Educational Psychology / Unit 10 EDP 0905 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Backward Design
The idea
Backward design, from Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design, plans a unit in three stages. Stage one identifies desired results, sorting content into what is worth being familiar with, what is important to know and do, and the enduring understandings at the center. Stage two determines acceptable evidence: how students will show they have reached those results, decided before any activity is planned. Stage three plans the learning experiences that will lead students there.
In practice
Worked example: a unit on ecosystems names an enduring understanding, that living things depend on one another. The evidence is a project in which students predict what happens to a pond when one species disappears. Only then does the teacher choose activities: a field trip, food-web diagrams and a simulation.
Where people slip
Forward design starts with favorite activities and hopes they add up, which risks activities done for their own sake. Designing the assessment before the activities keeps every activity aimed at the results, and it carries forward to the alignment of assessment in unit twelve.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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