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Sam Leal
Chapter 3: What Really Matters in Learning? (Content)

From reading Chapter 3 in the book, UbD/DI, I learned a lot about a couple struggles teachers face when it comes to teaching the curriculum and content overload. Teachers want to teach so much to the students and give them such a great understanding of the material there’s just not enough class room hours to do so. Also I’ve learned that they have been creating new standards to try and focus learning, this is thought to help teachers teach more to what’s important, but in the end it has added more time that teachers need to teach the content. Another problem is that textbooks often intensify the situation. One way teachers try to address the situation is to plan backwards. To try and set desired results and goals that they want students to achieve. In doing this teachers often teach the content around essential questions, this is an approach that really focuses the teaching. Reading about this made me think a little bit more about teaching in the future and how it will be hard to teach to what the students need to learn. The chapter made me think about how I’ll have to thoroughly plan out a year and staying on task is more important than ever. Classes have to be productive and have goals. Each day is vitally important and that why you hear teachers say that to you when you have your classes. Content overload will always be an obstacle because as a teacher you want your students to learn as much as possible, but keeping everything in mind ahead of time will help.

Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Understanding by Design: Chapter 3 toc I strongly identify with the content of this chapter. As a student of history, I am constantly reminded of the enormity of the subject and just how much //stuff// is out there. You could spend a lifetime trying to know it all and you still would capture only a fraction. Setting priorities, while always arbitrary, are a neccissity to make sense of it all. In my classroom, I will have to constantly renegotiate the conflicting demands for breadth and depth. If I focus too much on one area, I may remove it from its proper context and thus hurt understanding, but “a mile wide-inch deep” is also harmful. Whatever solution is reached, it will not be perfect. As a teacher, I will have to wake up everyday and tinker with it, hopefully getting closer and closer to perfection, trying to keep up with the changes in the times and my students.

I do not feel that backward planning is “awkward” to do. I feel lost otherwise. I like to have a clear idea of what I am trying to achieve before I get there.

I will definitely keep a copy of this template around my desk when I begin to teach, as a way to organize my sometimes chaotic thinking. //This chapter is about how to balance the element of anarchy of individualized instruction with the order of standards-based teaching.//

Emily Haskell
UbD Chapter 3 In many schools there does seem to be a very large amount of information to learn. This idea of information being a mile wide and a inch deep is not a new one. Although I agree that there are many things students should learn, I also think that there should be some kind of boundary. When did it become normal to forfeit quality for quantity? Is knowing more topics really more important than knowing about these topics?

I was fascinated by the backwards design plan and am excited to use it. To me this seems like the most logical way of going about things. This is something we use every day. So why not apply it to teaching? Take for example an essay. If you were to write an essay for a class you would actually use the backwards design plan. First you would start by developing an idea and a central theme.

From there you would find quotes to support your argument and begin to decide on sub themes. Finally, the last thing you would do is write the paper. You started with what you wanted your audience to gain and ended up actually teaching. In teaching it seems to make more sense to start with the goals you with to achieve and then move on to the more in depth parts of the lesson.

Colby Hill
UbD chapter 3

One of the first things I tell my parents if they ask about what may frustrate me in teaching is this: content! Not the actual content itself, but instead how much content we must shove into the brain of a student. I feel like teachers are forced to forget a student’s best way of learning sometimes for the sake of content coverage. Hopefully this will not happen to me, but I do think this is a common “overload” (24) problem. If a student really did need an additional “15,465 hours” (25) as Tomlinson and McTighe write, it goes on to prove that this coverage idea should be seriously reduced to the really important benchmarks… or increase school so there is fifteen grades (hopefully not). The “Planning Backward” (27) idea seems great. A teacher needs to have a solid plan when going into a year of school. My only worry was that this idea was set too close to stone. “What should they know?” “What proves they know this stuff?” A teacher needs to have a game plan, yes, but a very loose one that is always subject to change, and we must keep differentiation in mind. Later, on page 33, the authors start to get into this. This statement “The nature and needs of learners should certainly influence how we teach toward these targets” (33) nicely defines how I think, and how any teacher should approach the backward design process.

Karina Sprague
This chapter talked about how to manage your content and how to use the backwards design model to plan units. A common problem for teachers is not having enough time to cover all of their material. Standards were created to help this problem. I don’t really think that standards have made a huge difference on fitting content into your allotted time. Although the standards told you what the students have to learn, the standards are so broad sometimes, or they contain so many requirements that you are still challenged with time. I have only used the backwards design model once for homework, but I think it helps a lot. However, I do not usually plan backwards, so it is new and challenging for me. Whenever I have thought of lesson plans in my head before, I thought about what area of English/Language Arts I wanted to teach, then I thought about what would be the most important things for them to learn, and then I thought of a assignment that would work for that list of goals. I realized this process can still work with the backwards design model, too, because you can just start at the bottom of the page, then find a content area that fits the standards you are choosing to teach. I think the backwards design model will help me a lot when I become a teacher because I will be able to make sure that my assignment is something that I want to do, and I will be sure that it covers all the standards that are required.

