SECTION A: Introduction
My name is Elaine M. Peters. I live in Caledon (one of three parts of Peel Region, which is comprised of Mississauga, Brampton, and Caledon), Ontario, Canada. Since 1990, I accumulated twelve years of entrepreneurial and professional adult education experience in the field of automated litigation support. I both sold specialized litigation support software and trained lawyers, law clerks, and other legal support staff in law firms as well as government and corporate legal departments the practical application of the litigation support software.
Upon my daughter’s first birthday, my professional focus changed as she was diagnosed with Global Non-specific Development Delay by doctors who had no training in diagnosing the characteristics of autism. It was my dissatisfaction with the segregated education system that prompted me to turn my energy and attention to child advocacy, not just in the education system, but in other social systems as well. From 2001 onward, once my daughter at the age of nine was diagnosed with moderately severe autism, I educated myself about autism and other challenges children, youth, and adults face when their processing and learning styles differ from those of people such as educators, administrators, and people in professional fields. I paid close attention to teaching methods and research-based instructional strategies that lead to higher levels of academic and cognitive function overall in general education classroom environments. In addition, I educated myself about the segregated education system, including special education in the region where I lived.
Throughout the second half of the first decade of the new millennium, I provided collaborative input to administrators, itinerant teachers, special education teachers, guidance counselors, and general education teachers in various educational setting. My suggestions focused on ways to differentiate curriculum and assessments to create an inclusive educational environment for students with significant learning needs, at-risk children and youth, as well as for some typically developing children and youth. Unfortunately, often my suggestions were not enacted, particularly those that make use of technology to assist learning. One possible reason for this could be attributed to a less than comfortable level of computer literacy on the part of many general and special education teachers. Perhaps if technologically shy teachers were more strongly encouraged by their school boards to pursue professional development to increase their technological knowledge and skill level, classroom use of assistive and augmentative technologies would increase, thereby equalizing a currently inequitable learning climate in most schools.
In addition, over the course of nine years, I assisted in the development of IEP goals, accommodations, and modifications to programs and activities based on individual children’s strengths and learning preferences. I provided one-on-one mentoring support to at-risk children and youth in both the school and community environments. I adjusted weekly activity plans to individual children’s age- and developmental readiness based on their interests and curiosity about particular topics.
The demography of my educational environment was based on the 2006 census data of Statistics Canada, included 39.6% visible minorities. The visible minorities included 4.9% Chinese, 45.4% South Asian, 29.6% black, 4.5% Filipino, 4.3% Latin American, 2.2% Southeast Asian, 1.6% Arab, .4% West Asian, .4% Korean, .5% Japanese, 4.1% physically or developmentally challenged, and 2.3% are described as multiple visible minority having physical or cognitive challenges and of minority ethnic origins (Statistics Canada, 2006).
I have seen and still see a “one size fits all” approach used by many teachers who do not understand how their own limited self-knowledge and knowledge about multiple intelligences and how to teach to various kinds of learners prevents them from differentiating instruction so that children who are predominantly visual and/or tactile-kinesthetic learners, for example, experience academic success. Rather, many teachers instruct and create activities and projects that are based on their own learning style(s), which tend to be verbal-linguistic and/or mathematical-logical, from a multiple intelligences perspective (Gregory and Chapman, 2002). Then, there are the fundamental elements required to construct a climate for learning within a classroom that get lost in an education systems’ demand for higher achievement based on standardized tests. Consequently, there is no room for accommodation or adaptation based on individual student’s needs, specifically, the basic “beliefs in and about human potential and in the ability of all children to learn and achieve” (Gregory and Chapman, 2002, p. 1).
SECTION B: Understanding by Design Self-Assessment Form
The UbD form is used to self-assess one’s Understanding by Design (UbD) for a curriculum unit. Referring to Figure 1.4 in the text by Wiggins & McTighe, 2005 for the complete UbD Design Standards guided the responses below. For each design standard the assessor describes a minimum of one strength and one weakness. In addition, the “suggestions” section was used to recommend ways the design could be improved. The writer must be as specific as possible in their assessment. This UbD curriculum unit was developed using an Anti-Bias Education/Curriculum perspective, which includes differentiating the curriculum, delivery of the curriculum, as well as the assessment.
