UbDDI+B2+Chapter+3

Synthesis - Grady

 * Abstract**

The third chapter of this book dealt primarily with issues regarding content in today’s schools. Specifically, this chapter discusses the benefits and pitfalls of working with [|content standards], recognizing that some standards can be too vague and others too specific. It is suggested that teachers break all standards down into “big ideas,” and then into “essential questions,” which aim to refine any standard into key concepts. This chapter also details the importance of working backwards in planning a curriculum, so that lesson plans and assessment relate directly to learning goals. It is suggested that teachers use resources that model UbD and DI units and lesson plans. The distinction is also drawn between //how// and //what// we are teaching, meaning that it should be the goal to teach every student the core concepts included in the standard, while the methods in which we teach our students these concepts may differ. The chapter concludes with some tips on unpacking content standards, explaining that by looking at the verbs in the language of a standard (apply, analyze, know, identify, etc.), one can get a better idea of how to turn that standard into a unit.


 * Synthesis Reflection**

Judging from the responses given by the class, it seems that a majority of us focused mostly on the concept of working backwards, and how this idea can really help us to create quality lesson plans. Additionally, many of us commented on our initial apprehension in dealing with state or national standards, stemming from personal experiences as students in public classrooms. However, most of us seemed optimistic that by using [|strategies] such as working backwards, we could create effective and dynamic units.

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Tiarra
In this chapter of UbD/DI, we take a look at the challenges teachers face in effectively delivering meaningful content to their students. State issued Learning Standards are frequently too vague or too specific about what they want the student population to learn and it is the teacher’s job to decode those standards in order to create clear goals for their students. Discovering the essential questions or “big ideas” of a curriculum is the first step of the backwards design method of teaching. By knowing what you want your students to take away from the specified content it becomes easier to determine what you will consider acceptable evidence of said learning and how to instruct such learning experiences. This not only gives students a clear idea of what they are aiming for but it allows you as a teacher to ensure that there will be actual, deep, long-term learning taking place. The chapter also addresses the two major ‘sins’ of teaching and how backward design helps you to avoid such problems. Without a clear goal a teacher may provide the class with a fun, activity-oriented lesson; however such lessons although pleasant may be lacking substance. Also, Learning Standards may pressure teachers to rush through curriculum because they feel that they need to cover more area than they have time to do, and therefore sacrifice deep student understanding. ===

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Grace K.
In chapter 3, Tomlinson and McTighe outline the reasons behind content standards and how standards, rather than being something teachers look at as inhibiting, can actually be used as tools for designing effective units. The authors also go into detail explaining how a backwards design model can be easily adapted to address content standards. By starting with the content standard and using it to establish “big ideas” and essential questions that students need to be able to know and answer, teachers can create more meaningful units while efficiently addressing content standards. I really enjoyed this chapter, because content standards have always been intimidating to me. I worry about how to address them, but still make a unit interesting, and still give my students the skills and knowledge they need to do well on assessments (both mine and standardized tests). The backwards design model offered a concrete plan to address standards and still teach meaningfully. The suggestion to “unpack the nouns and verbs” from a standard in order to make sense of it was enlightening. The authors state that nouns in a standard would probably point to “big ideas” while verbs are indicative of possible assessments (Tomlinson & McTighe 32). This is definitely an approach that makes content standards less intimidating.

Justin C.
This chapter talks about how we, as teachers, can fit content in to the “big ideas” that we want students to be able to understand. It talks about how we can plan backwards, starting from those big ideas and work to ways in which we can achieve those big ideas. We then have to figure out ways in which we can teach the content so that our students are able to answer some essential questions based on the goals set for the class. Taking a math perspective into planning backwards, I feel it would be easiest to take a complex problem, one that would take many steps to complete, and take each part separately, and teach them that way. I would make sure that students are able to understand what exactly each piece is doing, and then introduce the big idea, which would entail that students put all of their prior skills into solving the new problem.

Jen R.
Throughout chapter three, the idea of condensing content material into efficient and understandable units for the students and this theory proves to be just as if not more productive than following content standards. Chapter three also introduces the backward design technique, a common strategy used by many teachers today. The backward design suggest that when creating a lesson plan, a teacher should consider what the students are interested in learning and what will be most intriguing and beneficial to them, not what they will be assessed and tested on. Although standardized testing and assessments throughout grade school do prove to serve a significant impact in a student’s education, they should not solely shape a classrooms structure and/or curriculum. As mentioned in previous chapters, it is crucial for the teacher of a classroom to focus on the involvement and benefits of each individual student among the class and if a teacher were to create a structured class based on assessments, this would be a narrow gauge spectrum for teaching. Many students educational potential is cut short by standardized test and assessment, and this is something I would like to focus on avoiding in my classroom.

