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

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

A B
Alpha Boxes
C

Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
Prepare to be Blended

Sync Thinking with Rigorous
Curriculum Design Map
Big Ideas:
Know:
(Vocab)
Do:
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Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
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Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
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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

Mix – Freeze – Pair – Share
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Lingering
Questions
Parking Lot
Thoughts
& Ideas

Break

Return from Break

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

Deconstructing a Model
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 Please move to your preassigned groups

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?

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

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

Lingering
Questions
Parking Lot
Thoughts
& Ideas

Lunch

Return from Lunch

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

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?

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

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

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?)

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

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”

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?

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

Break

Back from Break

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?

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

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
What goes up, Both Ways must come down.
War is hell.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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?

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?

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

Types of Essential Questions
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Technical
How precise must the math be here?
 What constitutes
“appropriate supporting evidence”?
 What strategy is best when you are winning a game early?
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Philosophical
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?

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.

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

Know and Be Able to Do
 Specific Knowledge
 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 –

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

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?

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?)

Key Validity Question
1.
Could the performance be accomplished (or the test be passed) without in-depth understanding?
2.
Could specific performance be poor, but the student still understand the ideas in question?
The goal is to answer NO to both.

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

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

Stage 3 – Learning Activities

 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?

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

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

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

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

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

Closure – Ticket out the Door
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