Part 1
Design Standards
Self-Reflection about Stage One: To what extent does the design focus on the Big Ideas of content and frame the Big Ideas around Essential Questions (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p.28)? See Figure 1.4 in text for related questions to consider when assessing Stage One of the curriculum unit.
Strengths:
My UbD design Stage one targets durable understandings that are founded on the curriculum standards’ big ideas about the characteristics and needs of plants and animals, including humans, and how our environments are interconnected. The essential questions I posed were selected based on their tacitly inherent ability to ignite meaningful connections, elicit natural thoughtful inquiry, and encourage transfer in grade one children of a variety of academic readiness levels (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).
Weaknesses:
It is possible that I have identified too many thought provoking essential questions, hence a bit overwhelming at first glance for grade one students. However, modifications can be made to increase or decrease the scope and number of essential questions according to each student’s ability to connect, make thoughtful inquiries, and transfer their knowledge in concrete ways.
Suggestions:
I would chunk lesson specific essential questions to lessen any overwhelming feeling that may be brought on by having too many thought provoking essential questions. For example, I would post in large print matched with illustrations at the front of the class prior to a new lesson topic, those essential questions, such as, “What are our body senses? How can they help us understand the world around us?” which relate specifically to the first lessons surrounding the topics of body senses and body organs; followed by “What is a living thing? What is a non-living thing?” pertaining to the lesson about living vs non-living things.
Self-Reflection about Stage Two: To what extent do the assessments provide valid, reliable, and sufficient measures of the desired results (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p.28)? See Figure 1.4 in text for related questions to consider when assessing Stage Two of your unit.
Strengths:
The assessments are authentic performance tasks that will provide students of differing academic readiness levels opportunities to show their understandings of the big ideas and essential questions. The rubrics created as criterion-based scoring tools are appropriate for evaluating students’ products and performances. For example, the teacher-friendly rubric is very thorough and the student-friendly rubric outlines exactly what is expected of them as far as quality and accuracy, thus, encouraging students to self-assess. Both indicate thoughtful reflection was used in their creation to produce rubrics that provide evaluation criteria as well as feedback for both students and the teacher (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005).
Weaknesses:
The student-friendly rubric, as shown in my UbD, pages 18 – 20, is not ESL/ELL or low-level readers adapted. The rubric can be adapted/modified for learners of all types.
Suggestions:
The student-friendly rubric will be modeled daily for all students of all reading levels and abilities through computer options that include text to speech, text translation, peer expert one-to-one helpers, as well as teacher-student one-to-one scaffolded assistance with direct instruction.
Self-Reflection about Stage Three: To what extent is the learning plan effective and engaging (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p.28)? See Figure 1.4 in text for related questions to consider when assessing Stage Three of your unit.
Strengths:
The learning plan is organized in an effective and engaging way according to the big ideas, understandings, essential questions, and authentic performance tasks of the UbD. There are several varied and well thought out performance tasks and activities involving several levels of higher-order thinking throughout the learning plan created to capture students’ attention through their individual interests, processing strengths, and learning styles.
Weaknesses:
Thirty-three days is a long time for grade one students to stay focused on a unit topic. There may be issues of boredom that set in.
Suggestions:
To offset potential boredom on the part of either the students or teacher a large calendar that displays removable (velcro is wonderful for this) illustrations with a simple text descriptor the schedule of lessons, the when and how the unit is planned to progress will be displayed for all to see in the classroom. Once a learning topic is completed, student volunteers will be asked to place the removable illustration and its accompanying text descriptor on the Completed poster. This way, short term goals as well as what has been learned are kept visually present via a yet to come schedule and an all ready been there schedule.
Overall Design: To what extent is the entire unit coherent, with the elements of all three stages aligned (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p.28)?
The learning plan activities all circle back to the big ideas, understandings, essential questions, and authentic performance tasks. The performance tasks and learning activities build upon the big ideas, understandings, and essential questions. In addition, the rubrics address what the students will know and be able to do from stage one. There is also a good use of literacy activities to reinforce learning of the curriculum standards’ content.
Part 2: Explaining Design Decisions
For each stage of the UbD template, provide a brief explanation of your design decisions as indicated below. In particular, be sure to address the reasons for any elements or alignments in your plan that may not be evident to the outside reader.
