UBD Meeting Wednesday October 24, 2012

The Big Idea - Learning experiences should be designed from the onset with a meaningful appreciation of the end-goals in mind. We start by looking at our desired learning outcomes, and we design every aspect of the school experience from that goal. We are teaching for big understanding. What is most important is what our students take into their adult years - the 30 year learning that takes place. In this light, factual recall is far less important that conceptual and skill-based understanding.

Levels of Depth:
A - Biggest Picture The story of Lit. as a subject of study Why do we study lit/writing/speaking? How can this be much more explicit to the students? What learning outcome do we want? Thoughtful critical, engaged, effective thinkers who read, write, listen, and speak with understanding and conviction. B - Next Biggest Picture The arch of high school English as it fits in to that bigger goal: 9 The intersection of culture/history/lit. Intro to the art of lit. Understanding the structures of arguments. Lit as part of humanities, as part of the story of civilization. 10 How to write well. How to read well. Connecting back to the intentions of an English class. Maybe this is the place where we cover the ideas of archetypes, monomyth, etc.? It continues the arch of the 9th grade year quite well. It seems that 9 & 10 are sort of global in emphasis, whereas 11 & 12 are more about the individuals place in a given society Is that an over-generalization? 11 How to write well. How to read well. Connecting back to the intentions of an English class. Maybe the theme of 11th grade gets combined with the theme of 12th grade, since many of these classes are mixed? 12 Speaking well. Transitioning to college writing. Finding our place in the world. Seeing English skills as part of a larger intellectual discourse. The individual and society. C - Next Next Biggest Picture

Looking at our ESLRs/Standards/Questions/Understandings and building unit plans around them to support the two previous levels of depth. We unpack the content for our units. Segregate need to know, nice to know, and essential understandings. Get a very accurate understanding of the unit calendar before you ever talk about resources and literature.

D - Next Next Next Biggest Picture Design appropriate summative assessments that measure achievement against the standards/benchmarks/ESLRs/Questions/Understandings. Agree on how these assessments will be moderated. The idea is that they should somehow show a meaningful integration and transference of knowledge and skills.

Finally We get to pick formative assessments, books, and materials that work towards each of the previous goals. We can design activities and experiences with all of the previous levels of depth in mind. Design for understanding! There is much more detail to be had in the UbD model. The WHERE acronym, for example, is very helpful in unit planning. W - Do the activities explain by themselves where are your students heading and why? HDo the activities hook your students through engaging, thought provoking experiences? EDo the activities help students experience the ideas or issues to make them real? RDo the activities cause students to reflect and rethink- to dig deeper into the core idea? EDo the activities allow for students to exhibit their understanding through a product or performance?