Curriculum by Design

Curriculum by Design
Aligned Unit Plans based on Desired Student Understanding

Teaching without Design
Suitcase Curriculum & Isolated Curriculum
A teacher moves to a new school or to a new subject or grade level, then unpacks and teaches the same units from the previous school, subject or grade level.
A new teacher arrives in a classroom, is handed a textbook or general guidebook and left to teach. The teacher begins to teach what he or she knows in the way he or she was taught. Often, there is no coordination or help other teachers or administrators.

Teaching without Design
The Apple Event:
A Familiar Problem
Activity-oriented, theme-based tasks with interdisciplinary connections, but what are the enduring understandings? What is being “uncovered”? Do the students understand the learning targets? What evidence reflects worthwhile content standards? What understandings will emerge and what will endure?
Examples: Harvest Celebrations, Holiday Pageants, Field Trips

Curriculum by Design Includes
Backward Planned UbD Units
Understanding by Design (UbD) - a systematic method used to develop curriculum units.
Identify desired results
Determine Acceptable Evidence
Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
Articulated Units
Curriculum Maps, a school-wide timeline of curriculum units
Standards and Benchmarks, defined set of knowledge and skills linked to units on curriculum map.
Shared Database of Maps and Units - for example, Atlas Rubicon, an online database used to track curriculum maps and units.

Planned UbD Units
Backward Planning
Unit Design
Unit = Short for a “unit of study”. Units represent a coherent chunk of work in courses or strands, across days or weeks. An example is a unit on natural habitats and adaptation that falls under the 3rd grade science.

Planned UbD Units
Define the Destination
Backward Planning
Curriculum should lay out the most effective ways of achieving specific results.
The best designs derive backward from the learnings sought.

Planned UbD Stages
Backward Planning
Stage 1: Identify Desired Results
Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Stage 3: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction

UbD Stage 1
Stage 1 Unit Plan: Identify Desired Results
What is worthy and requiring of understanding?
What are enduring understandings and essential questions?
What should students understand by design?
Is the focus apt and rigorous?
What is feasible and appropriate allocation of time, given overall priorities?
What will users need to know to judge the unit’s value and usefulness to them?

UbD Stage 1
Worth Knowing?
Enduring Understanding Example
Overarching understanding: Elements of “wellness” include healthy habits, nutrition/diet, exercise, mental health
At the end of the unit, students will understand (1) that a balanced diet contributes to optimal health and “healthy” living, and (2) the elements of good nutrition by analyzing the nutritional value of menus and planning a balanced diet.
“Uncover” Knowledge?
Guiding Questions Example
Overarching questions: What does it mean to lead a healthy life? What is wellness?
During the unit students will ask and find answers to: (1) What is healthy eating? (2) What is a balanced diet?

UbD Stage 1
Understanding checkpoint:
What is an enduring understanding in a unit you are or will teach?
Are you using guiding questions to uncover knowledge? What are the questions?

UbD Stage 2
Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
What is evidence of understanding?
What fits within the school’s continuum of assessment types? Does it assess the 6 facets of understanding?
Is the assessment valid, reliable, sufficient, authentic, feasible, student friendly?
Is the unit anchored in credible and educationally vital evidence of the desired understandings?
Is the assessment sound? Are rubrics developed and available?
What will users need and need to know for assessment?

UbD Stage 2
Assessment Evidence
6 Facets of Understanding
Can explain
Can interpret
Can apply
Have perspective
Can empathize
Have self-knowledge

UbD Stage 2
Can explain
provide thorough, supported and justifiable accounts of phenomena, fact and data
Assessment Example
A cook explains why adding a little mustard to oil and vinegar enables them to mix. The mustard is an emulsifier.
A history student provides a well-supported view of the economic and political causes of the American Revolution.

UbD Stage 2
Can interpret
tell meaningful stories; offer apt translations; provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make it personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies and models
Assessment Example
A grandfather tells stories about the Depression to illustrate the importance of saving for a rainy day.
A student shows how Gulliver’s Travels can be read as a satire on British intellectual life; it’s not just a fairy tale.

UbD Stage 2
Can apply
effectively use and adapt what we know in diverse content
Assessment Example
A young couple uses their knowledge of economics to develop an effective financial plan for saving and investing.
7th grade students use their knowledge of statistics to accurately project next year’s costs and needs for the student-run supply store.

