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Backward Design
Beginning With The End in Mind to |
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Backward Design Overview & FAQs
Backward design begins with the end in mind: What enduring understandings do I want my students to develop? How will my students demonstrate their understanding when the unit is completed? How will I ensure that students have the skills and understand the concepts required on the summative assessment?
These are the kinds of questions that teachers pose at the earliest stages of the backward design planning process. By beginning with the end in mind, teachers are able to avoid the common pitfall of planning forward from activity to activity, only to find that some students are prepared for the final assessment while others are not. Using backward design, teaching for understanding, and requiring students to apply and demonstrate their learning are not new concepts. Many of the best teachers have been using this approach, even if they didn't have a name for it. The resources on these linked web pages attempt to explain the backward design planning process and show how it can be used to design thematic, multi-genre units that promote enduring understanding.
Some Frequently Asked
Questions &
Question: Why is it called Backward Planning? Answer: In theory and practice, the unit begins at the end. Sound like a paradox? Not really. It is based on the concept that both the students and teacher will have a much firmer and clearer grasp of where the learning is going if the goal or summative assessment is clearly articulated right from the beginning. By starting with a focus on the enduring understandings that you want your students to learn and apply, then developing how you will know how and when they have reached that understanding, the steps between will be carefully scaffolded to reach that objective. Teachers are designers; we need to ask and answer the following questions before we move to the actual day-to-day lessons:
What is Essential to know and be able to do?
What is important to know and
do?
In other words, what knowledge is worth understanding?
Question: What are the basic steps to the backward design planning process? Answer: The steps to this process are listed below and explained in detail on the linked pages (see the menu to the left):
Question: How can I design an assessment before I teach a unit? Answer: Yes, this is a major paradigm shift for many of us. To be able to do this, you need to decide on what is essential for students to know; what is at the core or "heart" of your discipline and then decide how you will know when students have reached that goal. So, designing your assessment is a necessary piece that must occur in the beginning to give both you and your students a clear destination for the unit. Once the destination is clear, the teacher is able to create the best roadmap to get there.
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