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Understanding by Design
What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today s high-stakes, standards...more
Paperback, 200 pages
Published
October 1st 1998
by Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development
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Mar 19, 2013
Henry Wijaya
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
teachers
Recommended to Henry by:
Professor Lesley Bartlett
It is a great book for teachers to help them evaluate what they have been doing in their teaching works. Reading this book makes me revisit all works that I have done related to the actual teaching in the classroom, my preparation before that, and my follow up after that. Furthermore, it also makes me rethink about curriculum design and material development.
It is scary to think how easy it is for a teacher to design a curriculum, develop the materials, teach the students, and evaluate the outcom...more
It is scary to think how easy it is for a teacher to design a curriculum, develop the materials, teach the students, and evaluate the outcom...more
This book was assigned for a graduate Information Literacy course I took for my Master's in Library Science program. I thought it was a smart choice for an info lit book since it is not a "library science" course book. I have fifteen years teaching experience and I learned new and fresh ideas from this book for developing lessons using the authors' backward design process. I had been using a version of backward design for many years now, especially for teaching conversational English and recentl...more
There is no better book for curriculum design and deployment. I came to the party late, considering my old unit designs to be extraordinary. Oh how wrong was I. The key however comes in that my old aligned plans and units were the best teachers can be expected to do without the added piece of time. To create units and instruction from this model you have to have lots of it. I'm blessed to have it now in my new position, but until PLCs can address the time issue, we won't see more than pockets of...more
Understanding by Design is a technical publication for building curriculum using the backward design process. This book helps instructors support their work by implementing Essential Questions so that a course can be built around the end result and focused on understanding rather than milestones and tasks. It is a pretty basic lesson planning guide – almost a 101 for teachers of anything. It lacks a few fundamental ideas, such as using taxonomy as a basis for questioning, but I think that the bo...more
As a rule, if I review a book, I read every word of the book. There have been a few exceptions (this brings the total up to 4, I believe...)
There was a lot of good content in this one. The concept is pretty solid, and I think most teachers are using Backward Design by now. I remember learning about it in my undergrad methods courses, but it wasn't nearly as in depth as it was here.
Basically, as the title implies - you start with what you want kids to know, and develop the curriculum from there....more
There was a lot of good content in this one. The concept is pretty solid, and I think most teachers are using Backward Design by now. I remember learning about it in my undergrad methods courses, but it wasn't nearly as in depth as it was here.
Basically, as the title implies - you start with what you want kids to know, and develop the curriculum from there....more
1 like · like · see review
Jan 27, 2011
Mark Feltskog
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
professional-development
When I was a forklift operator, I topped out in terms of skill pretty quickly. And one need only receive one or two truckloads of any kind of merchandise to master the warehouse worker's skills. One of the great things about being a teacher, for me, is that it is a career that offers virtually endless opportunities to improve as a practitioner; it is, therefore, never boring. Grant P. Wiggins and Jay McTighe's Understanding by Design is in all respects a guide to keep one's teaching career stimu...more
Nov 21, 2008
DWRL Library
added it
Wiggins offers ideas for designing curriculum to engage students in exploring and deepening their understanding of important ideas, and creating assessments that reveal the extent of their understanding. This is not a step-by-step guide on how to design a course, but rather a conceptual framework and design process. It offers a way of thinking about your course, but does not offer individual lesson plans.
I read the book at the same time I was putting together my 309K proposal, and found it very...more
I read the book at the same time I was putting together my 309K proposal, and found it very...more
Three stages of backward design:
1. Identify desired results (To what extent does the design focus on the big ideas of targeted content?)
2. Determine acceptable evidence (To what extent do the assessments provide fair, valid, reliable, and sufficient measures of the desired results?)
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction (To what extent is the learning plan effective and engaging)
To what extent is the entire unit coherent, with the elements of all three stages aligned?
1. Identify desired results (To what extent does the design focus on the big ideas of targeted content?)
2. Determine acceptable evidence (To what extent do the assessments provide fair, valid, reliable, and sufficient measures of the desired results?)
3. Plan learning experiences and instruction (To what extent is the learning plan effective and engaging)
To what extent is the entire unit coherent, with the elements of all three stages aligned?
While I had been working with UBD before I read this book, I found this detailed and full of good advice for implementing "teaching for understanding". While I found sections dense to read, it was worth trudging through these sections to get to the nub of what the writers were saying. This new way to approach my lessons has been transforming my teaching over the past year and this book helped reinforce the ideas I have been implementing.
May 27, 2008
Mary
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
forclass,
teacher-books
This thing is such an institution at Teachers College we use UbD as a verb. As in, "Did you UbD this novel yet?"