Stage One: Desired Results
Reveal your thinking about why or how did you decided on the Goals, Understandings, Essential Questions, “Students will know,” “Students will be able to,” and how they are aligned.
When deciding on the Goals for stage one of my UbD, I first analyzed, also known as unpacking, the curriculum expectation standards of the Ontario Ministry of Education for Grade one students regarding the science topic of Needs and Characteristics of Plants and Animals, including human beings (OME, 2010). The Understandings and Essential Questions were based on the goals I unpacked from the content standards; and written in developmentally appropriate language for grade one students. The section, “What Students will know” and “be able to do” was derived from the Understandings and Essential Questions so that there is coherence between them.
Stage Two: Assessment – Determine the Evidence
Reveal your thinking about why or how you decided on your performance tasks, other evidence, and strategies for student self-assessment and reflection. Comment on any difficulties you encountered with the Assessment Task Blueprint or the Rubric.
The performance tasks and other evidence such as various selected-response items with reasons for choices and some constructed-response items designed as developmentally appropriate according to individual students’ academic readiness by using not just verbal-linguistically traditional methods of testing, but also technological and/or kinesthetic-tactile options as a means of assessment. Moreover, I chose assessment evidence means that are flexible for various levels of academic readiness and are of high interest to children when there is inclusion of personal choices based on individual interests, processing strengths, and learning styles. The assessments chosen also frame the overall goals of the UbD in terms of transferability through concrete and applicableness to real-life scenarios that the students will connect to through class field trips, and, hopefully, throughout other situations in their lives.
Difficulties I encountered with the Assessment Task Blueprint and Rubric were centered on my requiring further and deeper knowledge about the content of what the needs and characteristics of plants and animals, including humans and how they all are so interdependent on each other as well as what might be implied criteria rather than the obvious criteria of content knowledge and applicable skills specific to the unit requirements. Through feedback from other learners in the course, course readings, and research specific to the unit’s content, I gained a deeper insight into what constitutes both implied and overt criteria and skills. It truly took much time, energy, and planning to disseminate the knowledge of the content into the UbD design including authentic performance tasks, rubrics, and assessment task blueprint. Many revisions were accomplished over the entire nine week period spent on the design process. For example, the learning plan itself had to fit within a time period of four and a half weeks, cohere to the goals, understandings, and essential questions, as well as what students would know and be able to do by the end of the unit. This reality caused me to reconsider which authentic performance tasks to keep as well as the order in which they were presented within the learning unit.
Stage Three: Learning Plan
Reveal your thinking about why or how you decided on the WHERETO teaching and learning activities.
Deciding on the WHERETO teaching and learning activities was a journey in itself; a journey of researching a variety of high interest activities practiced by expert teachers in education and naturalist fields, in many provinces and states; then choosing what I felt comfortable using in my learning plan with my own personal changes to make them uniquely my own. In effect, I stood on the shoulders of others to create something new that will evolve as it is practiced and refined over time.
The W activities incorporated one or more answers related to the Where to, Why learn it and/or Why do it, and/or Where from (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). The learning activities I included as H should create a hook, an interest for children personally in which their natural curiosity is stimulated due to connections they can make with their own lives, or something that is mysterious to them. Many activities I include in the learning plan are of the E for Equip type that will provide practice and experience for each student to be able to do the culminating authentic performance task of the unit, the research booklet. In addition, I planned for activities that provide students with the opportunities to Rethink, Reflect, and Revise their projects/assignments/creations as well as E2, Self-Evaluate, as these skills are important to develop to become reflective and evolving higher-level thinking adults (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). Finally, the activities I included in the learning plan can all be tailored, T, to meet individual students’ academic readiness, processing and learning styles through research-based differentiation and learning strategies, computer and/or kinesthetic-tactile options for both the activities and assessments (Marzano et al, 2001; Tomlinson, 2005). The organization, O, of all three stages of the UbD design unit flow together such that each stage provides support for the one before it as well as for the stage that follows it. All three stages are interconnected and developed further by the learning plan in a sequence of logical, yet interesting, hands-on experiences.
