“Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connections and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.”
Welcome to Fourth Grade with Mrs. Caiola
An instructional design model is a system of processes by which a teacher or instructor organizes a lesson plan or unit. Each model has stages in which the designer can intentionally plan out the many components most lessons include such as student experiences, materials, essential questions, assessments, and reflections as they pertain to what students will know and will be able to do, if applicable.
​
There are several effective instructional design models to choose from such as ADDIE which stands for Analyze, Design, Development, Implement, Evaluation, Problem-Based Learning, the Dick and Carey model, and Understanding by Design model (UbD).
​
I've spent some time researching the UbD model and find that it resonates with me, therefore I wish to share it with all of you!
Overview
Understanding by Design – Backward Design is a student-centered, constructivist, inquiry-based approach to designing lessons (Kolenda as cited by Loeser, 2018). The framework is simplified into three steps by Wiggins and McTighe (2005), however, each step is comprehensive and requires the designer to fully identify what is worth learning, what is relevant to learners, and the means by which the students know when they have achieved the goals of the unit as enduring understanding (Briggs as cited by Loeser, 2018). Clearly, this framework focuses on “teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer” (McTighe & Wiggins, 2012). This is achieved by designing the unit with the end in mind and student understanding is at the heart of UbD. There are six facets to understanding per Wiggins and McTighe (2005) which are explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. Unlike Bloom’s Taxonomy hierarchy of learning, these six facets are all equal and complex forms of demonstration of transferable student learning.
Stages of Backward Design
​
There are three distinct stages in Backward Design: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning experiences and instruction. Each of these steps ensures purposeful planning and has “a number of benchmarks to help guide the course design process” (Kurt, 2018).
​
Identify Desired Results
​
In the first stage, the designer focuses on big ideas. The designer should ask several questions as they go through this process such as What is an enduring idea that students can transfer to any other discipline or other learning? What should students know, be able to do, or understand by the end of this lesson or unit? How will this knowledge serve them in the future? At this stage, the designer must contemplate the specificity of the knowledge and skill that will be showcased in the student assessment. In the template, established goals will be identified directly from a standard using a verb such as explain, compare, analyze, or demonstrate. Then the designer will identify the big ideas in which the students will understand specific information. What are the key concepts that the designer wants students to understand at the end of the lesson or unit? Conversely, misunderstandings may be anticipated and planned for in this stage. After these concepts have been established, the designer will use essential questions to engage students and to guide their thinking as they interface with the lesson. From this point, the designer will be able to identify what students should be able to know such as key facts and academic vocabulary and do such as define the vocabulary, conduct effective research, and clearly express their learning in writing or other performance tasks (McTighe, 2004). This is extremely helpful when looking at materials. By using the outcomes, the designer can measure the usefulness of materials to determine if they help to achieve the outcome or are superfluous.
​
Determine Acceptable Evidence
​
Stage two is determining acceptable evidence. What the designer is defining here is the assessments and how they will measure student success, the desired results. The designer will determine what evidence they will collect throughout the lesson, such as exit tickets, and a culminating performance task or assessment. In this stage, the designer will want to identify alternate assessments to meet student needs such as oral assessment, using vocabulary in context, and visual displays. The overarching idea of this stage is that the assessments absolutely match the learning goals in the first stage (Michigan.gov, n.d.).
​
Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
​
The third and final stage of using the Backward Design model is the learning plan. With the desired results identified and the evidence to measure if the desired results have been achieved, the designer can now focus on materials and activities that will construct knowledge in an engaging and effective manner. To this end, the teacher can think about what will be taught and how it will be taught, and what logical sequence will the material be presented. A competent educator will consider materials and activities which “hooks interest and promotes understanding, develops knowledge and skill, and provides students with opportunities to engage with the content in meaningful ways” (Keeling, 2015).
Wiggins and McTighe have coined a helpful acronym to guide designers in step two, the WHERETO. This is a multi-step acronym for educators to fully conceive a comprehensive plan for teaching and learning with the desired outcomes in mind.
For any subject taught in primary school, we might ask [is it] worth an adult’s knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult. A negative or ambiguous answer means the material is cluttering up the curriculum.
~Jerome Bruner