UbD Stage 2
Have perspective – see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture
Assessment Example
A 10-year old girl recognizes in TV advertisements the fallacy of using popular figures to promote products.
A student explains the Israeli and Palestinian arguments for and against new settlements on the Gaza Strip.

UbD Stage 2
Can empathize
find value in what others might find odd, alien or implausible, perceive sensitively on the basis of prior direct experience
Assessment Example
From a British national exam: “Romeo and Juliet, act 4. Imagine you are Juliet. Write your thought and feelings explaining why you have to take this desperate action.”
A middle school student empathizes with the restrictive, constrained lifestyle of students his age in a war-torn country.

UbD Stage 2
Have self-knowledge
perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; we are aware of what we do not understanding and why understanding is so hard
Assessment Example
A mother realized that her frustration with her daughter’s shyness is rooted in issues from her own childhood.
Mindful of the fact that many students are visual learners, a teacher deliberately includes visual organizers and images.

UbD Stage 2
Assessment Methods
Assessment Types

UbD Stage 2
Identify and describe how students will demonstrate an enduring understanding at the end of a unit.
Describe assessment methods and types of assessments used.

UbD Stage 3
What learning experiences and teaching promote understanding, interest, and excellence?
Does the unit include a research-based repertoire of learning and teaching strategies?
Where is the unit going? Does it “hook” students and allow them to explore, rethink, revise, exhibit, evaluate?
Does it promoted learning and teaching to evoke desired understandings.
Is it clear, coherent, and engaging?
What will users need and need to know to teach and modify the unit?

UbD Stage 3
“Note that the teacher will address the specifics of instructional planning – choices about teaching methods, sequence of lessons, and resource materials – after identifying the desired results and assessments.
Teaching is a means to an end. Having a clear goal helps us as educators to focus our planning and guide purposeful action toward the intended results.”

UbD Stage 3
Describe a lesson activity that will help students to achieve the expected understanding. How will the unit hook the students and allow them to explore, rethink, revise, exhibit, evaluate?
Are the learning experiences modified to accommodate student needs.

Articulated Units
Curriculum Maps:
Timelines to
promote planning.
promote communication and collaboration.
promote an articulated curriculum.
promote professionalism and teaching creativeness.

Articulated Units
Curriculum Map Sample – Timeline of Units

Articulated Units
Curriculum Map Sample – Timeline of Units
In Version 2 the curriculum was adjusted to make the curriculum more meaningful for students. They saw the articulation of knowledge across the curriculum, and they were taught basic skills that were used immediately in another subject.

Articulated Units
Standards are broad-based statements indicating what skills student must perform and specifying content to be learned. There are 3 types of standards:
Content standards answer the question, “What should students know and be able to do?”
Performance standards answer the question, “How well must students do their work?”
Design standards answer the question, “What worthy work should students encounter?”
Benchmark, associated with specific standards, specify content and skills for grade levels.

Articulated Units
Standards & Benchmarks
Specify content and skills for each subject and at each grade level
Ensure increasingly in-depth curriculum.
The standards and benchmarks are often listed in the UbD unit Stage 1 linked to the skills and knowledge students will learn.
Social Studies Example
Big Idea/Standard 2: Pre-Columbian Florida
Grade 2: Compare the cultures of Native American tribes from various geographic regions of the United States.
Big Idea/Standard 2: Pre-Columbian North America
Grade 5: Compare cultural aspects of Native American tribes from different geographic regions of North America including but not limited to clothing, shelter, food, major beliefs and practices, music, art, and interactions with the environment.

Articulated Units
Standards & Benchmarks
Standards and benchmarks reduce the gaps and overlaps among subject areas and grade levels.
Standards and benchmarks articulate units horizontally and vertically.
Curriculum Map with Benchmarks.

Articulated Units
Describe how a unit you teach is articulated with other subjects at the same grade level or/and with the same subject at other grade levels.

Articulated Units
Online, Shared, Transparent
Atlas Rubicon
http://www.rubicon.com/
Atlas Rubicon is a Database of Curriculum Maps and Unit Plans. The units can be accessed by teachers and administrators and can be made accessible for parents and students.

Curriculum by Design

by Incarnation Catholic School on Aug 08, 2011

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