Chapter 3: Gaining Clarity on Our Goals

In this chapter we dived into on how learning targets are not all created equal. In fact, many times teachers are given more learning targets than they can thoroughly teach in a school year. Normally teachers have to pick and choose which targets are the ones their students need the most. This chapter discussed how teachers can figure out which targets to keep and which to not teach, or unpacking standards. With their current learning objectives teachers can create essential questions to help facilitate general inquiry. Also, teachers can look at multiple similar objectives to pick out the skills they should focus on. After they have the skills, they can pick out the big ideas are the core of the subject. I like to think of them like the theme or topic of the unit. It is important the big ideas help make students aware of what they learned before, and also help them to make unfamiliar new ideas more familiar. Finally, teachers can use the skills and Big Idea to make the core task. The core task should be authentic and as real world like as possible to make it appealing and practice that will help students in the future.

Right now, I have been struggling with picking out what parts of my curriculum are more important than other parts, or what my students need for their future. I think this is because I am new to the curriculum this year. The school created the objectives we have to use, and over this year I have been, little by little, getting better at picking out the Big Ideas, skills, and creating tasks. I used to find it extremely difficult to find the big ideas because the objectives are very ambiguous, but I’ve been working to focus on only finding the Big Idea and skills the students will need for the future.  

Chapter 2: Understanding Understanding

In this chapter we investigate more about the concept of knowledge. According to the text understanding is more than simply being able to repeat facts to answer questions. It is actually the ability to transfer the knowledge that is learned to other situations. Transfer in this sense means to be able to apply knowledge into more than one context. Students should also be able to explain why they use this knowledge to solve a problem or do something else. To effectively have students understand teachers need to ask themselves two questions when lesson planning: 1.  What should students come away understanding? and  2. What will count as evidence of that understanding? The first question helps the teacher form their objective and the second is the assessment that is used to measure understanding of the objective. 

With understanding there are also misunderstandings. These are instances when students apply knowledge learned to a wrong context. It is important that teachers can see these because they can reflect on what happened and figure out why this misunderstanding occurred. They can also use this reflection to help guide the student to the correct way to transfer knowledge.

In my classroom I try to promote this idea of knowledge in the classroom. It is hard though because I have specific content I need to cover for the year. Sometimes, instead of promoting the teaching of knowledge I just teach facts of English to my students. I forget to give them opportunities to practice using their knowledge in other situations. I am now more aware of how I should be designing my lessons to teach knowledge and give opportunities to students to use it. I believe this is the first step in the right direction to solve the traditional teaching problem I can get sucked into.  

Under Standing Backwards Design: Introduction and Chapter 1

After reading the Introduction and Chapters 1 I think that the first concept a teacher needs to know is understanding, which is a person’s ability to connect and apply different knowledges and skills together in a real life situation. Then a teacher needs to know that knowledge and skills do not always lead to understanding. The three steps to backwards design are identifying desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning experiences and instruction. To effectively ensure students’ understandings grow teachers need to have a clear cut objective set on where the students will end up at the end of the unit. After this is understood the teacher needs to decide which assessments are going to show this growth through the unit and provide the concrete evidence of students’ understanding.  It is important to create opportunities to give feedback to students about their growth with these assessments. Finally, the teacher can start to piece together knowledge and skills that they need to provide to the students so they can properly perform the final desired results.

 In my experiences at my school I attempt to do backwards design when planning curriculum. When I start planning a lesson I have my objective and desired results set. After, I start planning an assessment that shows the students know how to perform the objectives of the whole unit. However, here I struggle with creating assessments for throughout the unit that show this growth. I normally only have a few random assessments set because of administration purposes. After I have the final assessment done, I go through and plan lessons that provide my students with the knowledge and skills to accomplish the final goals of the unit. I also need to work on provided my students with feedback; I am not the most efficient teacher when it comes to providing proper feedback.  I hope after taking this course I can successfully and completely apply Backwards Design to my units.