UbD Peer Training

1
UbD Peer Training

• October 10, 2008
• Hilary Evans
• Laura Hilton
• Bev Moshier
• Kristie Schmidt
• Sara Wasley

2
The big ideas of UbD
UbD big idea Why important? If not
Backward Design
Plans need to be well aligned to be effective
Aimless activity coverage
Understanding Transfer
It is the essence of understanding and the
point of schooling
Students fail to apply, poor results on tests
Understanding via big ideas
thats how transfer happens, makes learning more
connected
Learning is fragmented, more difficult, less
engaging
3
2 key understandings

• You must design backward from understanding if
  you want to achieve understanding by design
• Without transparent and important priorities -
  stated as performance, not content - neither
  teacher nor student can be effective nor can
  they make wise decisions when inevitable
  adjustments have to be made.

4
Goodlads Research

• "What do students perceive themselves to be
  learning? We asked them to write down the most
  important thing learned in school
  subjects...Most commonly students listed a fact
  or topic...
• Noticeably absent were responses implying the
  realization of having acquired some intellectual
  power

5
Learning vs. teaching

• Teaching does not cause learning. Successful
  attempts by the learner to learn and use what
  they have learned to achieve a goal causes
  learning.

6
3 useful Qs to ask in class as kids work

• What are you doing?
• Why are we doing it?
• What will it help us be able to understand/do
  (that matters)?

7
3 different but inter-connected learning aims

• All effective units of study balance these three
  goals
• Acquisition of knowledge and skill
• Ability to make meaning from challenging/puzzling
  facts, texts, and situations
• Transfer of prior learning to new situations

8
Forms of learning

• You acquire facts you figure out what they mean
  you transfer your prior learning to new
  challenges
• You acquire a skill you figure out a good
  strategy you apply all your skills to a new
  task, in context

9
Backward Design

• I want them to learn____content__________ so
  that, in the long run, they will be able, on
  their own to __________a long-term desired
  accomplishment, involving important transfer or
  extension of learning

10
Transfer defined and justified

• What is transfer of learning?
• Transfer of learning is the use of knowledge
  and skills (acquired in an earlier context) in a
  new context. It occurs when a persons learning
  in one situation influences that persons
  learning and performance in other situations.
• When transfer of learning occurs, it is in the
  form of meanings, expectations, generalizations,
  concepts, or insights that are developed in one
  learning situation being employed in others
• Bigge Shermis, 1992.

11
How people learn

• A major goal of schooling is to prepare students
  for flexible adaptation to new problems and
  settings. The ability of students to transfer
  provides an important index of learning that can
  help teachers evaluate and improve their
  instruction.
• Students develop flexible understanding of when,
  where, why, and how to use their knowledge to
  solve new problems if they learn how to extract
  underlying principles and themes from their
  learning exercises.
• - How People Learn, Natl Academy of Sciences

12
The Transfer Question

• What should the student be able to do effectively
  with a repertoire of knowledge and skill,
  increasingly on their own, in future tasks at the
  heart of true expertise?
• How, then, will transfer ability be developed
  over the course of the course?

13
examplegetting your drivers license
14
The transfer goal we are designing backward from

• STAGE 1 Passing the driving test, I.e. you are
  now modestly competent at driving on your own in
  real-world conditions, handling key challenges
  likely to confront you as a driver.

15
Transfer over time increased

• Autonomy the student is less and less reliant on
  teacher-provided scaffolding
• Repertoire the challenge demands greater control
  over a bigger repertoire
• Task difficulty the required tasks become more
  and more realistically messy, noisy, complex -
  in contexts

16
Autonomy gradual release of responsibility as
in reading

• I do, you watch
• I do, you help
• You do, I help
• You do, I watch

17
Note how this goal changes our view of time use!

• What will we do to achieve the performance goal -
  given the very limited time we have?
• We do NOT say sorry, no time for
  performance-based learning and assessment - there
  is too much information to cover!
• Nor do we make this mistake in the arts,
  athletics, writing, speaking a language

18
What follows for long-term planning?

• Make clear the goal is autonomous performance in
  context
• Students need many formative assessment
  experiences where they must
• increasingly self-prompt,
• with fewer and fewer teacher prompts, cues,
  scaffolds, graphic organizers

19
Repertoire use

• The focus is thus on strategy can the student
  wisely choose from all available knowledge and
  skill?
• Developing and assessing strategic use of
  repertoire requires complex tasks - I.e. tasks
  with student decision-making about various
  possible approaches solution paths
• Research shows that transfer is especially
  difficult when a subject is taught only in a
  single context.
• How People Learn, Chapter 3

20
Transfer the real game of using content on
your own

• Applying prior learning to -
• a novel and increasingly new and
  unfamiliar-looking task
• An increasingly challenging context situation
  (in terms of purpose, audience, dilemmas, noise
  etc.)

