Understanding by Design

Many times, as teachers, we focus on creating our scope and sequences based on what we want to teach the students with little regards to the final outcome of all the lessons. After listening to Grant Wiggins in Understanding by Design, I understood why it is so important to plan with the end result in mind. In other words, we should always ask ourselves: "what is it that I want my students to be able to do once I have taught this unit?" Once we have responded this question, then we are able to start planning our lessons-to target the final outcome. 

For example, when I want to teach my students about geography I first ask what I want the end result to be which in this case is for them to analyze how geography affects settlement. They will be able to demonstrate this by creating a brochure that can attract tourists to this area. They need to explain how Utah's geography will be beneficial or detrimental to those who move. But for my students to have sufficient knowledge to be able to create a brochure, I will need to teach them what geography is, what landforms are, the kinds of land regions we have among other vital information about our state. 

Being able to plan the performance assessment I just described before I teach the unit, helps me to choose technological applications and devices appropriately. Instead of having to think on the spot how to enrich the lessons with technology, I can think ahead and check the different websites and applications I would implement to ensure that they work and that the students will be able to learn most effectively from. 

Furthermore, "unwrapping" standards and objectives for our content area impacts decisions about assessment. Choosing the assessment and technology first is extremely helpful in planning a curriculum. There are so many standards and objectives that are not as vital as others for students to know. We need to examine each one and decide what is most important for the students to know. We also need to look at the verbs used in each. In Utah Studies, all six standards use the verb "understand." This word is rather vague as it is not something the students can demonstrate a skill with. Therefore, we as educators, need to use Bloom's Taxonomy Level list and implement the appropriate verbs so that students may be able to do what they learn. At the same time, they will develop higher order thinking skills which are vital to survival in their lives as they will almost always have to critically think to solve everyday problems. 

Students know they are capable of learning and expanding their knowledge through more than just memorization and regurgitation. This is why we need to challenge them as they learn; to do so we must analyze our course's standards, choose the appropriate verbs to teach with, create an assessment with the end in mind and then create a scope and sequence.