Understanding by DesignUsing Backwards Design Principles to Create Standards-Based Units

Welcome!

We are glad you are here!

Overall Outcome

Participants will use their knowledge of the Understanding by Design process to create at least one complete unit for their content area and grade level.

Norms“Having to know the answers puts us in a terrible position from which to learn.”

Courtesy Norms

• Be on time and return from breaks on time.

• Cell phones on silent, vibrate or off.

• Be mindful of side-bar conservations.

• Focus on the task at hand.

Collaborative Norms

• Harness the power of what we know and can do together.

• Promote a sense of inquiry

• Make our practice public to one another.

• Pay attention to self and others.

• Assume positive intentions.

• Be reflective.

Vocabulary Sort

• Learning Principles• Standards• Course or Yearlong

Curriculum Map• Transfer• UbD• Stage 1: Desired Outcomes• Stage 2: Acceptable Evidence• Stage 3: Learning Plan• Enduring Understandings• Essential Questions• Curriculum• Performance Tasks

Write vocabulary terms on small sticky notes. Place each sticky in

the column that best describes your understanding of the term.

Do not know this term

Have seen or heard – not certain of meaning

Can give a brief definition

Can explain and give examples

Enduring Understandings

• Learning principles guide decisions made during unit design processes.

• Understanding by Design provides a framework for identifying the core ideas and questions that form the work of the content and disciplines we teach.

• By beginning with the end in mind, we are able to determine what students should know, be able to do, and understand in order to support them as they master content and reach performance standards.

• The integration of assessment and instruction leads to genuine differentiation that supports the unique strengths and needs of individual students.

Essential Questions

• What does a viable, guaranteed, and coherent curriculum mean for Cabarrus County Schools?

• Why Understanding by Design?

• How does Understanding by Design align with the other current initiatives (PLC, Workshop, SBIGR, etc.) that we are focused on in Cabarrus County?

• How can we use Understanding by Design to create meaningful learning opportunities for students that align with the Common Core State Standards?

• How can we use our Understanding by Design experiences to transform attitudes and perceptions about standardized testing and overcome notions of drill-and-kill teaching and test preparation?

• In what ways can we acquire and ensure the long-term availability of resources required to sustain successful UbD implementation?

• How can we ensure that UbD is a clear and natural part of instruction and learning for all students, including those in primary grades, those enrolled in special education, language learners, and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged?

Learning Principles

Learning Principles

Think back to your many prior experiences with well-designed learning, both in and out of school. What was the most well-designed learning experience you have ever encountered as a learner? What features of the design – not the teacher’s style or your interests – made the learning so engaging and effective?

Design elements include: challenges posed, sequence of activities, resources provided, assignments, assessments, groupings, teacher’s role, etc.

Describe the design.

Learning Principles

Mission of Cabarrus County Schools:

We will value, teach and empower each student in a culture of educational excellence.

Learning Principles:

• Provide an accessible, conceptual foundation of how people learn

• Guide how we are going to achieve our mission and program goals• curriculum design, assessment procedures, instructional

practices/resources, professional development, school structures

Learning Principles

Effective Learning Principles…

• Reflect research on learning from multiple sources

• Resonate with our personal and professional experience in learning and teaching

We Believe…

• All students can learn and be successful

• Student learning is best achieved through rigorous, integrated, and culturally responsive lessons

• Teachers facilitate learning by probing student thinking through purposeful, provocative questions that encourage mathematical justifications

• Effective mathematics instruction develops most effectively in a safe learning environment where student ideas are valued and a love of mathematics is fostered

• Research-based instructional techniques that allow for differentiation (product, process, content, etc.) support all learners

• Collaboration and reflection is essential among teachers and students

We Believe…

• Mathematics learning experiences should plan for students to be challenged and allow for some struggle

• There should be a balance of building of number sense, computational fluency, and conceptual understanding

• Opportunities should be provided for the application of the mathematical concepts students are learning (problem solving)

• Students must be engaged in conversation, interaction, and metacognitive processes

• There should be a balance of teacher talk and student talk

• The standards for mathematical practice should be integrated with the content standards

• Student mistakes are opportunities to learn

• Students must create and solve a variety of problems

• Students should be provided with opportunities to check for reasonableness and self-assess

Learning PrinciplesCabarrus County Schools

• What do we know about the teaching and learning of social studies? Visual arts? Chorus?