Overall Design: Alignment and Coherence
Comment on issues of alignment or coherence that you found difficult. Explain why these issues were challenging. To what extent did you need to revise and rethink your unit during the development process? Review your responses to Part 1. What have you learned from your strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions? What would you do differently the next time you design instruction using the Understanding by Design framework?
The two areas of the UbD I found the most useful, relevant, and easy to align coherently were stages one and two. Stage one facilitated me learning how curriculum standards align, or should align, with children’s learning, and the types of assessments that are the most effective and why. Also, establishing the big ideas, the desired results/goals, understandings, essential questions, as well as what students would know and be able to do by the end of the unit was a fabulous process for vividly envisioning the ultimate end result an educator should have for all students in their classroom. Stage two was useful, relevant, and easy to align coherently with stage one for me because it provided a way of planning specific, flexible authentic performance assessment methods that truly show what a student, even those who have learning strengths in intelligences other than verbal-linguistic and mathematical-logical, has understood and where their understandings may require bolstering, rather than the traditional pencil to paper methods.
Aligning the learning activities with stage one and two I found more difficult as I had to sift through much more material to narrow down the lessons that were essential to teaching and guiding students through the practice they would require to do the performance task assessments, selected-response items with reasons for choices, constructed-response items, and other evidence assessments. Once I chose the lessons that would lead to the authentic performance tasks, I found I had to remove some performance assessments due to time constraints, and rearrange others to cohere with the sequence of learning activities such as the My Body Has Senses!, which I moved to the first in the list of performance tasks from its original second place location. It made more sense for students to begin learning about how they use their body senses to obtain information about their environment and the things in their environment, prior to focusing on what constitutes a living thing, seeing as one should be conscious of one’s senses to see, hear, smell, and feel before one can determine if something is alive or not.
After reviewing my responses to part 1, I learned that I had a greater understanding of how curriculum standards, lesson planning, and assessments are so deeply interconnected. Furthermore, I learned how their interconnectedness should be utilized to build flexible research-based instructional lessons and assessments that meet each child where they are developmentally and academically.
When I use the UbD again, I would spend more time organizing the Ministry of Education curriculum standards from other subjects for a better overall view of those standards in order to create cross-curricular unit plans. Being as there are so many standards that cover a vast area of information from so many subject areas, and that it is critical for children to learn by the end of a particular unit skills and knowledge that will help them to be productive and empathetic citizens, it would therefore, be beneficial to interconnect the standards from each subject area. This would probably also be a more efficient and effective way to teach, especially if the lesson plans and assessments are created collaboratively between educators with input from parent(s)/guardian(s), students, as well as community members.
In addition, I would have spent less time on the small details of the lesson plans because it is not always the details that make the difference in the implementation of the lesson but the flexibility with which the lesson can be carried out. Rather, the framework of the lesson and preparatory items would be my focus next time through, and in collaboration with other educators, the students, and of course, parents/guardians and community members. Lastly, I would spend more time devising means to track student assessment outcomes to inform further instruction, thus, helping students overcome any misconceptions they may have about the curriculum content.
[Adapted from McTighe, J. & Wiggins, G. (2004). Understanding by design professional development workbook. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.]
Reflective Synthesis
I re-took the Self-Assessment for Understanding by Design, the pre-assessment for which was originally completed the week of April 19, 2010. My degree of expertise in the elements of Using Concept-Based, Inquiry Curriculum, Designing Concept-Based, Inquiry Curriculum, Using Essential Questions, Designing Essential Questions, Using Performance Tasks, Designing Performance Tasks, Using Scoring Rubrics, and Designing Scoring Rubrics had all significantly improved to approximately the half-way to Expert level. I acknowledge humbly that more practice is needed before I would say I was 100% comfortable designing learning units using the UbD process. However, it is an excellent process that has deepened my understanding of backward planning using a structured, linear approach.
My learning and curriculum design preferences in my educational setting showed varied changes. For example, I perceived myself as designing curriculum more alone than collaboratively because school educators and administrators are still reluctant to use computer technology to accommodate students’ assessment needs. For their own comfort reasons, they were fine with allowing students with significant challenges to rely on a teaching assistant while taking pencil and paper tests, a reality that is impossible for me to reconcile and accept because this approach encourages dependency and diminishes self-efficiency and self-esteem.