Chris D.
Chapter 3 of Differentiated Instruction + Understanding by Design talks about creating a curriculum that covers the essential standards and benchmarks already set for teachers. As a future math teacher, I have a finite set of ideas that I can teach my students based on grade level, but those ideas have a vast number of methods and skills that I will need to decide what is important for them to learn. In order to create an effective curriculum for my subject, I would create a backwards design model. In this model, I would plan my entire class by deciding the key ideas, or in the case of math, problem solving skills that I want my students to learn. After deciding what those skills are, I would then need to figure out a method of assessing their knowledge of these skills in an appropriate manner (e.g. quizzes and tests). The last thing that I will have to do in following the backwards design model would be to find resources and create my lessons so that they would revolve around the skills that I am teaching my students. Although the textbook is a good resource for information, it won’t be something that I will be using as my only method of instruction. I know right now without any experience that if all I did was do example problems right out of the book, I would lose a great deal of interest in my students and the goals that I have set for them won’t be reached.

Jonathan B.
This chapter is about selecting and working with the vast amount of content available to a teacher. More specifically, the chapter deals with integrating content as specified by standards. As always, the expected results of the lesson should be clearly identified. This is essential regarding content, as you want to pinpoint student understanding. Assignments and evaluations should focus on “big ideas” and essential questions. Without clearly defined goals, content is being used ineffectively. I found this chapter to be particularly useful, considering the fact that I am about to begin the construction of a unit in Geography. As a Social Studies teacher, I will be sure to set clearly defined objectives for each unit so that students can find their way to understanding amongst the huge amount of content.

Danny K.
Chapter three covers how content standards can be used as tools for developing units. An important part of the chapter is the backwards design model. The backwards design model can be used to address content standards. I found this chapter really interesting and helpful because I have never planned a unit before. In my teaching I will look to use the backwards design model. With using the backwards design model I will be able to teach a unit so students will be able to grasp the big ideas and will be able to answer the essential questions for that unit.

Kaitlin T.
The idea of content “overload” is not unfamiliar to me. Students often hear their teachers mention how they’re hardly going to have enough time to cover everything. And often times, the end of the school year becomes a mad rush to cover the miscellaneous topics. Tomlinson discusses some of the potential “solutions” in chapter three of her book: “National subject area associations, states, and provinces in North American have establish content standard to specify what student should know...Despite all goos intentions and many positive effects, that standards movement has not solve the ‘overload’ problem...The standards may have exacerbated it,” (24). The statistics researchers uncovered gave me a mild panic attack: “If 30 minutes if instructional time were allocated to each identified benchmark, an additional 15,465 hours (...nine more years of school) would be required for students to learn them all,” (25). I’m starting to realize that the “crunch time” at the end of the school years must be some of the most stressful times for educators, especially since students have most likely checked-out from their school work and studies come late May, early June. Tomlinson believes using backward design will lead to more precise results and a clearer way to obtain those results. Interestingly enough, textbooks should be used as a resource, but not as a means of lesson planning. As Tomlinson states, “It [a textbook] should not constitute the syllabus.

Tyler
Standardized tests and curriculum make teaching harder. Far too many goals are crammed into not enough time and often enough, the goals are far too specific, and in truth do little in educating a student. Teachers also need to stop teaching to meet set requirements, or simply going through the book chapter by chapter. I have had teachers who taught that way, and if you asked a question that wasn’t answered in the book, there were times when they had no idea what the answer was. I think first and foremost, a teacher really needs to know what it is they are teaching. If they don’t really know, then the students aren’t going to completely understand either.

Grady B.
In reading this chapter, I feel that I am much more confidant in my ability to take an incredibly vague content standard and “unpack” it in a way that will allow me to structure an applicable unit around it. The examples that were provided for creating “essential questions” out of standards (pg. 26), gave me a much clearer picture of how to take a standard that seems particularly unwieldy into something much more manageable. Additionally, after looking at the way in which one goes about planning a curriculum backwards, I see why it makes more sense than the “traditional” method, which can leave out either dynamic lessons or a clear endpoint. After reading examples of what not to do in lesson planning on page 28, I immediately was able to think of courses in my own life that had suffered from either of the “sins.” Especially as a high school student, it seemed that virtually every class was focused on making through the textbook above all else. I also gained insight from the statement on page 35 that even when employing DI, students must be judged by the same criteria, regardless of the type of work that they do. As I had been learning more about these methods, that point had been a question of mine: how to differentiate instruction without taking away equality in grading. This method surely accounts for that concern. ===

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Dan B.
The thing that I thought was the most important in this chapter had to deal with backward planning. In backward planning the teacher thinks about the the goals that they want the student to achieve, and what they want the student to take out of the lesson. The teacher also has to think about how they want to assess the student, and finally they have to think about how they teach the material so that all students will be able to take something out of the course. I had never really thought about lesson planning and teaching before, and thought that maybe you could just get in front of a class and wing it to achieve the desired results, I now know that this is not possible. You need to plan multiple ways to get a point across, because if you do not have more than one and the students do not understand the way you are teaching it then you will not be able to teach those students effectively. If you have multiple ways to teach a lesson it enable you to be able to teach all students effectively which as a teacher is your goal.

Will L.
In this chapter, it spoke of the problems with the implied standards of education. These standards are also enforced by the application of textbooks in the classroom, as they create and unofficial template on how a certain class should be taught. It is through this confusion that some teachers find more confusion in how some things should be taught differently. Later in the chapter, the concept of planning backwards was introduced. While forming a lesson plan, a teacher starts with the “desired results” first, then literally working backwards from there. This includes primarily working with the official state regulated standards and working backwards in order to achieve the full learning experience for students.