment
between each section of the
template
AUDIENCE
BOE approval process
• Parents
• New Teachers
• Other Districts
 Should reflect accurately what is happening in
classroom. Should “paint a picture” in the
readers mind.
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COLLABORATION
Engage in conversations
 Content Experts
 Curriculum Experience
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