Promoting Alignment Through UbD and Backwards Design

Video Transcription

Hello and thank you for joining me for promoting alignment through Understanding by Design and backwards design. Today's essential question is, how does backward design, using Understanding by design, promote the alignment of instructional goals, assessment, and learning activities? Let's begin with a brief recap of Understanding by Design.

Remember that Understanding by Design is a tool for instructional planning, and it uses backwards design. It has three steps. The first step is setting instructional goals. And these goals can be placed on the curriculum standards of your school, the big understandings you want the students to walk away with, essential questions that you want the students to know, and the knowledge and skills that you want them to be able to have by the end of the unit or lesson.

The second step involves the performance task, and this is twofold. The performance task includes an authentic assessment, where the students prove mastery, and formative assessments, which is where the teacher kind of takes the temperature of the class and gauges who understands what and how well. Remember that the formative assessments should be multiple and varied. Some examples include observations, homework, et cetera.

And the third step is that learning activities are designed. So that gets us from what do I want my students to know to how am I going to teach my students what they need to know. Understanding by Design is very different from traditional design. Traditional design begins with planning what needs to be taught, then planning learning activities, then planning the assessment.

It's important to understand that Understanding by Design is based on a hierarchy of levels of knowing. These are called the six facets of understanding. And they include explain, which is when students should be able to provide recall of facts in a thorough way; interpret, which is where students should be able to tell meaningful stories, expand on an idea or an event, or make personal connections to the subject.

The third is apply. And this is where students should be able to apply what they know into other context areas. The fourth step is have perspective. And this just means that the students can see other people's points of view, and they can imagine the big picture surrounding the issue that you're learning about.

Then we have empathize. And this is where the students go one step further than just understanding the other points of view. It's where they actually find value in those different perspectives and that they're sensitive to the fact that their classmates have these different perspectives because they're based on previous experiences. Lastly, we have self-knowledge. And this is just that students should be able to know what influences their own learning. It's a type of metacognition, and it makes them just more aware of their learning, and essentially it's that they know what they don't know.

We're going to look at two examples, highlight the six facets of understanding. And these examples are going to be of learning activities. One example is having students participate in a Socratic seminar in, say, a social studies classroom.

So they've discussed a topic or a reading from the book, something along those lines. And they get around, and they prepare notes ahead of time, questions and comments to make, according to a set standard. And then they discuss it in a seminar setting, where the teacher actually takes on not the leadership role, not the questioning role, but really just an observing role, sometimes playing devil's advocate.

Out of the six facets with the Socratic seminar, you're going to have explain, because students need to be able to recall those facts; interpret, because they need to be able to provide dimension to the ideas and make personal connections to them; have perspective because they need to be able, through these conversations, to understand their side of the topic in a larger, broader world view; and empathize because they're going to get value from their classmates' comments and questions. Another learning example would be having students write a compare and contrast paper, where they compare a poem and a short story during. This compare and contrast essay, they would also be going through the writing process, revising their work as they go.

This encompasses the explain facet, because students are going to be able to recall what they know. It also includes the interpret facet, because students are able to tell a meaningful story about what they know or provide dimensions to what they know. It also includes apply, because now the students are going to be able to adapt what they know into other contexts. So what do I know about this poem and how does it compare to the short story? And how can I take what I know about these two pieces and put them into writing? And then it also includes have self knowledge, because students will be going through the revision process, which will help them identify what they need to know to be successful.

So how exactly does Understanding by Design promote alignment of standards with assessment and learning experiences? It's built on the idea of backwards design. And according to Wiggins and McTighe in 2000, one starts with the end, the desired results, goals, or standards, and then drives the curriculum from the evidence of learning, or performances, called for by the standards and the teaching needed to equip students to perform.

While this sounds really great in theory, one problem that teachers have is that they do not use backwards design when using Understanding by Design. They think they're doing Understanding by Design, but they're actually using traditional design instead. Traditional design is when goals, instruction, and assessment are not closely aligned because you're coming up with the content and then the activities and then the assessment.

Another important thing with Understanding by Design is that it's not teaching to the test. Teachers need to strive to teach what you are going to test and test what you taught. This is not the same as teaching to the test, because essentially good, solid instruction insists that there be close alignment between these elements. And if there isn't, then the assessment isn't a valid measurement of the learning that's been going on in your classroom.

We also want to make sure that we ensure alignment. And Understanding by Design helps this by showing that students have mastered the desired learning and by promoting motivation of the students. The motivation is promoted because it allows students to know what exactly is expected, and they know this because you formulate these central questions or the big ideas at the beginning of the unit, and you share those with the students.

What exactly does Understanding by Design look like in a technology-rich environment? Well, it looks like the learning plan and activity having lots of opportunities for student research, as well as communication and collaboration in a digital environment. This would also include creation of summative assessments.

There would also be collaborative teams in the classroom. And these teams could collaborate using technology, such as Google Docs or Hangouts. Another sign of technology in UbD is that students will be able to publish their work and present it using technology. So they might publish their work by creating a blog. And they might present it to an authentic audience by publishing the blog.

You might also have Google Forms, Schoology, or Socrative as part of your formative assessments that help you take the pulse of the class. These things provide you with immediate, instant feedback. And it helps the teacher not have to muddle through all that data. But it provides it for the teacher so they can make sound decisions in real time. And the teacher's able to make technology a privilege for their students. And it helps the teacher build their plans and be very intentional about collecting it back to the standards and competencies.

Let's reflect for a moment. Do your lessons include any of the six facets? If not, will you try to incorporate them in the future?

What way would you use technology to enhance Understanding by Design in your classroom to review today we answered the essential question of how does backwards design using Understanding by Design promote alignment of instructional goals, assessment, and learning activities. Now it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video.

The Additional Resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description so you can easily target the resource you want. Thank you for joining me today and happy teaching.