Yeah.
But I certainly can't think of a better way to plan than the approach so laboriously extolled in this tome. It's a smart, methodical way to make truly rigorous curricula that demand authentic learning, not coverage or cute performance tasks. And I'd say it's worth it to give the opening chapters a thorough read. Most teachers only get a forced march through the UbD Workbook tem...more
Yeah.
But I certainly can't think of a better way to plan than the approach so laboriously extolled in this tome. It's a smart, methodical way to make truly rigorous curricula that demand authentic learning, not coverage or cute performance tasks. And I'd say it's worth it to give the opening chapters a thorough read. Most teachers only get a forced march through the UbD Workbook tem...more
It wasn't until a few chapters into this book that I really grasped the instructional design technique the authors promote here. However, once I understood how everything fit together it gave me a whole new perspective on teaching. The authors provide step-by-step materials for lesson planning that show how to implement their design structure.
Jun 27, 2012
Debra S
added it
No rating as I didn't actually read this title. I skimmed it. I think I picked up the first edition and was actually looking for the 2nd edition. I saw a presentation on library instruction design based on the principles of Wiggins and McTighe. The presentation was assume. Lots of good ideas on what you can and can't accomplish. Big plug for backward planning.
Still think I will ferret out the 2nd edition at some point, but will probably skim it as well. :-)
Still think I will ferret out the 2nd edition at some point, but will probably skim it as well. :-)
This was by far the best book assigned in my Master of Education coursework so far, and one which will stay on my bookshelf. This book reframes lesson planning by focusing on learning objectives and then using the "backwards design" approach to design learning experiences and assessments that are truly made to get the student where they need to be. It will be useful for educators working in the classroom at any level, K-16.
This is a great resource with lots of detailed information. I love the practical tables and examples. Sometimes, I think Wiggins gets into the weeds but in general, this is a practical and helpful guide that you can either read as a whole or flick through to find the relevant chapter or sub-section.
Jan 29, 2011
Theresa Gischler
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
special-education
Okay, for someone who came to this via ABA and verbal behavior, backward design seems only natural. But the details sound intriguing: essential questions, transfer tasks and the six facets of understanding. Will only know once I read it, but the recommending source is persuasive!
Interesting academic read. Backwards design is something that many people I think have been doing but not to the detail the Wiggins describes it in. I used the design for my new Catcher unit and I like were it has taken me. I feel more confident in why I am teaching what I am teaching, and that makes it easier to explain to my students. The only problem is how time consuming it can be to revamp a unit, especially during the school year. Naturally teachers do not get nearly enough time to accompl...more
Does your teaching sometimes feel disconnected and choppy? This book is a game-changer. I can't wait to apply these ideas to my teaching this school year. Highly-recommend.
Begin with the end in mind is the advice of the authors of this great book, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. This is a valuable resource that all teachers should read and think about.
Somewhat thick verbiage makes it a little hard to read, but the main point of the book is about a more effective way to teach current curriculum to students and the basic premise should be fairly obvious to anyone who teaches regularly - you think about the learning outcome and devise essential questions and discussion points to get students to your level of understanding of a topic.
Helpful in working through a unit of instruction, but not something aimed at the larger questions of why do we eve...more
Helpful in working through a unit of instruction, but not something aimed at the larger questions of why do we eve...more
In my opinion, this is the single most important book a teacher (from Pre-K through university) should read and master. This is educational scripture.
This book outlines best practice in backwards planning, a very effective pedagogical technique. We've used it in all our lesson plans and suggest you do too!
This was required reading for me but I would recommend it for all old-school teachers. We definitely need to change the way things are done.
Not sure how I feel about Wiggns and McTighe's processes yet. My star rating may change once I've had time to cogitate.
Go Understanding! Take that standardized testing! Recommend for all educators, cognitive scientists and measly neurologists.
Sicuramente interessante e utile. Mi pare eccessivamente prescrittivo, ma comunque utile.
Feb 15, 2012
Shelley
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
education,
non-fiction
Made an indelible impact on my teaching - really liked this one.
Challenging....but so necessary to read and implement.
Good tool to compliment Standars-Based Grading.
normally I don't tag textbooks as "read" but this one is basically my life this summer, and yet is still surprisingly good so I think it counts...just saying
Mar 21, 2011
Kimberly
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
library_science,
non-fiction
Chapters 1-11 assigned and read. For the most part, a well-written book with appropriate examples and explanations. I don't like the size of the book, it's just too floppy and difficult to take places, but the content is fine.
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Nov 11, 2012 10:59am