• What do we believe?

Working in small groups, work to develop your learning principles.

Put your ideas on chart paper.

Learning Principles

Gallery Walk

Look for commonalities:• Big ideas• Themes• Vocabulary

Consider your learning principles. Tally those that appear in other groups’ lists.

Learning Principles

Break

What is UbD?

UbD in a Nutshell

• A way of thinking purposefully about curricular planning and school reform.

• A means of integrating curriculum, instruction, and assessment within a unit of study in any discipline

• A unit design template for beginning with the end in mind

• A way to enhance meaningful understanding and transfer of learning

• Ubd transforms content standards into relevant desired results, authentic assessments, and appropriate learning plans

UbD is NOT…

…a rigid program or prescriptive recipe • Rather, UbD offers helpful design tools and design standards. It

does not tell us how to teach or which activities to use.

…a philosophy of education• UbD does not require a belief in any single pedagogical approach.

…incompatible with established content standards or state testing• In fact, the focus on understanding and transfer of knowledge, not recall of

facts and procedures, highly correlates with Common Core State

Standards and the Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Connections Between Understanding by Design and Professional Learning Communities

UbD PLC

Stage 1: Desired Results • What will students know, understand, and do?

Stage 2: Determining Acceptable Evidence

• How will we know they are learning it?

Stage 3: The Learning Plan

• What teaching and learning experiences we will provide?

• What will we do when students already know it?

• What will we do if they don’t learn it?• What teaching and learning experiences

were effective? How do we know?

From Standards to CurriculumA “course to be run”

Coherent

It makes sense

Logical progression

Effectively organized

Viable

It can be done

Guaranteed

Every student

Every class

Every school

Our Commitment

Cabarrus County SchoolsCurriculum Design Process

• Implementation of the new standards across all content areas and grade levels.

• Grouping the standards into units covering 4-6 weeks of content.

• Using Understanding by Design to provide the framework for the units.

This work is done by a few and shared with ALL.

How do we get there?Unpacking Standards

Unpacking Standards

Why unpack standards?

1. The practical meaning of a standard is not self-evident even if the writing is clear.

2. Standards are typically written in hierarchical form.

3. Standards typically address different types of learning goals.

Tips for Unpacking Standards

Tip 1: Look at all key verbs to clarify and highlight valid student performance in which content is used.

Tip 2: Look at the recurring nouns that signal big ideas.

Tip 3: Identify and analyze the key adjectives and adverbs to determine valid scoring criteria and rubrics related to successful performance against the standards.

Tip 4: Identify and/or infer the long-term transfer goals by looking closely at the highest-level standards and indicators for them, or inferring the transfer goal from the content and justification for the standard.

Tip 5: Consider the standards in terms of the long-term goal of autonomous performance.

Unpacking Worksheets

Caution!

“Unpacking” often results in a checklist of discrete skills and a fostering of skill-and-drill instruction that can fragment and isolate student learning in such a way that conceptual understanding, higher order thinking, cohesion, and synergy are made more difficult. Too often, the process of “unpacking” is engaged in an attempt to isolate the specific foundational or prerequisite skills necessary to be successful with the ideas conveyed by the overall standard and is a common precursor to test preparation and reductive teaching. Although this process may be important work in some instances and can certainly be enlightening, it also poses substantial problems if those completing the work never take the time to examine the synergy that can be created when those foundational or prerequisite skills are reassembled into a cohesive whole. Metaphorically speaking, “unpacking” often leads educators to concentrate on the trees at the expense of the forest.