21
We often confuse the drills with the game

• Drills - test items
• Short-term objective
• Out of context
• Discrete, isolated element
• set up and prompted for initial simplified
  learning
• Doesnt transfer to new situations on its own

• The game - real task
• The point of the drills
• In context, with all its messiness and interest
  value
• Requires a repertoire, used wisely
• Not prompted you judge what to do, when

22
We often confuse an exercise with a problem

• Exercise
• Familiar look
• Reinforce your learning
• Approach should be obvious
• 1 or 2 steps, using only a targeted skill
• plug and chug

• Problem
• Non-routine look
• Challenge your learning
• Not clear how to proceed - or even what the right
  way to frame the problem is
• Requires drawing wisely upon a repertoire
• Creative and careful thought required to clarify
  frame the problem, check your approach for
  efficiency effectiveness

23
So, what follows for the textbooks?

• The textbook CANNOT be the syllabus
• It is a limited resource
• It almost never focuses on transfer rather it
  provides mostly logically organized content and
  drills only

24
So? What follows for local assessment?

• If that is the goal, then local assessments must
  regularly find out if
• This is the essence of Backward Design
• Marching through the indicators in isolation will
  not meet these standards, nor prepare students
  for the transfer demanded. You are confusing
  indicator with the goal.

25
Irony thats what the difficult problems on
state, AP, IB exams are - TRANSFER problems

• Unfamiliar reading passages and writing prompts
• Unfamiliar-looking versions of math and science
  problems
• No obvious prompts or clues as to which
  content applies (since there is no teacher or
  textbook heads-up available as to what this is
  about)

26
A big idea, framed as an Essential Question

• Provides a clear priority for teaching and
  learning of content
• Makes clear that the goal is inquiry not passive
  learning of knowledge
• Enhances transfer by making clear the kinds of
  connections sought to other content studied

27
Transfer based on big ideas permits future
learning

• The first object of any act of learning, over
  and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it
  should serve us in the future.... In essence, it
  consists in learning initially not a skill but a
  general idea which can then be used as a basis
  for recognizing subsequent problems.... This type
  of transfer is at the heart of the educational
  process-the continual broadening and deepening of
  knowledge in terms of...ideas.
• Bruner, Process of Education p. 17

28
A big idea is a working theory, schema or
theme

• Think of -
• the detective - and historian or mathematician -
  sifting clues to find the best-fit story of the
  facts
• The big idea in Watergate, as recounted in All
  the Presidents Men Follow the Money
• Harvard TfU refers to this as the throughline
  we would say the overarching understanding

29
Big ideas 4 examples of useful year-long
theories

• History is written by the winners
• The key to solving problems is to make the
  unfamiliar complex familiar and manageable.
• Re-grouping, factoring and converting - these are
  all ways of making hard problems simpler, using
  another big idea - equivalence
• You need to converse with and Question the
  text and its author, to understand - even if the
  author is not physically present!
• Success in ball games depends upon making
  unpredictable or confusing moves

30
No big ideas in skill areas? Not so...

• equivalence is key to problem solving in math
• does it work for this audience and purpose? in
  writing
• create space and uncertainty in your opponent
  in sports

31
Toward Valid Curriculum Focus on Priority
outcomes
32
So, how can UbD help?
33
by design it addresses the problems

• Unprioritized coverage state standards
• Aimless activities
• No focus on transfer
• Drill vs. game focus
• Teaching the textbook instead of focus on
  learning goals

34
How?

• Template of questions to change habits
• Design tools and resources to re-focus planning
• Powerful strategies to prioritize content around
  big ideas and important tasks, to make learning
  more engaged, focused, and long-lasting

35
KEY 3 Stages of (Backward) Design
Then, and only then
36
What we typically (incorrectly) do
37
UBD Template
Stage 1 - Desired Results
Long-term goals

• The Template
• Reflects the logic
• Addresses the problem

Knowledge Skills
38
Stage 1 Design Questions
pp. 60 ff.

• What are the long-term transfer goals? In the
  end, students should be able, on their own, to...
• What are the desired understandings? (What
  misunderstandings must be avoided, overcome?)
• What are the essential questions to be
  continually explored?
• What knowledge skill should they leave with?

39
Stage 2 Design Questions

• What evidence for assessment is required by our
  Stage 1 goals?
• What performances are indicative of understanding
  - transfer of learning and understanding of
  content via big ideas?
• What other evidence is required by the goals?
• What scoring rubrics/criteria/indicators will be
  used to assess student work against the goals?

40
Stage 3 - design Qs

• If those are the desired results in STAGE 1 and
  the tasks of STAGE 2-
• What do they need to acquire?
• What inquiries and meaning making must they
  actively be made to engage in?
• What transfer must they practice and get feedback
  on?
• What formative assessments are essential for
  feedback, adjustment, meeting goals?
• What sequence is optimal for engagement and
  success?
• How will the work be differentiated - without
  sacrificing goals - to optimize success of all?

41
Key Design moves

• Making content fit under (a few) key questions
• Making skills fit under (a few) key transfer
  goals
• Thinking through evidence of understanding
  BEFORE developing (any old) activities quizzes

42
The big ideas of UbD
UbD big idea Why important? If not
Backward Design
Plans need to be well aligned to be effective
Aimless activity coverage
Understanding Transfer
It is the essence of understanding and the
point of schooling
Students fail to apply, poor results on tests
Understanding via big ideas
thats how transfer happens, makes learning more
connected
Learning is fragmented, more difficult, less
engaging