Understanding by Design: Professional Development Workbook

by Jay McTighe, Grant Wiggins

Implementing the popular Understanding by Design ® (UbD™) framework is much easier when you use this in-depth resource for workshops, curriculum teams, and teacher training. This collection of templates, design tools, examples, and exercises helps you give all staff members a firm grasp of key UbD principles, including Give staff members at all levels clear action steps they need in every stage of the UbD process, including Included are steps for conducting a peer review of unit designs plus process steps to guide your implementation of UbD systemwide.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Reference, Nonfiction, School, College

295 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Anne-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Backwards approach to designing a unit (begin with "big questions," standards, and "essential questions" before deciding on a text and assessments). Excellent ideas but articulated in a redundant and oftentimes confusing way.

[Gyaneshwaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

It provides handy worksheets and templates to help with planning our lessons by backward planning. The process has 3 stages - 1. Identify the desired results (goals/big understandings) 2. Decide what the evidence will be that will let us know whether the desired results have been achieved (assessments) 3. Learning Plan (the sequence of learning experiences that will enable the students to reach the goals).
Requires lot of hard work to implement but the teacher can target one unit per year to begin with, and groups of colleagues can distribute the different units among themselves, and then do a peer review to improve the units prepared by each. This way, the entire curriculum can be built in this format in a few years.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resource when you are working towards revamping how you implement curriculum. I will definitely continue to refer to this book as I create UbD units to improve learning outcomes for my students.

[Alyssa Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

If your school is calibrated for backwards design then this is great resource. It is very resourceful in helping teachers effectively plan lessons that are purposeful, relevant and have clear end goals. I especially like the 6-page template planning and the WHERETO guidelines to stress test the instructional value of a lesson plan. Excellent resource.

[Shatanna]

text for my curriculum development courses. This is the only way I know how to write a lesson plan. I intend to carry this text with me through my career as an educator.

[Nichole Bushman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really helpful, but poorly organized.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew the basic concept from the book, but this workbook was helpful in that it helps to have all the useful worksheets and resource lists in one place.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

To get the most out of the Understanding by Design book you need this workbook to complete the equation. Full of reproducible content and examples.

[Bonnie Bynum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing curriculum is sometimes brain racking... Love the concept of UBD!

[Tamara Suttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent step by step for backward design