Understanding by Design

            The reading about Understanding by Design was incredibly informative and helpful.  I think the idea of shaping learning by starting from the end is revolutionary.  The system requires teachers to be organized and know where they want their students to go and have developed a way to get there.  By doing this, teachers have the opportunity to listen for teachable moments and work them into the overall goal.  The author states that this method is also called planned coaching.  It is a system which allows teachers to follow their objectives and use their teaching tools (textbooks and projects) and methods to achieve these objectives.  Circular priorities (a fundamental concept of this framework) allow teachers and students to interact with the material in a meaningful way which goes far beyond meeting state-mandated objectives for learning.  It allows students to achieve enduring understanding instead of memorizing facts for assessment purposes.

            I had a teacher for literary criticism who worked his class in this way.  Instead of beginning by having us read about New Critical theory, he had us watch some video clips which helped the class understand where he planned for us to end up when the semester was finished.  He used the first two class meetings to get us acquainted with the much more complicated ideas behind post-modernism and worked his way backward.  Now, I know that UbD does not require teachers to start a unit from the end and work their way to the beginning of a chronological progression.  It is a planning framework which requires teachers to know where they will end up so students can grasp and try to answer the essential questions presented to them.  This teacher’s method of instruction simply reminded me of UbD.  He knew where he wanted us to end up and slowly introduced the material to us so we would not be caught off-guard by the involved material.