This document provides an introduction to the backward design process for curriculum development. It outlines the three stages of backward design: 1) identify desired results, 2) determine acceptable evidence, and 3) plan learning experiences and instruction. For stage 1, it discusses identifying goals, essential questions, understandings, knowledge, and skills. It emphasizes that the purpose is to be thoughtful about learning goals rather than just gaining technical skills. It also notes that the process is not always linear and the stages don't need to be followed strictly step-by-step.

1. Introduction to Backward
Design

2. Good design…is not so much about
gaining a few new technical skills as it is
about learning to be more thoughtful
and specific about our purposes and
what they imply (p. 14)
- distinguishing interesting learning from
effective learning

3. Stages of Backward Design
 Stage 1: Identify desired results
◦ Requires clarity about priorities
◦ Must make choices
 Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence
◦ Evidence gathered through a variety of formal and
informal assessments during a unit of study, not
just a culminating test or project
◦ Self-assessment (p. 25) – explain what you mean;
describe the purpose of the self-assessment

4. Stages of Backward Design
 Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and
instruction
◦ What activities will equip students with the
needed knowledge and skills?
◦ What material and resources are best suited
to accomplish these goals?
◦ “WHERETO” elements (p. 22)
 T = tailored to the different needs, interests, and
abilities of learners  modifications

5. Key Points
 In actuality, it does not follow that this is
a step-by-step process …Don’t confuse
the logic of the final product with the
messy process of design work.
 It doesn’t matter exactly where you start
or how you proceed, as long as you end
up with a coherent design reflecting the
logic of the three stages (p. 29)

6. Unpacking Stage 1: Elements
 Established Goals: formal, long-term
goals, such as state content standards,
district program goals, departmental
objectives, and exit-level outcomes
◦ Typically refer to academic aims (e.g., factual,
conceptual, procedural)
◦ Also includes habits of mind (e.g., tolerance of
ambiguity) and values and attitudes (e.g.,
stepping in to mediate a playground dispute)

7.  Essential Questions: highlight the big ideas
that are central to the design, ideas that the
work will require students to address
◦ Are at the heart of the subject
◦ Raise more questions – provoking and sustaining
engaged inquiry
◦ Because many of the truly essential questions
recur and have no final resolution, it is
appropriate to say that “seriously pursuing the
question” as opposed to “answering” it is the
desired result (p. 58)

8.  Understandings: a “moral of the story”
about the big ideas
◦ What specific insights will students take away
about the meaning of ‘content’ via big ideas?
◦ Understandings summarize the desired
insights we want students to realize
◦ Specific generalizations about the “big ideas.”
They summarize the key meanings, inferences,
and importance of the ‘content’
◦ Deliberately framed as a full sentence “moral
of the story” – “Students will understand
THAT…”

9.  Knowledge: the straightforward facts and
concepts that are to be gained from the
learning and teaching activities
 Skill: identifies what students will be able to
do by the unit’s end (the discrete techniques,
complex procedures, and methods)
◦ Skill-related aims focus on techniques and
approaches (e.g., long division, jumping rope),
and processes (e.g., reading, problem solving), as
opposed to performance goals, such as “writing
persuasive essays,” which is a long-term outcome,
requiring many units and courses of study

10. • The targeted knowledge and skills can be of
three different kinds (p. 57):
– The building blocks for the desired understandings
– The knowledge and skills stated or implied in the
goals
– The “enabling” knowledge and skills needed to
perform the complex assessment tasks (identified
in Stage 2)
• We must always ask of knowledge and skill
goals, “For what kinds of important capacities
will this content actually equip us?” instead of
merely asking, “What knowledge and skills are
(potentially) important?”
– Transferability

11. Key Point
 Although these categories are
conceptually distinct, they often overlap
in practice!

12. Essential Questions
 Not only promote understanding of
the content of a unit on a particular
topic, but also spark connections and
promote transfer of ideas from one
setting to others (p. 107).
 Keepstudents focused on inquiry as
opposed to just answers (p. 114)

13. A question is “essential” if it is meant to:
– Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas
and core content
– Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained
inquiry, and new understanding as well as more
questions
– Require students to consider alternatives, weigh
evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers
– Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas,
assumptions, and prior lessons
– Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and
personal experiences
– Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to
other situations and subjects

14. Key Points
• No question is inherently essential. It all
comes down to purpose, audience, and
impact
– Why we pose it
– How we intend students to tackle it
– What we expect for learning activities and
assessments as a result
• Many yes/no, either/or, and who/what/when
questions offer the potential to spark
impressive curiosity, thought, and reflection in
students, depending upon how they are posed
and the nature of the follow-ups

15. Key Points
 Essential questions can be framed around four
categories of big ideas relevant to effective skill
learning (p. 113):
◦ Key concepts
◦ Purpose and value
◦ Strategy and tactics
◦ Context of use
 Essential questions do not always need to be
global; they can go to the heart of a particular
topic, problem, or field of study
◦ Topical
◦ Overarching

16. Crafting Understandings
 As with essential questions, no statement is
inherently a fact or understanding. It depends
upon who the learners are and what their
prior experience has been. (p. 136)
 The point of identifying understandings is to
clearly frame our goals for ourselves, not to
come up with an actual learning plan (Stage 3)
– it’s a blueprint for the plan

17. Four Rules of Thumb:
• A desired understanding is a priority. A
unit should focus on a small number of
transferable big ideas about which
understandings are stated.
• Desired understandings are best stated
in propositional form: “Students will
understand that…”

18. Four Rules of Thumb:
• Although pertaining to general or abstract
ideas, the desired understandings must be
stated in clear, unambiguous terms – as
specific and insightful generalizations.
• Understandings are of two kinds, topical
and overarching. Topical understandings
are unit-specific, and overarching
understandings are broader and offer a
possible bridge to other units and courses.