Kansas Department of Education

Stage 1: Identify Desired Results

Identify Desired Results

• What long-term transfer goals are targeted?

• What meanings should students make to arrive at important understandings?

• What essential questions will students keep considering?

• What knowledge and skill will students acquire?

• What standards are targeted?

Stage 1

With a partner, take turns reading pages 14-15 in The Understanding by Design Guide to Create High-Quality Units.

Begin with Stage 1: Clarifying Desired Results.

Read a paragraph and then each “say something.”

Stage 1

• Look at the examples on pages 18, 23, and 29

• What do you notice about Stage 1?• Sections• Components• Language

• Do a close read (see wiki for instructions) and discuss.

Curriculum:A Pathway toward a Destination

Having learned key content, what will students be able to do with it?

Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions

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?)

Some questions for identifyingEnduring Understandings and Essential Questions

• 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?

Essential Questions: Doorways to Inquiry

• Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas of the standards

• Provoke deep thought, lively discussions, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions

• Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers

Essential Questions: Doorways to Inquiry

• Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons

• Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences

• Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations

Essential Questions

• Purpose of Essential question is more important than the form

• Intent of the question is to sustain inquiry- you should have a range of answers

• 2-5 per unit

• Should be engaging and provocative for the age group

Are these Enduring Understandings?

• Mathematicians create models to interpret and predict the behavior of real world phenomena.

• Great artists often break with conventions to better express what they see and feel.

• Mathematical models have limits and sometimes they distort or misrepresent.

• Writers don’t always say things directly or literally; sometimes they convey their ideas indirectly.

• Friendships can be deepened or undone by hard times.

• History is the story told by winners.

• The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story.

Are these 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?

• How accurate does a solution have to be?

• How do you “read between the lines?”

• How reliable are the predictions of mathematical models?

MeaningEssential Questions

• An essential question is: • A provocative question looks for opening up thinking, varied

and divergent answers – “uncoverage” of important issues• The question is more important than any answer

• An essential question is not: • A leading question points to an unarguable fact

Returning to Unpacking

AcquisitionKnow 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 Standards

Stage 1

Have we connected everything so that all teachers can understand what should be taught in this unit and what students should understand about the

content area?

Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence

Determine Acceptable Evidence

• What performances and products will reveal evidence of meaning-making and transfer?

• By what criteria will performance be assessed, in light of Stage 1 desired results?

• What additional evidence will be collected for Stage 1 desired results?

• Are the assessments aligned to all Stage 1 elements?

Backwards Design

“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?

Learning Outcomes

By the end of our time together, you will…• understand the purpose of assessment and how each type

informs instruction• know what a performance task is and how to use it to evaluate

student progress• know the four types of assessments

What comes to mind…

…when you hear the word assessment?

Creating A Park

                                        

Sound Classroom Assessment Practice

skill in gathering accurate information

+

effective use of information and procedures

=

sound classroom assessment practice

Student as User of Assessment Information

In order to answer the question: Students must:

Where am I going? Know what high quality looks like

Where am I now? Be able to objectively compare their work to the standard

How can I close the gap? Have a store of tactics to improve work based on their observations

Putting the Pieces Together

Key 2: Clear TargetsAssess What?

Key 2: Clear TargetsAssess what?

Learning Targets

• Any achievement expectations we hold for students.

• Statements of what we want students to learn.

Provide a clear statement of the learning target

• Convert complex or unfamiliar targets to student-friendly language (keeping key vocabulary)

• Post them or have students keep them

• Connect the learning targets to specific activities

Teacher Decisions

• Design lessons that will lead to the learning target.

• Use instructional strategies that will best meet the needs of the students.

• Develop a set of formative assessments for students to use to set goals (consider DOK and RBT)

• Design a sound summative assessment based on what was taught

Clear Targets

• Know what kinds of targets are represented in the curriculum

• Know which targets each assessment measures

Without clear targets, we can’t…

• Know that the assessment adequately covers and samples what we taught

• Correctly identify what students know and don’t know and their level of achievement

• Plan next steps in instruction

Without clear targets, we can’t…

• Give detailed, descriptive feedback to students

• Have students self-assess or set goals likely to help them learn more

• Keep track of student learning target by target or standard by standard

• Complete a standards-based report card

Key 3: Sound DesignAssess How?

