UBD: Understanding by Design

        After reading UBD there was a lot to take in! Understanding by Design at first seems really hard but once you look at it and break down the pieces it really doesn't look it. Of course saying its isn't hard and then actually trying to do it are two completely different things.  UBD forces the teacher to think about what it is you really want students to know and get out of your class. It also forces you to think about what things can students just have a general idea about and what you want them to really grasp. You work backwards when it comes to planning . You identify the desired results first, then you find evidence, and then you lesson plan. UBD breaks it down further to establishing curricular priorities and separating the content into three circles; "enduring' understanding, important to know and do, and worth being familiar with. Something I thought was really important was that UBD wants teachers to think of assessment before even designing specific units or lessons. We come back to this question of what we want students to learn and get out of this class, the way we are going to see what they know is through assessment. UBD stresses the point of having a continuum of assessment methods and to think about different ways of doing it to know if the students have achieved the desired results. The part that I found most interesting about the reading was on p. 15, which shows how certain types of assessment go with certain curricular priorities. I think this type of teaching really does make sense, if you plan what you want your students to know, then make find evidence, then lesson plan you can decide before the lesson is made what you can leave out or what you need to include more of (in terms of content).