Planning for Instruction (UbD Unit)

Standard #7: Planning for Instruction The teacher plans instruction that supports every

student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas,

curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the

community context.

Standard #8 – Instructional Strategies The teacher demonstrates their use of a variety of

instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content

areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.

One of the things I most enjoy about being a teacher is thinking of all the neat,

creative lessons and activities I can do with the students. It is rewarding when I think of

new idea that I believe the kids will just love doing. However, it is necessary for me to be

constantly checking in with the overall goal of education- their learning. What is it that I

really want them to be able to know, understand, and do? These are the concepts that

Wiggins and McTighe (2005) address with their backwards design for lessons and units:

Stage 1- identify desired results, Stage 2- determine acceptable evidence, and Stage 3- plan

learning experiences and instruction. I created this unit using the backwards design

method; the title of the unit is “Community Involvement”.

To start, I looked at the desired results of the unit; the big idea of the unit was that

students have the responsibility to contribute to their community’s well-being. I hoped

that after this unit students had a better understanding of different ways they fit into their

society and ways they could actively contribute to that society. The end goal is for students

to have understanding of the big idea, not simply knowledge; as Wiggins and Tighe (2005)
state, “Understanding is the result of facts acquiring meaning the learner” (p. 37). Dewey

(1933) said:

To grasp meaning of a thing, an event, or a situation is to see it in its relations to

other things: to see how it operates or functions, what consequences follow from it,

what causes it, what uses it can be put to. In contrast, what we have called the brute

thing, the thing without meaning to us, is something whose relations are not

grasped. (p. 137)

At the end of the unit students would be able to describe how volunteer opportunities

contribute to well-being of a society, explain how various jobs in our community benefit

our society, and understand that even though they are young they can still be positively

involved in government. The lasting result would be students who are more community-

minded, rather than more individually-minded.

The next stage dealt with how I would assess that the students had learned the

learning targets of the unit. One example of an assessment is a quiz in which the students

identify a picture of someone who contributed to their society and write two sentences

about what that person did. People in this quiz included Martin Luther King Jr., Elizabeth

Peratrovich, and Malala Yousafzai. This stage also included culminating performance tasks

that involved students volunteering for 4 hours somewhere of their choice and

interviewing an Alaska State Legislator. Einstein (1954) said that “the most important

method of education . . . always has consisted of that in which the pupil was urged to actual

performance” (p. 60). It is important to have rubrics for culminating performance tasks

and other assessments that do not have a simple right or wrong answer. These rubrics

specify what a teacher should look for to see if objectives were met and create grading that
is fair and consistent (Wiggins, 1998, 91-99). As part of my unit there are rubrics for

grading the volunteer work culminating performance task and the Alaska legislator

interview culminating performance task.

The final stage, Stage 3, involved me creating five lessons to teach to the class. Titles

of these lessons include “Children can be involved in government too” and “People who

made a difference in their community”. This latter lesson is when students learn about

people who made a difference in their community, some of whom the students may have

not heard of before, like Malala Yousafzai. The focus of these lessons is the big idea from

Stage 1; more important than the style of the lesson or how much I like it, is whether the

lesson is accomplishing learning of the big idea. Mursell (1946) said:

Successful teaching is teaching that brings about effective learning. The decisive

question is not what methods or procedures are employed, and whether they are

old-fashioned or modern, time-tested or experimental, conventional or progressive.

All such considerations may be important but none of them is ultimate, for they

have to do with means, not ends. The ultimate criterion for success in teaching is-

results! (p. 1)

So many educators and lay persons have opinions about how to do education, but Mursell

hit on the main concern, which is effective learning.

Wiggins and McTighe (2005) provide a mindset of preparing units and lessons that

enhance student learning by asking what students should know, understand, and do first. It

is a philosophy more than a specific method, as Wiggins and McTighe (2005) state:

Understanding by Design is not a prescriptive program. It is a way of thinking

more purposefully and carefully about the nature of any design that has
 understanding as the goal. Rather than offering a step-by-step guide to follow . . .

the book provides a conceptual framework. (p. 7)

I see myself using this way of thinking throughout my teaching career. Even when I do not

make a formal unit such as this one, referring to the backwards design style will make my

teaching more effective and student learning greatest.

 References

Dewey, J. (1993). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the

educative process. Henry Holt.

Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and Opinions. Crown Publishers.

Mursell, J. L. (1946). Successful teaching: Its psychological principles. McGraw-Hill.

Wiggens, G. (1998). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve

performance. Jossey-Bass.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Association for

Supervisors and Curriculum Development.