Chapter 12 : Big Picture  

In my opinion  the most important  issues in this chapter are the  Six Facets of Understanding:

explain provide thorough and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data

interpret  tell meaningful stories, offer apt translations, provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make subjects personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models

apply — effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse contexts

have perspective — see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture

empathize — find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior indirect experience

have self-knowledge — perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; they are aware of what they do not understand and why understanding is so hard.

The assessment plan has to involve more high-quality, application-focused performance tasks constructed around the 6 facets mentioned  above . (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006).  The assesment and rubric must be considered when framing the curriculum.

The authors mentioned  the stages as well:

According to Stage 1 the desired results refers to not only the course goals and objectives, but the learning that should endure over the long term. This is referred to as the “enduring understanding”.

Stage 2 The second stage in the design process is to define what forms of assessment will demonstrate that the student acquired the knowledge, understanding, and skill to answer the questions .

The last  stage , Number 3, it is determined what sequence of teaching and learning experiences will equip students to develop and demonstrate the desired understanding.

To develop those  topics  above teachers or designers   should follow certain sequence of  the subject. This is the continual spiral.  To develop curriculum around recurring, ever deepening inquiries into big ideas and important tasks  . The teacher's task is to design related challenges so that learning results in the "production of new ideas".  New facts and ideas become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.

Chapter 9 Planning for learning

As we read in some  chapters before, teachers  or the designers must make the goals clear to the students.  “That means completely demystifying  the big ideas, the essential questions, the desired performances, and the evaluative criteria  constituting the sought-for achievement. It requires instructors to provide a rationale for the desired learnings—to identify what is most important (and what is not) and why it is worth learning.” (p 198)

According to the authors there are two points which are essential  when  a plan is designed: 1  Desired results and 2 Performance . In that sense the challenge is related to learning more than  teaching. But what is a good plan?. Each teacher would think about  his/her own. The most important thing that a teacher has to consider , is obviously effectiveness (reached by students) related to their competence and production.  So teachers  should help students become clear about and mindful of the expected performances.

The authors refers to Whereto which is an important tool when it is planning. It considers different steps that we have to take in mind in order to help our students to get  the goals.

Chapter 6 Crafting Understandings

We start our process of teaching year by year with the same situation: Students  do not remember the most they  should  from  the year before... so   the question is what  is happening with the teaching – learning process? To give some answer to this question Wiggins and McTighe define  understanding  as follows.

1. An understanding is an important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, stated in a specific and useful generalization;
2. An understanding refers to transferable, big ideas having enduring value beyond a specific topic;
3. An understanding involves abstract, counter-intuitive, and easily misunderstood ideas;
4. An understanding is best acquired by "uncovering" and "doing" the subject (i.e., using the ideas in realistic settings and with real-world problems;
5. An understanding summarizes important strategic principles in skills area.

According to  those points defined above we can understand, in my opinion,  that Understanding is a long- term  process which attempts to clarify priorities through  essential questions and big ideas to challenge our students  to develop  understanding.

Therefore,  work  this issue with our students  requires to establish  which is more worthy for them. The complex topics which should be filtered  in order to teach  meaningiful contents.

We  should carefully consider who our learners are and whether what we call a fact or an understanding really is so to them. The challenge is to help learners be more open-minded  to understand the process  that they are living.   

“When Students are able to understand the purposes why ,what for  to learn, and so on, we as teachers can say that our work is made.” I think.

Chapter 5 Essential Questions Doorways to Understanding

Forming essential questions is the first step in creating  big ideas for a unit according to the UbD model. Essential questions are not the type of questions that offers  a quick, direct, right or wrong answer. These questions might create a debate. Essential questions go  deeper into our thinking and produce even more, questions full of transfer possibilities. Would  a teacher just be interested and focused on teaching dates, and facts  or is the teacher who is influenced to use Ubd going to design the unit based on those essential questions if he or she is teaching a History topic? .The UbD trained teacher would use those essential questions to help structure powerful and meaningful lessons for the students. A possible essential question for a unit on the  history lesson could be, "What is the cost of freedom?" Clearly in this type of question there is no simple straight forward answer. This kind of questions opens the door for debate and deep thinking and reflexion. This type of question would undoubtedly spark deeper thinking and more questionsl .This is the goal of UbD. Other examples of big ideas mentioned in this chapter would be questions like:  What is democracy? What is racism? The chapter gave many examples of essential questions that are specific to a topic, problem, or field of study.

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Chapter 3: Gaining Clarity on our Goals
As a teacher I always have problems with lesson plans and time. Priorities seem to be easy when I have to make decisions or make choices, but it is not really true.
To reach a solution for the aspects mentioned above, we have to focus on the most meaningful and useful tasks. When we are able to establish priorities and we are able to determine what is necessary for students to learn, means that we are not overloading with contents and contents.
In that sense, teachers have to ask essential questions which are connected with BIG IDEAS . They are central to the design. Those BIG IDEAS make our students to work and carry out the goals. In addition, the discussion, reflections, problems solving, research and debate are very important for developing deep understanding of essential ideas.
Authors suggest helping students to “learn how to learn” and “how to perform”. For them is both, a vital mission but a commonly overlooked one. On the other hand, contents are a means and there is not the main AIM in teaching/learning.
BIG IDEAS can help to connect discrete topics and obviously to skills because they are transferable. That means that BIG IDEAS are useful, completely effective and efficient in our students`learning process.
BIG IDEAS must be identified and carefully designed because it can exist the temptation of teaching as much as possible and ignoring the real value of a specific topic. We, as teachers, have always to remember that some is great for us, it is not for our students, so priorities are different too, so BIG IDEAS have to be relevant for them not for us.
Finally, I think, we have to consider challenges for our students: realistic situations, context in which tasks are as faithful as possible to real life opportunities and difficult situations will make our students develop the skills they need to face life.

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Estela Quilodràn: Estela Quilodràn: Estela Quilodràn: Estela Quilodr...: "Backward Design Teachers are designers of curriculum and assessments. Teachers are required to provide meaningful learning experiences for t..."

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Backward Design
Teachers are designers of curriculum and assessments. Teachers are required to provide
meaningful learning experiences for their students and determine students needs and interests in
order to guide their teaching and learning. They must also determine whether the goals of their
students have been achieved demonstrating understanding.
This type of curriculum designing has been described as backward because teachers traditionally
start curriculum planning with interesting activities and textbooks rather than looking at the big
result with the end goals in mind. In the backward design model, the teacher starts with the end,
the desired results, and then derives the curriculum from the evidence of learning called by the
expectations and the teaching needed to equip students to perform.
Common practice of assessing indicates that teachers think about assessment at the end of the
unit, once the teaching is completed.
Teachers determine what they would accept as evidence that students have attained the desired
understanding and proficiencies before proceeding to plan teaching and learning experiences,
enables them to remain focused on the desired results.
The backward design can be used in all kind of plans : a school year, a unit or a lesson . It contains three stages:
I. Identify desired results : Objectives ( what students have to know, understand, do)
II. Determine acceptable evidence :Assessment.(evidence of learning by students)
III. Plan learning experiences and instruction: Activities(sequence of learning- teaching)

There is a guide, UBD Template, which contains all the aspects that should be taken into account

in a plan. Teachers will use them in the design of units that focus on understanding. The three

points mentioned above, essential questions and desired understanding by students have to be

considered by teachers or designers .

On the other hand, the first and most important aspect of backward design is to become familiar

with standards for the level and curriculum area being taught . Once the standards have been

selected , teachers have to decide assessment that will measure the students` understanding.
In this way students will achieve higher levels of learning.