However, I am now able to follow a structured, sequential process that is directly accounted for by the authentic performance task of using the Wiggins and McTighe (2005) UbD template. Because of using the UbD template, I trust my own instincts about my work more, though not completely, than I did when I initially completed the Self-Assessment for Understanding by Design as a pre-assessment, which was eight weeks prior to beginning the process of designing the curriculum unit using the UbD form.
Furthermore, the only opinions I found that I had changed over the eight weeks of UbD include the statements: 1. Most teachers are not highly skilled as designers [i.e. for all children], to which I now Strongly Agree rather than just Agree; 2. There is a strong belief among educators that mandates limit our ability to design well and teach for understanding to which I now Agree rather than Disagree [mainly because I became more aware of how much unrelenting desire to help students succeed academically is required in the design process that demands review, reflection, and revising]; and lastly, 3. I am aware of what is considered “best practice” for my area of responsibility, i.e. grade-level, content-area to which I Strongly Agree rather than just Agree, as my experience unpacking curriculum standards into their big ideas and core tasks had increased my level of understanding in this area.
Thus, I am more cognizant of the need for planning using a structured, sequential process. My awareness of different learning styles has increased. And my understanding of implementation of differentiated instruction from an educator’s perspective had become amplified. In addition, I learned the importance of the six facets of understanding as integral components of instruction and assessment (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005):
Six Facets of Understanding:
- explain:
Students provide thorough and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data. - interpret:
Students tell meaningful stories, offer apt translations, provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make subjects personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models. - apply:
Students effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse contexts. - have perspective:
Students see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture. - empathize:
Students find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior indirect experience. - have self-knowledge (through self-reflection):
Students perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; they are aware of what they do not understand and why understanding is so hard.
And without the effective modelling of these six facets of understanding by the classroom teacher, students will have difficulty attaining higher standards of success in each facet.
Within the eight weeks of UbD instruction I had seen somewhat of an improvement in learner motivation and achievement in my educational environment through feedback by colleagues who were in daily contact with the same students as me.
Following my review of my second and fourth journal entries, I found my perspectives on assessment had expanded as a direct result of having to create authentic differentiated performance tasks with a teacher- and student-friendly rubric. Thus, I had developed a deeper understanding of the process of designing assessments that truly provided students with a means to show their understandings and knowledge in simulated and/or real-life situations. The challenging aspect of assessment was developing a rubric that aligned with the Ontario Ministry of Education Curriculum Expectations. I had to add a non-performance level to both the teacher- and student-friendly rubrics with corresponding criteria, an uncomfortable experience as I am prone to optimism and I have seen too many criteria and performance levels written with a pessimistic slant.
In my educational environment, as mentioned earlier, individually meaningful, instructionally supportive assessments were for the most part missing as teachers are embedded in traditional practices with which they are comfortable and which engage students with the same learning and processing styles as themselves, bolstering up verbal-linguistic and/or mathematical-logical intelligences, rather than the six other multiple intelligences that up to one third of students prefer to use (Gregory and Kuzmich, 2004). As for me, much of what I had practiced as far as instructionally supportive assessments I still used, but with greater awareness of individual differences in processing preferences. Therefore, I provided more options for learning and showing learning that were student-driven based on their individual processing and learning styles. I was, therefore, much more mindful about what choices I presented to a child based on what I learned about the importance of authentic differentiated performance task assessments.
After reviewing my third journal entry, the questions that emerged centered around how I could affect change to entrenched habits of instruction among educators who were taught in a system that supported the behaviorist concept of learning such that students must first attain building blocks of skills before any deeper, bigger picture learning can take place rather than the cognitive approach where meaning and learning are constructed through conversation, and real-life or simulated experiences of inquiry, review, reflection, and revision (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). What kind of meaningful encouragement could I provide to educators to differentiate instruction for the variety of learners in their classrooms? How could I explain to educators in a way that I would be heeded? How could I explain effectively why it is important to give students opportunities to choose how they show what they know and understand? I found myself thinking about and developing essential questions based on the Ontario curriculum standards, which is something I originally did not practice. I see this as another step in my own development as someone with a strong interest in human development and potential.
References
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