Table Of Content
When developing your course within a Backward Design framework, it is important to map out your course learning objectives, assessments, and learning activities and instructional materials to ensure alignment across the elements. We suggest using CATE’s Course Map Planning Document to guide your progress. Once the assessments are aligned to the intended learning outcomes, the job of in-class instruction becomes much clearer.
Rigid Framework
So if we re-do this unit plan with backward design, we’ll need to start by developing an assessment that would measure success with that standard. I was first introduced to this concept in my sixth year of teaching, and the genius of it completely blew me away. I used it when planning my next unit and experienced the biggest spike in student success I’d ever seen. On top of that, I was actually excited about teaching the lessons I had planned. For the first time, it felt like none of my class was wasted; everything actually mattered. There was something a lot more satisfying about doing things this way.
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Critical Race Theory concerns aired to school board.
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If you’ve never heard of backwards design or see it being used then it is because most of the time people are using a traditional approach. The traditional design approach is the exact opposite- the process starts at the front and works its way to the end. When we first begin the process of building our online course, we are overwhelmed by all the different ways to begin the process. We know the content so well and have taught the material many times but suddenly we get stuck when planning the course.
Understanding the Benefits for Students
Some states in the U.S., like Massachusetts and North Carolina, even began incorporating elements of Backward Design into their educational standards. In the simplest terms, Backward Design is like planning a treasure hunt. Instead of starting with the first clue, you begin by planting the treasure—your final learning goal. Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions. By making this approach part of our regular practice, we’ll be able to look back on a day, a week, or a year of teaching and say with a lot more certainty that when they were under our care, our students learned. With a good rubric in place, we then work backwards to determine what lessons students need to do excellent work on the final assessment.
Step two: Set assessment methods
Two heads are always better than one, so after you’ve taken the time to thoughtfully backwards design a lesson, after you teach it, the next step is to collaborate with a colleague. Debriefing about what worked and didn’t during the instruction will help you improve the lesson even more for next time you teach it. It may also help you realize you need to put on the brakes and tweak some things in the lesson to make it more accessible so that when it comes time for an exit ticket, more than two kids actually meet the standard. You can also think about the prerequisite skills students need in order to achieve the objective. This lesson would have looked very different with some backwards design! I can’t imagine you will not find the process useful and increase the cohesiveness of your lesson plans.
And it is easier to create the final assessment as soon as the goals are made. Traditional assessments were often an exam that included multiple-choice questions and matching (read easy to grade!). Bloom’s Taxonomy is a great tool in helping to identify action verbs appropriate for measurement. An integration of “backwards planning” unit design with the “two-step” lesson planning framework – This article takes a look at the process of backwards planning in a detailed case study of a math class.
I’m a social studies teacher, so my examples reflect that content — sorry math and science teachers! In the past, classroom instruction has focused on the instructor and the ways in which the subject matter could best be presented to the student. In the first stage of backward design, instructors identify what students should know, understand, and be able to do by the end of the course, lesson or module. With this detailed set of ILOs, we see exactly how the three general ILOs in the first section will be measured. Relatively immeasurable outcomes (e.g., “Gain an appreciation…”) are analyzed into the homework and exam tasks through which students can show that they have gained such an appreciation. This second set of ILOs also provides much more detail, specificity, and measurability.
Bloom’s Taxonomy: The Ultimate Guide [Free Download]
Backward design takes a learner-centered approach to course design, facilitating the creation of more cohesive, clear, and intentional learning experiences for students. A learner-centered approach goes beyond engaging students in content and works to ensure that students have the resources and scaffolding necessary to fully understand the lesson, module, or course. Once you have worked through the three steps of backward design, you should make sure that all elements (objectives, assessments, learning activities, and instructional materials) align with each other. Your learning outcomes should be achievable for the students in your class and achievable in the time allotted to your subject. Crafting realistic learning outcomes requires some understanding of students’ prior knowledge and skills in your subject. In this model, traditional classroom activities and homework assignments are reversed.
Backwards Design Step One: Effective Learning Objectives
This learner-centered focus makes it a powerful approach for modern education, where student engagement and outcomes are increasingly emphasized. This method is rooted in the constructivist theories of educators like Jean Piaget. Like Backward Design, Inquiry-Based Learning encourages higher-order thinking skills.
Instructional strategies are the teaching methods by which you present new information to your students. Methods can include teacher-centered approaches like demonstrations or lectures, or student-centered approaches like peer discussion and inquiry-based learning. What do you want students to know or be able to do at the end — explain how cells work? Backward lesson design begins with identifying a specific desired outcome. In the classroom, I found that this resulted in far too much focus on content, rather than having students work and exhibit their own understanding. A natural result of that much content was significant “sage on the stage” time, with lectures replacing what should have been active lessons.
Unlike Backward Design, which is highly structured around pre-set objectives and assessments, Montessori is far more exploratory and driven by the student's own interests. Backward Design is a way of planning lessons or training sessions by starting with the end goal in mind. Imagine planning a road trip by first thinking about the destination, and then figuring out all the best stops and routes along the way. Use specific action verbs to express exactly the kinds of skills you want your students to develop. Ensure that various, appropriate levels of challenge are represented in your outcomes so you can measure how close students are to achieving the learning goal. You might wonder what the true difference is between traditional and backward design lesson plans.
Let’s say a teacher had just finished teaching a place value lesson and was preparing to give her students the exit ticket. She had written a variety of digits on the board and asked the students to create two six-digit numbers, compare them, and then write it out in word form. It was an exit ticket based on the lesson she’d taught previously, and it was appropriate for the lesson, but she didn’t take into consideration the students in the classroom. Most of the students were struggling with reading and writing the number so they couldn’t complete the place value exit ticket.
Think of your plan as a "course skeleton" rather than as a detailed roadmap. Be prepared to review the columns for alignment, move things around, and update your Course Plan as needed as you progress through each step. Join the more than 100,000 creators who use Teachable to share their knowledge. Easily create and sell courses, coaching, and digital downloads with our powerful yet simple no-code platform. In theory, this will mean that every test your students take is relevant and helpful and shows them exactly what they do and do not need to do in order to pass your course.
