Understanding by Design in Columbia Heights Public Schools

1. Understanding by Design in Columbia Heights Public Schools

2. Outcomes • Define big idea, enduring understanding, essential question, skill • List examples of each in your content area • Given a state benchmark in a content area, identify the big idea, enduring understanding, essential questions, and associated skills. • Explain the reason we are separating unit design into 3 stages.

3. 1. Identify desired results 2. Determine acceptable evidence 3. Plan learning experiences & instruction Understanding by Design

4. Why “backward”? • The stages are logical but they go against habits • We’re used to jumping to lesson and activity ideas - before clarifying our performance goals for students • By thinking through the assessments upfront, we ensure greater alignment of our goals and means, and that teaching is focused on desired results

6. What is a map? • A map offers a calendar of designs in a school or district, unit by unit, over the course of the year • Maps can be as simple or complex as you like: simply select the template fields you wish to see “mapped” over time • Maps can be viewed or downloaded as a spreadsheet • Maps can be works in progress - e.g. local work only on essential questions done so far: see map of all essential questions, by date, grade level, etc.

7. Why map? • Maps help teachers and schools- • Ensure that key state standards are not falling through the cracks • Know what the big ideas are in units and courses across the system • Find natural ways to link their work with that of other teachers, to make the student’s experience more rich and coherent • Identify unhelpful redundancies or gaps in program that happen from isolated design

8. You’ve got to go below the surface...

9. to uncover the really ‘big ideas.’

10. The Parallel postulate S.A.S. Congruence Like rules of a game Like Bill of Rights Big Idea: inference A2 + B2 = C2 The big ideas provide a way to connect and recall knowledge

11. “Big Ideas” are typically revealed via – • Core concepts • On-going debates/issues • Insightful perspectives • Illuminating paradox/problem • Overarching principle • Underlying assumption • Key questions • Insightful inferences from facts

12. Examples of Big Ideas Patterns Balance Adaptation Community Invention Perspective Repetition Loyalty • Culture • Change • Cycles • Rhythm • Fairness • Friendship • Harmony • Discovery

13. Some questions for identifying truly “big ideas” • Does it have many layers and nuances, not obvious to the naïve or inexperienced person? • Can it yield great depth and breadth of insight into the subject? Can it be used throughout the school system? • Do you have to dig deep to really understand its subtle meanings and implications even if anyone can have a surface grasp of it? • Is it (therefore) prone to misunderstanding as well as disagreement? • Does it reflect the core ideas as judged by experts?

14. From Big Ideas to Understandings about them An understanding is a “moral of the story” about the big ideas • What specific insights will students take away about the the meaning of ‘content’ via big ideas? • What will they remember 3 years later? • Understandings summarize the desired insights we want students to realize

16. Understanding, defined: They are... • specific generalizationsabout the “big ideas.” They summarize the key meanings, inferences, and importance of the ‘content’ • deliberately framed as a full sentence “moral of the story” – “Students will understand THAT…” • Require “uncoverage”becausethey are not “facts” to the novice, but unobvious inferencesdrawn from facts - counter-intuitive& easily misunderstood

18. Understandings: examples... • 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 • Rules are made to protect people • History is the story told by the “winners” • F = ma (weight is not mass) • Math models simplify physical relations – and even sometimes distort relations – to deepen our understanding of them • The storyteller rarely tells the meaning of the story

20. Knowledge vs. Understanding • An understanding is an unobvious and important inference, needing “uncoverage” in the unit; knowledge is a set of established “facts.” • Understandings make sense of facts, skills, and ideas: they tell us what our knowledge means; they‘connect the dots’

21. Just because the student “knows it” … Evidence of understanding is a greater challenge than evidence that the student knows a correct or valid answer

22. Essential Questions • What 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 organizing purpose for meaningful & connected learning

24. Whose “story” is it? Who is an American? Who says? WW II 60’s 80’s Is “all fair” in war (internment)? Who should get Green cards? How much does race matter? Essential Questions in History

25. Sample Essential Questions: • Who are my true friends - and how do I know for sure? • How “rational” is the market? • Does a good read differ from a ‘great book’? Why are some books fads, and others classics? • To what extent is geography destiny? • Should an axiom be obvious? • How different is a scientific theory from a plausible belief? • What is the government’s proper role?

27. Skills • Divided into what the students will KNOW • and be able to DO • Know – they can tell or explain • Do – they can show you

28. Two Kinds of Skills Declarative Procedural

29. How do the four fit together? Why bother?

30. 1. Identify desired results 2. Determine acceptable evidence 3. Plan learning experiences & instruction 3 Stages of (“Backward”) Design

31. ! Misconception Alert:the work is non-linear • It doesn’t matter where you start as long as the final design is coherent (all elements aligned) • Clarifying one element or Stage often forces changes to another element or Stage • The template “blueprint” is logical but the process is non-linear (think: home improvement!)

33. Why is curriculum mapping not putting yourself out of a job? • Maps are unit level views. • You make the daily instructional choices. • We all benefit from your ability to differentiate and adjust to meet the needs of kids. • You bring the planned curriculum to life. • The reason the students are engaged in learning is the teacher, not solely the curriculum.

34. Please agree to • Considering novel ways to think about instruction and learning in your classroom. • Contributing to a healthy learning environment in this room. • Managing yourself so that maximum productivity is possible for all.

35. Complete credit is due to: