Understanding by Design Adapted from Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe
Dec 16, 2015
Learning Goals
• Acquisition of knowledge and skill• Ability to Make Meaning• Transfer of knowledge to new
situations
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The Big Ideas of UbD
A Focus on Design“Backward” from understanding-based goals
A Focus on UnderstandingBig Ideas grasped and transfer of learning as the
goal of education
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How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and
School---Bransford
Application of Knowledge---transfer Think in terms of the Big Ideas Depth Timely specific feedback Performance-based assessment- “Real World” Self-assessment Open-ended questions Understandings/Generalizations Inquiry- Active Learning
“The capacity to apply facts, concepts, and skills in new
situations in appropriate ways.
-----Dr. Howard Gardner
Handouts Pg. 26
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STAGE 1:
STAGE 3:
STAGE 2:
U Q
G
T OE
L
It doesn’t matter where you begin or how you proceed - as long as the design ends up with all elements aligned!
Design process is non-linear
Link assessments to curricular priorities
‘big ideas’
worth understanding
important to
know & doPerformance tasks and projects• Open ended• Complex• authentic
worth being familiar with
Traditional quizzes
and tests• Paper/pencil• Selected-response• Constructed response
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Stage 1 Identify Desired Results
• Enduring Understanding Framed as a generalization The Big Picture/Big Idea Something beyond the specific
content The heart of the discipline
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Enduring Understanding
The “Aha”The Moral of the StoryInsight into the Standards
(Unpacking)The “forevers”
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Examples of Enduring Understandings
1. Laws and rules prevent chaos.2. Fairy tales often illustrate profound philosophical
truths3. The words of poetry stir up feelings and ideas in
the reader or listener.4. In music the silence is as important as the notes.5. Mathematics is a language consisting of symbols
and rules.6. Living things grow and change, sometimes in
predictable patterns
Skills Compared to Understandings
Skill Understanding
Reading text The author’s meaning in a story is rarely explicit; one must read between the lines.
Creating scoring opportunities in soccer One needs to create space, spreading the defense as broadly and deeply as possible
Asking directions in Spanish Knowing whether or not one has been understood requires attention to nonverbal as well as to verbal feedback.
Speaking presuasively in public Persuasion often involves an emotional appeal to the particular wishes, needs, hopes, and fears of an audience, irrespective of how logical and rational the argument.
From the Understanding by Design Handbook p. 89
Pay Attention!
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=40c570a322f1b0b65909