When reading the Understanding by Design section and its modules, I was struck by the sense of deja vu--I couldn't help but to feel like I've seen this before, and I started getting annoyed with the reading. I had to set aside the reading to sort out what I was feeling. Where had I seen this before? Starting at the end goal and making your strategy from there? Wait a minute--that's what writers do all the time! Little-known and slightly personal fact about me: I love writing stories, and over the course of the years I've learned (oftentimes the hard way) that any story starts with an end goal. You have your ending, good--now work back to it. Plan how you're going to get there. It's not easy, and sometimes it's frustrating because you want to skip right to that juicy ending, but all the work in the beginning and the middle makes the ending payoff so much the better. That being said, I looked over the reading again and scoffed. "This is common sense!" I said to myself, all smugness and eye-rolling. "You shouldn't just dive into your lessons--you need a concrete goal to work towards! Identify and then plan! What a bunch of hacks! Are they getting paid for this?".
What I didn't understand until well into Module F was that it hit me that I wasn't understanding what they meant by understanding and creating enduring knowledge. And now the egg was on my face. Good broad questions don't have a correct answer. Good broad questions are in-depth queries into a subject that can be debated and examined and reexamined. Good broad concepts lead to more active thinking from students, which leads to a better understanding of the material, which leads to enduring skills and knowledge. As I read over page 76, the lightbulb flicked on in my head and I said "Oh. Oooh. Oh. I see." The point of Backwards Design is not just to set up an end goal and then work within given parameters to that end goal. The point of Backwards Design is to challenge thinking and encourage critical analysis instead of spoon-feeding students answers.
My favorite thing about this reading, aside from the idea that we can shake up the questions we're asking to make them more in-depth, is the idea of "transferable" concepts. Concepts that transcend subject matter, that are universally applicable--concepts like humanity and morality--are some of my favorites concepts. They can be a great way to unite teachers across disciplines and unify those 'big concepts'.
Hi Emily, Ubd felt a bit like Deja Vu to me as well, I feel like I'd been told this before. I like how you applied it to story writing, if you start with the end in sight, the beginning and middle seem a lot more easier. I do believe that Ubd makes our lives easier by forcing us to be more organized.
ReplyDeleteYou make a really strong argument that UbD affects everybody differently: "good broad questions don't have a correct answer. Good broad questions are in-depth queries into a subject that can be debated and examined and reexamined." Good broad questions also provide students with a sense of choice, they can go whatever way they want with the question, and rarely is that answer wrong. As you put it we want the students to be thinking on their own , we don't want to do thinking for them. Dr. Horwitz's example of English as a spectator sport sticks with me, so much of English is the teacher of relaying their interpretation of the novel and the students taking this in and believing that this is the only interpretation. In turn, the teacher receives 30 very similar essays. I don't want this, I want students to tell me what they think about the literature, to think critically about it.
Hi Emily - thanks for sharing your journey with the reading with us - I too felt a little like 'Duh, this is common sense' reading about the concept of starting at the end - but I think it's so important for us as teachers not to take it for granted because I think the demands of a full curriculum have the potential to thwart our best intentions. I too really liked reading about the power of essential questions, the idea of asking questions that don't have answers but actually serve to keep the question alive. However, I sometimes think 'But wait, some questions do have answers and the goal is for students to have those answers, those understandings...' My content is science, so I think about this in terms of 'You know, photosynthesis really isn't open for interpretation...' But the UbD authors address this - in a footnote in Figure F.1 they say, "Some essential questions are meant to be guiding; that is, they are initially open to many plausible interpretations and answers, but they eventually end in an understanding." ... I like this because it frames the delivery of knowledge as an inquiry - yes, there are some definite answers, but we need to let students ask questions, make guesses, try things out, and come to understandings on their own - only this way is knowledge enduring. Sorry to blab on, you got me thinking! :)
ReplyDeleteWork backwards, work backwards, work backwards. That phrase stuck with me as I read through these numerous pages. For the most part I discovered the meaning of those words in my first year of college. Professors and colleagues will never just give you the answer immediately, even if they know the answer. We work and work and work towards the answer to a question until we not only have the same answer, but we also all align in our methods to that answer.
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But of course all was not like this. In secondary school I hardly experienced this type of nurture. In AP classes teachers would require us to continue questioning, but aside from those we were literally always given the cut-and-dry of the lesson and forced to move on. While I know there was a reason for that (lack of time and a necessity to move through units faster in preparation of SATs and the like), I always wondered if any of my secondary school teachers tried UbD.
In my opinion the UbD is a complex version of Direct and Indirect Teaching Methods. Perhaps my secondary school teachers did and I forgot, or perhaps they did so in a way that made it seem like they were always giving us the right answer all the time. Overall, that sense of Deja Vu hits home, especially after only a semester after we utilized it.
Emily, I love how you told the story. I too felt like this should be a no-brainer but apparently it isn't. I think it is really funny how many of the concepts we learn feel like they should be common sense, but aren't. As far as backwards design is concerned though, I think that it is a method of preparation that all teachers can appreciate if they take the time that it requires.
ReplyDeleteEmily, I had the same feeling as you. You're a good writer, too; this is a well conceived post with an arc of understanding from beginning to end. It's almost like you used backward design in creating this post! I'm glad you pointed out that the best kinds of questions are the ones that make answers difficult or impossible. I think that a "good" question as you understand it to be is something that is so incredibly important to teaching: giving a question that has an immediate or easy answer is doing no service to students or to learning. Teachers learn from students, too, and we can do this by asking difficult questions and getting difficult answers. I wonder, though, what are some of the ways that you would use this in your classroom? You talk about morality and humanity as topics of interest, but how do you intend to use these in a classroom setting? I'm just interested because I think you have some good ideas.
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