Understanding by Design NESD Model for Curriculum Implementation

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Understanding by DesignNESD Model for Curriculum
Implementation

• Presented by DI Team
• March, 2009

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What is Understanding by Design (UbD)?

• Unit-planning process
• Created by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
• Known as backwards design
• Begins with the end in mind
• Beginning stages of UbD

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Basic Stages of UbD

• Stage 1Identify desired results
• Curriculum Goals and Learner Outcomes
• Big Ideas
• Essential Questions/ Enduring Understandings
• Know/ Understand/ Do
• Stage 2 Determine acceptable evidence
• Formative/Summative Assessments
• Stage 3 Plan learning experiences and
  instruction
• Developing the Learning Plan
• Consider how to differentiate

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• Stages of Backward Design

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Curriculum Actualization

• UbD requires teachers to examine curriculum to
  align the learning plan/assessment with
  provincial expectations
• UbD leads students and teachers to higher level
  of thinking and inquiry
• Links assessment directly to learning outcomes

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• Establishing Curricular Priorities

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Meeting the Learner Needs

• Invites us to attend to the child
• Allows for scaffolding for students
• Clarifies outcomes that all children are expected
  to learn
• Clarifies what students need to understand, know,
  do

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The How-tos of UbD

• Categories within the process are most important
• Many entry points
• UbD takes time to do well
• Units are often revised as teachers reflect on
  effectiveness
• Process may guided by organizer use

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Big Ideas

• Invite higher levels of thinking
• Requires uncovering throughout the unit
• Transfers across grades or subject areas
• A big idea is a way of usefully seeing
  connections, not just another piece of
  knowledge..it is more like a theme than the
  facts of a story. (Grant Wiggins, 2007)

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Essential Questions/Enduring Understandings

• Stimulates thought, provokes inquiry, and
  generates questions
• Interdisciplinary invites you to transfer and
  apply learning
• Links to curriculum

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• They require new thought rather than the mere
  collection of facts, second-hand opinions, or
  cut-and-paste thinkingmany of us believe that
  schools should devote more time to essential
  questions and less time to Trivial Pursuit.
  (Jamie McKenzie, 2008)