Understanding by Design (UbD) developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2011) is a curriculum planning framework that purposefully focuses on helping students understand the big ideas that are being taught and be able to transfer these understandings outside the classroom. Big ideas should allow a learner to make sense of a lot of information. Curriculum planning progresses through three steps: determining the desired goals, looking for evidence of learning, and then developing a learning plan. This backward design allows curriculum designers to check for curriculum alignment continually.
The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others. — John Locke
Wiggins and McTighe advocate for teaching for understanding and then providing the opportunity for students to apply these understandings in real-world circumstances instead of covering the material or teaching to the test. They describe the teacher’s function as a coach. The teacher determines what is essential for the student to understand and then plans how they will assist them in reaching and demonstrating that understanding, much as a coach determines which skills and abilities his or her players need to succeed, determining how players can demonstrate mastery and then planning exercises and training to help them develop these skills (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Standards of learning should be obtained in the area of content and used as a benchmark to measure student progress towards understanding. According to Wiggins and McTighe (2011), students’ ability to explain, interpret, and apply their knowledge serve as markers that they have mastered understanding. Students who understand the concepts will be able to make connections and justify their conclusions in their own words.
Stage 1 Template Overview: Identify Desired Results
Stage 1 is composed of identifying relevant content standards or competencies and using them as guides to develop transfer goals and understandings about meaning. Standards are frequently overarching and ambiguous. They are hierarchical in structure and require interpretation and unpacking. The standards or competencies are intentionally put to the side of the UbD curriculum planner to make it clear that while they are essential to consider, they are not the goal of the unit.
The unit should not be planned in one sitting. Instead, the knowledge and skills should logically give the student the tools to learn the meaning or understandings in the unit which will then allow them to transfer these understandings outside the curriculum. Periodically all of these components should be checked against the standards to verify alignment (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Transfer Goals
Transfer goals should lead to specific long-term accomplishments. They should be the goal of all education. Education is only valuable to students if they learn how to do something in one context and can apply it in another. With clearly written transfer goals, students will never need to ask why they need to learn something. It will be clear what the benefit of learning the concepts will be and how understanding them will allow the student to benefit in the real world.
Students should also be able to use their knowledge in real-world situations without needing someone to tell them when and how to do something. Students must mine their knowledge base for what is applicable in that particular situation, apply this knowledge without guidance, and use good judgment while doing so. Transfer goals should be written as “Students will be able to independently use their learning to…” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Transfer codes, list of long-term accomplishments as a result of the course, competency codes
Meaning
Essential questions should be asked throughout the unit to help guide the learner toward understanding. Essential questions are not questions that can be quickly answered or that depend on rote memorization. They should be open-ended and have no simple right answer. Essential questions ask the student to think deeper, to question, and to analyze. These questions should be debated and looked at in several ways. Students should be asked to defend their perspectives to demonstrate that they genuinely understand what the question is asking. These essential questions will help students find patterns, connect ideas, and come up with strategies to solve future problems. These questions should raise other issues in the mind of the students and should be questions that require repeated questioning. Inquiry to answer these essential questions will lead to the understandings of the course. Understandings should be stated as, “Students will understand that”….(Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Essential questions you will ask and your understanding goals along with competency codes
Acquisition
The acquisition part of the curriculum planner is where you determine the knowledge and skill goals that the student will strive to obtain to master the understanding and transfer goals. The knowledge and skills are not the end goals, just as drills in sports are not the end goal. Knowledge and skills should be effectively utilized throughout the course as building blocks. They should be carefully chosen to make sure that they fit the goals of the unit. These knowledge and skill goals should be written as “Students will know…” or “Students will be skilled at…” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).
Factual knowledge and skills that are required along with competency codes.
References
Wiggins, G. P., and McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wiggins, G and McTighe J (2012). The understanding by design guide to advanced concepts in creating and reviewing units (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Publishing.