Table Of Content
- Understanding by Design allows me to revise lesson plans to keep them aligned with learning goals
- In K-12 Education
- Backward Design Step 3. Plan a Sequence of Lessons
- Integration into Curriculum Planning
- Potential for Overemphasis on Assessment
- Developing a backward design lesson plan step by step
- Zone of Proximal Development

Learning outcomes should be specific and stated in concrete, observable, and measurable terms. This last example provides intended learning outcomes for a subject focused more on soft skills, where measuring student ability objectively is significantly more nuanced and difficult. However, these ILOs still communicate crucial information to students about what good communication looks like to the instructor and help them better understand what will be expected of them in the course. With clear results and methods of assessing understanding in place, the teacher can now tailor the instructional strategies to help students attain new understandings of the content. Also having done backwards design, the teacher isn’t bound by the traditional textbook and can pull together different resources, such as Kognity, which does the task for you and presents the information in a better format. The teacher begins by reviewing the learning standards that students are expected to meet by the end of a course or grade level.
Understanding by Design allows me to revise lesson plans to keep them aligned with learning goals
Historians use “continuity and change” to refer to aspects of life or society that have remained the same (continuity) or developed over time (change). For the sake of this article I will use two examples as exemplars for each stage of the planning, the Scientific Revolution & Enlightenment and U.S. Next consider what skills they need improvement on that might work with the content.
In K-12 Education
I would deem the lesson a failure and abandon it in favor of new exercises, assessments or lectures. Identifying the educational priorities of a lesson or unit deliberately narrows content into a manageable stream. “Understandings” and “Essential Questions” help articulate and communicate the educational priorities. This, again, narrows focus and ensures that content is the means, and skill acquisition and transfer are the end.
Backward Design Step 3. Plan a Sequence of Lessons
In 2005, Wiggins and McTighe published a second edition of their book to include new insights and updates. Around the same time, the approach started getting attention from policymakers. Some states in the U.S., like Massachusetts and North Carolina, even began incorporating elements of Backward Design into their educational standards. In other words, by figuring out how you want your students to end up, you’ll be better equipped and prepared to teach them the right things so they achieve those optimal outcomes.
Your completed Course Plan should lay out, in brief, the weekly assessments, course content, and teaching strategies and activities that align to the learning outcomes you create in Step 2 below. As a result, Blooms Taxonomy guides the lesson planning and helps us frame each lesson with clarity, purpose, and specificity that sets clear expectations. Looking ahead to step two of backward design, you will need to identify evidence that an intended learning outcome has been obtained. If a learning outcome is not measurable, then we will not be able to know whether or not our course successfully achieved its goals. Contrary to a popular assumption, this does not mean that the leaning goal has to be quantitatively measured by some objective instrument (like a multiple-choice test).
Integration into Curriculum Planning
Using this approach, the teacher can assess student learning through formative assessments, such as one-on-one interviews, short quizzes, peer evaluation, and individual reflection. Your backwards lesson planning should incorporate both instructional strategies and instructional activities. Once you know the standards your students are expected to meet by a certain grade level, make a list of all the foundational knowledge they need to reach that goal.
Interested in more professional development opportunities for teachers? Explore education courses and certificates at the University of San Diego’s Division of Professional and Continuing Education. Using anticipated learning outcomes for backward design of a molecular cell biology Course‐based Undergraduate Research Experience. Objectives, assessments and learning activities are three cornerstones of backward design.

Developing a backward design lesson plan step by step
Creating Experiential Learning Opportunities in Any Course - Faculty Focus
Creating Experiential Learning Opportunities in Any Course.
Posted: Mon, 06 Apr 2020 07:00:00 GMT [source]
These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff. When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book.
Zone of Proximal Development
Backward designing an online course leads you to be more intentional about your use of the online space, helping to mitigate the challenges of online learning while maximizing its affordances. You will follow the same step-by-step process above, but there are a few additional elements to consider during Steps 3-5. Ohio State historyLong before Wiggins and McTighe popularized backward design, Ralph Tyler was working with fellow faculty at The Ohio State University to improve data gathered from assessments. As early as his 1934 article, “Some Findings from Studies in the Field of College Biology,” Tyler details how he helped faculty sketch out the ideas of needs analysis, backward design, and setting behavioral objectives. In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe reference Tyler as the originator of behavioral objectives (2005, p. 20).
Click on each step for further details, key considerations, and guiding questions to walk you through backward designing your Course Plan. Although backward design has been around for some time (Tyler, 1949), Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe are often credited with its current prevalence. In Understanding By Design (2005), Wiggins and McTighe explain backward design as a three-stage approach to course planning (p. 17-18).
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced backward design in their book Understanding by Design. In contrast to the traditional “forward design” approach, backward design begins by establishing learning goals and then developing assessments and teaching methods to achieve the desired outcomes. Instructional activities are the specific ways in which students interact with the course content. These activities run the gamut from watching educational videos, creating posters or presentations, completing a group project or playing learning-based games. Successful lesson plans often contain a mix of instructional strategies and activities, since asking students to adapt to different modes of learning is an effective way to keep them engaged.
This teaching guide will explain the benefits of incorporating backward design. Then it will elaborate on the three stages that backward design encompasses. Finally, an overview of a backward design template is provided with links to blank template pages for convenience. For those new to Backward Design, diving in with an entire curriculum may feel overwhelming. Educational consultant and author Heidi Hayes Jacobs recommends starting with a single unit or even just one lesson.
We know the content so well and have taught the material many times but suddenly we get stuck when planning the course. The foreign policy unit is shorter and is part of an elective course, so my goals differ. I want them to have a concrete understanding of what foreign policy is and the motivations thereof. I also want to flex their organizational muscles, because their notebooks and ability to hang on to handouts without losing them is awful! A 6-unit, online, self-paced course for K–12 educators seeking to engage students while adhering to standards.
With this “after” version, every lesson is designed to prepare students to give excellent presentations at the end. The whole time, they are using the lunar cycle vocabulary, correcting each other’s misconceptions, and just like scientists, thinking about how to explain concepts to other people. In many classrooms, teachers also have students track the appearance of the moon over the course of a month, so that might be added as well. If they don’t see the relevance of what they’re learning or a direct line between the content of your course and a desirable outcome, they’ll tune it out. Sure, many students will do what you ask anyway, because they want good grades and the benefits that come from them.
The emphasis was on “lectures” and “discussions” and the assumption was that learning largely consisted of a passive activity in which students received information and ideas from authoritative sources. Criterion – How WELL the learner must perform to demonstrate content mastery. This refers to a degree of accuracy, the number of correct responses, or perhaps a teacher-imposed time limit. Unlike overwhelming workshops, my approach guides you in real-time, providing more classroom options, reducing stress, and giving you more personal time.
Various kinds of assessments can fill this role, as long as the assessment task is closely aligned with the action described in the ILO. In this stage, the teacher asks the question, “How do I know if students have achieved the desired results? ” The key is to think as an assessor would and look for meaningful ways to evaluate student achievement. The focus is less on content coverage and more on higher level thinking skills and practical application.
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