Key 3: Sound DesignAssess How?

Assessments fall into one of four basic categories:

1. Selected response and short answer

2. Extended written response

3. Performance assessment

4. Personal communication

Selected Response

Students select the correct or best response from a list provided:

• Multiple choice

• True/False

• Matching

• Short Answer

• Fill-in Questions

For selected response questions, students’ scores are figured as the number or proportion of questions answered correctly.

Extended Written Response

Requires students to construct a written answer in response to a question or task rather than select one from a list and is at least several sentences in length:

• Compare pieces of literature, solutions to environmental problems, or economic events

• Analyze art work, forms of government, or solutions to problems

• Interpret music or scientific information

Students are typically scored using a rubric.

Performance Assessment

Students complete a performance or product:

• Playing a musical instrument

• Carrying out the steps in a science experiment

• Designing a zoo with the maximum space for the animals

• Creating a lab report

• Creating a work of art

Students are typically scored using a rubric or scoring guide.

Personal Communication

We find out what students have learned by interacting with them:

• Looking at and responding to students’ comments in journals and logs

• Asking questions during math games

• Conferring with students

• Listening to students as they participate in class

Students’ scores may be decided similarly to the other assessments depending upon the questions and communication.

Assessments

Four categories:

1. Selected response and short answer

2. Extended written response

3. Performance assessment

4. Personal communication

Performance Tasks

Authentic Assessment

What is the “game” for each unit?

A performance task is not…

• interviewing a family member and “writing about it.”

• summarizing the book you’ve read and some kind of prop that you’ve created to represent the book

• making an igloo out of sugar cubes, or a fort out of popsicle sticks, or a diorama, or a mobile, or a mask, or a model of a castle...

Performance Task Traits

Read page 154 and the accompanying vignettes.

Try to visualize a performance task for one of the units you teach. How might that look in your classroom?

Performance tasks…

...must be aligned to the essential questions and demonstrate their enduring understanding.

...enable the students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills gained in the unit.

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.

A “Picture” of Assessment

Stage 2: Assessment Expectations

Each unit will include:

• A performance task

• 3 additional assessments in any combination of the other 3 types of assessment

Potential Performance Tasks

• DPI Wikispaces

• Defined STEM

Stage 3: Learning Experiences

Learning Experiences

• What activities, experiences, and lessons will lead to achievement of the desired results and success at the assessments?

• How will the learning plan help students achieve transfer and meaning with increased independence?

• How will the unit be sequenced and differentiated to optimize achievement for all learners?

• Are the learning events in Stage 3 aligned with Stage 1 goals and Stage 2 assessments?

Summary of Good Design

Expectations and Opportunities – Structuring learning experiences to help students reach expectations.

• 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: a focus on the instructional strategies that will yield the most student learning; differentiated; intentionally structured.

• 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

Resources• Understand that there is no ONE sufficient resource.

• Resources should be aligned to the types of understandings that we are looking to attain in our students.

• Our work will include alignment with available resources to our written curriculum documents.

• We will continue to look for and consider the resources that help us to help our students learn AND help us to understand the content.

Potential Resources

• DPI Wikispaces

• Defined STEM

• iCurio

• Discovery Education

Connections Between Understanding by Design and Professional Learning Communities

UbD PLC

Stage 1: Desired Results • What will students know, understand, and do?

Stage 2: Determining Acceptable Evidence

• How will we know they are learning it?

Stage 3: The Learning Plan

• What teaching and learning experiences we will provide?

• What will we do when students already know it?

• What will we do if they don’t learn it?• What teaching and learning experiences

were effective? How do we know?

Wrap-Up:Questions, Comments, Concerns?