Spencer Hodge
Chapter three of UbD/DI is mainly about the content taught in today’s schools. This chapter shows the benefits and troubles of working with content standards; some standards being too broad and others too specific. It is suggested that teachers break all standards down into “big ideas” and core processes, and then into “essential questions,” which aim to sculpt any standard into key concepts. In planning a curriculum it is important to work backwards, so that lesson plans and assessment have direct relation to learning goals. The backwards design model is comprised of three stages: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning experiences and instruction. It is suggested that teachers use resources that model UbD and DI units and lesson plans. Understanding how to read and analyze the standards will ultimately help with designing units.

In my opinion standards can be a helpful tool in organizing how to set up a unit, however, if it hinders creativity in anyway there should be ways to adapt around it. Being a Social Studies concentration my standards are based off of the MLR, but I was told that by the time I am a teacher out of college the Social Studies concentration will have shifted to the CCSS, and I am excited to see that. I am also enthused about beginning to work with the concept of working backwards, and how this idea can really help us to create quality lesson plans. By using the backwards design models, we can focus our time on differentiated instruction and ensuring our students reach the goals we set forth.

Cidney Mayes
It is impossible to cover every standard of learning. The sheer number of them is daunting, and some are entirely too broad or too specific. This is where the theory of Backwards Design comes in. Instead of focusing on standards individually, content is prioritized by placing the focus on “transferable concepts and processes” (Tomlinson, 26), and essential questions that relate to each standard are formed. There are three stages to Backwards Design, and by using these stages as a framework for designing curriculum instruction, goals are more clearly defined, more appropriate assessments are created, and material is taught with more purpose. Stage 1 focuses on determining the desired results by asking questions like What should students know? Stage 2 concentrated on assessment and evidence for learning, and Stage 3 focuses on designing specific lessons that will result in students achieving the predetermined goals. This idea impacts me as a teacher because this is the method that I will use to plan units in my classroom. As an English teacher, I will be using Common Core State Standards to identify the desired results of Stage 1. By identifying what I want my students to be learning from the beginning, I can more effectively create assessments that determine whether content is being learned or not, and I can plan activities and acquire resources that will aid my teaching. =

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Jordan Hale
UbD DI Chapter 3: What Really Matters In Learning? (Content) Chapter three brought on the design tool of thinking backwards. Basically, thinking of a curriculum with a goal in mind us broken down and described in full detail to us. To establish goals, teachers look at standards sometimes to aid them. My experience in planning curriculum backwards is a work in progress to say the least. On the other hand, I have used the model of thinking backwards in my athletics to achieve my goals. In soccer, I would visualize what I wanted to do on the field in the game, and then go out and perform. It is the same idea as planning backwards, but in a completely different application. The planning template that we use in class is very easy to see and understand because it is broken down into easy parts. Also, for people just starting like myself, it is overwhelming sometimes, and with this nice visual aid, it should help all of us. In the future, I plan on designing each of my curriculums this way to make sure I am teaching the students what they need to know. As the book suggests, I will utilize the Maine state standards as a guideline. Being a math teacher, I feel as though I have more direction of specificity compared to other concentrations. In math, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) spell out, by grade level, the knowledge that students should know. For instance, one standard is “Understand solving equations as a process of reasoning and explain the reasoning” (CCSI p 65)1. There are many different ways to go about teaching students that standard, but it gives my curriculum some direction.

1. Common Core Standards For Mathematics presented by Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Elizabeth Sargent
UbD Chapter 3: What Really Matters in Learning? (Content)

Teachers are faced with so much curriculum plus getting high schools students ready to graduate and also ready for college level courses that it doesn’t seem like they have enough time. In my past experiences in school, I can notice when time has seemed like it runs on forever when we are in one topic too long, and this just proves that the teacher is just teaching the curriculum. They are focusing on one aspect of the content that they have deemed important enough to spend time on. Really, what students are taught depends on what teachers want to teach them. The chapter talked about planning backward, which seems like a pretty simple process. Three steps that focus on the big ideas and what we want our students to take away from the lesson. In the classroom it is important to have clarity in design but also in results. What do we want our students to learn? Will the way we are teaching them be able to get across what we want them to learn? Will they be able to apply that knowledge in the future? How do we know they will remember it? These are all great questions posed by and answered by the authors of this book. There planning is decisive and I see nothing wrong with their template. But actually trying this out on a unit seems a little daunting. For one, it isn’t something I have done before, how do I know just because they say it will work that it actually will? I get comfort from the fact that there is a website called the UbD Exchange where teachers exchange unit designs, which proves that this template has been successfully used.

Alex Randall
UbD/DI Chapter 3 Chapter three discusses the working backward design of teaching and its components. It talks about the difficulties of knowing what to teach. In broad topics like science and history (which are continually changing) it’s hard to know what’s the important stuff to teach and what is expected of students to know. I’ve always been a little confused by this method but after reading about it, it makes more sense. The idea is to establish the desired results of the curriculum and then work from there. The point is to make the destination clearer so it’s easier to know what to teach. I really liked that this chapter also talked about how “learning results should be considered in terms of understanding the ‘big ideas’ and core processes within the content standards These ideas are framed around provocative ‘essential questions’ to focus teaching and learning” (26). That made me the backward model sound more legitimate to me.