2. WHAT IS UNDERSTANDING
Understanding is…
The ability to infer hidden meanings.
The ability to read between the lines.
The ability to apply concepts to new and different
situations and concepts.
Understandings differ from knowledge
Knowledge is specific to facts, information, and
skills.
Understandings are more abstract and require a
deeper level of knowledge.
3. WHAT ARE UNDERSTANDINGS
Understandings are…
Conceptual
Transferable
Comprehensive
Abstract
Developed by uncovering and doing
Understandings are not…
Recalling information
Written facts
Immediately understood
4. BACKWARDS DESIGN
Backwards design is an approach to
understanding.
Allows us to begin planning by thinking
about the life long understandings we want
students to take away.
6. ESTABLISHED GOALS - STANDARDS
Common Core
State standards
Literacy, science, social studies, 21 st century skills
Starting point for each lesson
What lesson is formed around
NCSSS
National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies
Specific to Social studies
Introduces themes within social studies
7. ESTABLISHED GOALS - STANDARDS
NCSSS Themes
Culture
Time, continuity, and change
People, places, and environments
Individual development and identity
Individuals, groups, and institutions
Power, authority, and governance
Production, distribution, and consumption
Science, technology, and society
Global connections
Civic ideals and practices
8. TRANSFER GOALS
Transfer goals build off of the big ideas within a unit
and apply them to transferable tasks.
Blooms taxonomy poses many meaningful tasks to
help guide students in building understandings.
9. TRANSFER GOALS - BLOOMS TAXONOMY
EXAMPLES
Creating
Students will be able to create a brochure about eating healthy.
Evaluating
Students will be able to assess their peers presentation in a
respectful manner.
Analyze
Students will be able to compare and contrast healthy and unhealthy
foods.
Apply
Students will be able to classify animate and inanimate objects.
Remember
Students will be able to describe the characters in a story using key
details.
Understand
Students will be able to explain the stages of mitosis.
11. TRANSFER GOALS – NON EXAMPLES
Ineffective transfer goals
Students will be able to…
Recall what culture is.
Define culture.
12. MEANING MAKING
Understandings
This section is where we state the concepts that students will
understand by the end of the lesson.
The understandings are based off of the activities that students
complete during the lesson.
This section allows us to evaluate the tasks that we are having
students perform and how effective they will be for student
understanding.
The understandings should be narrowed down to specific concepts
within the standards.
Examples:
In a lesson on culture we would want students to understand:
Culture is the behaviors, beliefs, traditions, and ways of living in a specific
group of people.
Similarities and differences between cultures.
Non Examples:
What culture is
13. MEANING MAKING
Essential Questions
Essential questions are thick and descriptive questions.
They help to guide students thinking towards the important concepts
in the lesson.
Essential questions get students thinking about the concepts in ways
that they may not have already been thinking.
Examples:
How are groups of people alike and different?
How does culture link a group of people?
Non Examples:
What is culture?
Why is culture important?
14. ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL
Knowledge
The knowledge section pertains to the information that students will
gain during the lesson.
It can also pertain to the knowledge that students will already have.
Examples:
Students will know…
Important people who impacted the U.S. throughout history.
How to define culture and bias.
15. ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL
Skills
The skills sections is where you would put the skills that students will
need to have in order to complete the tasks.
If students do not already have these skills then you will need to help
the students gain these skills.
The skills section can also be where you would put the skills that
students will learn within in the lesson.
Examples:
Students will be skilled at…
Collecting information from various forms of media.
Using maps and globes to find locations of countries.
16. PERSONAL MISCONCEPTIONS
Knowledge and skill
At first I thought that the knowledge and skill sections were only for
the knowledge and skills that students will gain from the lesson.
However I realized that this can also be a place to put knowledge and
skills students will need in order to participate and engage in the
lesson.
Essential questions
When I first began working with the essential questions I thought
that they were just questions that you would ask during the lesson.
However, I learned that these questions are actually there to help
assist students in their thinking process. They help students to build
meaningful understandings and allow them to keep considering the
concepts even after the lesson is over.
17. PERSONAL MISCONCEPTIONS
Standards
My biggest struggle with building a lesson is pairing standards. The
standards are the most important pieces in building a meaningful
lesson. There were many times that I thought standards would pair
well together until I began working with those standards. It was then
that I would realize that the concepts within the standards were to
broad and needed to be narrowed down.
18. RESOURCES
Adler, S. A . (2010). National curriculum standards for social
studies: a framework for teaching, learning and assessment .
Silver Spring, Md: National Council for the Social Studies.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by
Design, Expanded 2nd Edition (2nd ed.). Alexandria: ASCD .