Where to Start: Backward Design Teaching + Learning Lab

Table Of Content

• Understanding by Design framework offers a solution to vanishing student knowledge
• Aligning assessments & instruction
• Discover more from World Language Classroom
• Stage 3 – Designing the Content for Instruction
• Stage 1: Desired Results
• Understanding by Design allows me to revise lesson plans to keep them aligned with learning goals

Lastly, the teacher creates an assessment to measure student learning throughout the unit. Now it is time to plan the lessons, determine reading assignments, method of instruction, and other classroom activities to support student learning. With students’ needs in mind, instructors can choose the most appropriate methods to help their students achieve the learning objectives. Finally, instructors create learning activities and instructional materials that align with and support the achievement of the learning objectives.

Understanding by Design framework offers a solution to vanishing student knowledge

By being aware of these potential pitfalls, teachers, trainers, and curriculum designers can take steps to mitigate them. You walk away really getting it, able to use what you learned in real life. Well, there's a good chance the person teaching you used Backward Design to plan that awesome learning experience. The big ideas and important understandings are referred to as enduring understandings because these are the ideas that instructors want students to remember sometime after they’ve completed the course. 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.

Aligning assessments & instruction

At this stage it is important to consider a wide range of assessment methods in order to ensure that students are being assess over the goals the instructor wants students to attain. Sometimes, the assessments do not match the learning goals, and it becomes a frustrating experience for students and instructors. Use the list below to help brainstorm assessment methods for the learning goals of the course. The incorporation of backward design also lends itself to transparent and explicit instruction. If the teacher has explicitly defined the learning goals of the course, then they have a better idea of what they want the students to get out of learning activities. Furthermore, if done thoroughly, it eliminates the possibility of doing certain activities and tasks for the sake of doing them.

Discover more from World Language Classroom

You study standards, learning objectives, or profit margins, then create your lessons and learning materials based on those goals. The backward design approach to curriculum planning enables educators to provide goal-centered instruction. With learning objectives centered, students can appreciate the relevance of the instructional content. The backward design approach for curriculum development applies to individual lesson plans through the backward mapping approach. Traditionally, instructors have applied a forward or content-centered approach to designing lessons, modules, or courses. This approach typically ends with crafting learning objectives to connect the content learned to the assessments.

Related Teaching Topics

When creating your own lesson plans, please refer to your state’s or school’s specific academic standards. Traditional language teaching has often focused on learning and producing language structures and vocabulary through practice-type activities. Do these assessments measure your students skills and content knowledge or just recall and reading comprehension?

As teachers, we are left scratching our heads, wondering how in the world students’ substantial content knowledge flitted out of their brains when the bell rang. Or worse, we confidently send students on to another class or grade, sure in their knowledge of our subject only to find out they seem to have forgotten everything we taught them. There is no prescribed minimum or maximum desired results for any unit. Just be aware that you will need to infuse each and every one of them into various lessons throughout the unit. So if you only have a week to run through World War I don’t attempt to include too many skills; you’re setting yourself and the students up for failure.

Stage 1: Desired Results

Unlike backward design, traditional planning begins with the educator who selects a series of learning tasks and then evaluates the resulting learning. This is problematic because learning may be limited to memorizing vocabulary or grammatical structures with little focus on developing language proficiency or using language to explore engaging content. Just like any plan, your initial Backward Design framework may require adjustments. Formative assessment expert Paul Black advocates for continuous improvement through the feedback loop, which involves tweaking the lesson plans based on student performance and other data. Teachers like Carol Ann Tomlinson, known for her work on differentiated instruction, have noted that when students understand what they're working towards, they are often more engaged and motivated. Backward Design’s focus on clear objectives and transparent assessments lets students know what's expected of them, which can enhance their motivation to succeed.

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Your answer to this question should provide you with more specific (and measurable ILOs. The traditional approach to education planning, sometimes called "Forward Design," usually starts with content and activities. Teachers first decide what to teach (content), then how to teach it (methods and activities), and finally, how to evaluate learning (assessment).

The Three Steps of Backward Design Are:

For your most important learning outcomes, you may need to develop multiple opportunities to measure students' progress over the duration of the course. This will also give students the chance to practice and apply skills in a variety of contexts, incorporate feedback, and get the practice they need to meet upcoming challenges in the course. For these same reasons, your assessment methods will ideally incorporate various degrees of difficulty or skill integration over the semester. When you create your course learning goals, you describe how you want students to change internally as a result of taking your course. Learning goals broadly state what students should know or care about by the end of a course or curriculum. Set aside specific content—remember, that comes toward the end of the backward design process—and think about the big-picture, lasting impact you want your course to have on students.

For example, even the simple act of having place value strips available to students (even if every student didn’t need them), could have made a big difference in this lesson. 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.

For example, if I’m planning a curriculum for losing weight by cutting out sugar, my first step would be to plan out the course curriculum by listing out all the topics related to the subject matter. Then the next step is to bring in the various lessons that fit the topic so that I’m breaking down the topic into sub-topics. Finally, the last step is to develop assignments and or quizzes to evaluate student’s grasp of the material. The challenge with this approach is that traditional design overlooks and neglects the course outcomes and how a student might achieve them resulting in lackluster results and engagement. The following examples are simply suggestions for what creating backward design lesson plans might look like.

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. If you're an Ohio State educator looking for more support with course design, there are a number of resources at your disposal. In addition to browsing our growing repository of teaching topics, we encourage you to explore the following professional development activities.

As such, students must have multiple opportunities to practice and apply the specific knowledge and skills they need to perform well on assignments and be successful in your course. Reflect on your assessments of student learning from Step 3 to determine the teaching methods and learning activities that will best support students to succeed. As you backward design your course, you should be planning with all students in mind. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for focusing curriculum and course design around the diverse needs of learners. Backward design and UDL are complementary frameworks for course planning, as each are centered on student learning and purposeful, proactive course design. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced backward design in their book Understanding by Design.