The teachers need to establish specific understandings and they must think of how can they achieve those understandings. The hands on activities should not be minds on that is it should be designed with specific goal in mind and the purpose should not be just fun. Coverage crisis is the other problem that teachers face when it comes to understanding by design as this stops the teachers from designing teaching for understanding. The teachers need to know what is the big idea? Design should provide clear purpose and explicit performance goals. What are they doing? Why are they being asked to do it? What will it help you do? How does it fit with what you have previously done? How will you show that you have learned it?
Three steps need to be considered by teachers to teach understanding by design: Identify desired steps (Teachers need to be clear about what they want to cover and how); Determine acceptable evidence (How will the teacher know that students have learned it?) ; Plan learning experience and instruction (What skills will students need? How will instruction be planned? Teaching is a means to reach the desired end result). Start with what evidence will the students show to show that they have learned what the teacher taught. Activity based must be result based.
1 comment:
Your posting does have some essential questions which would help guide instruction toward a big idea.
How did you relate to the "backward" design? I remember when I first learned about the framework in a class it really turned my thinking upside down. I think I had been too activity-oriented and had not asked myself enough of the tough questions that you need to in a backward design.
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