Understanding by Design and the NESD

1. Understanding by Design and the NESD June 20 and August 29, 2012

2. Big Idea Constructing knowledge is the foundation of all learning.

3. Purpose The purpose of today is to: • Develop an awareness of renewed curriculum direction • Construct an understanding of Understanding by Design (UbD) as a planning process and how it impacts instruction and assessment • Examine the work of the NESD and how this work can assist you in actualizing the renewed curricula

4. Agenda 9:00 – 9:45 Welcome, Motivational Set, Activating Prior Knowledge 9:45 – 10:30 Curriculum Renewal UbD Stage One 10:30 – 10:45 Nutrition break 10:45 – 12:00 UbD Stage One Continued UbD Stage Two 12:00 – 12:45 Lunch 12:45 – 1:50 UbD Stage Two Continued 1:50 – 2:00 Nutrition break 2:00 – 2:30 UbD Stage Three 2:30 – 3:00 NESD Supports, Parking Lot and Reflection

5. Mileage forms • Please fill out • Attach your mailing address

6. Motivational set

7. Find someone to work with who does not work at the same school as you. • Look at the package of student exemplars. Carefully read one or two and scan the others. • What grade did these exemplars emerge from? • What time of year do you think they were written? Does this matter? • How much will learning have progressed for these students by the end of grade twelve? In what areas? How do you know?

8. Renewed curricula and our work together in the NESD has helped us to clarify answers to these questions.

9. Activating prior knowledge

10. Pair-Share (Formative assessment) • Forming groups: Stand up and arrange yourselves in a line according to hair length. • Based on your order, form pairs. • In pairs, generate statements of understanding about the following topics (write one idea per sticky note): • Understanding by Design (UbD) or Backwards Planning • Components of renewed curricula (what has changed) • Assessment and reporting

11. Join with another pair to make a group of four. Share your ideas/ thoughts. • Consider questions your group still has. • Be prepared to share two questions with the larger group to add to our Parking Lot.

12. Curriculum Renewal

13. Industrial Model • Students are processed in batches • All are processed at same rate • Preset curriculum delivered to all in bite sized pieces in a preset order • Skills: • Punctuality • Following instructions • Recognizing the authority of the • supervisor • Working on monotonous tasks for a long period of time

14. Understanding 21st Century World New Competencies: The world our students will enter into is a world we cannot imagine right now. The information they will need is information we do not even have. Therefore, importance shifts to: • Learning how to learn • Problem solving • Teamwork

15. Curriculum walk • Find a partner who has brought a different curricular document from the one you have. • Look through the documents, and on a sticky note, identify similarities in both documents. • Be prepared to share.

16. Key Elements of Curricula • Broad Areas of Learning (BAL) • Cross-curricular Competencies (CCC) • Outcomes and Indicators • Active Construction of Meaning • Inquiry Based Learning • Deeper Understanding • Higher Level Questioning • Metacognition

17. Curricular Alignment

19. First Nations, Métis, and Inuit • Outcomes and indicators have been written to make First Nations, Métis, and Inuit ways of knowing, knowledge, and perspectives foundational in the curriculum • Resources are evaluated and recommended with a conscious effort to be inclusive and reflect this foundation

20. Implications for Teaching and Learning • Focus on strategies • Shift from what we are teaching to what students are learning • Continuous assessment and adjustment • Holding back on telling “the right answer” • Willingness to say “I’m not sure” • Starting with and returning to the big picture • Open and probing questions • Inquiry and learning for deep understanding takes time.

21. Previous documents New documents • Grade 8 ELA – 247 objectives • Revise final drafts to ensure that each paragraph has a topic sentence, a body and a concluding sentence. • Grade 8 ELA – 19 outcomes • Appraise own and other’s work for clarity, correctness, and variety.

22. Previous documents New documents • Grade 9 Science – 91 objectives • Identify parallel branches and series branches within a circuit. • Grade 9 Science – 15 outcomes • Analyze the relationships that exist among voltage, current, and resistance in series and parallel circuits.

23. New curricula invites the question, “Why?” • Why do we teach dance? What do we hope students will gain from engaging in this learning experience? • Why do we revise our communication before publishing and sharing it? What do we hope students will gain from revising their work? • Why do we invite students to explore electricity? How will this help them to understand their world? What can we learn from exploring relationships in science?

24. WA 10.10 Apply proportional reasoning to solve problems involving unit pricing and currency exchange. Example #1

25. Why this outcome? Money is a symbol that represents value. The value of money is not fixed; it is variable. What factors impact the value of money? Unit pricing speaks to the persuasive power of numbers eg. $3.99 vs $4.00

26. Quick think • Consider: • Which aspects of the information so far is news to you? • Which aspects are old news?

27. Understanding by design

28. Why Understanding by Design? • Curriculum is designed by UbD • Inquiry is inherent in process • It is a process by which we can come to understand the curriculum • Encourages higher level thinking • Encourages deep understanding and demonstration of understanding. • UbD is based on outcomes and indicators • Unpacking process explicitly uncovers what students need to know, do and ultimately, come to understand as a result of this knowing and doing • Assists in the continuum of learning across grades

29. Three Stages of UbD • Stage One – Unpacking the outcomes (Direct curriculum focus) • Stage Two – Assessment (Tools and Events) • Stage Three – Learning Plan and Reflection (Inquiry, Instructional Strategies, Learning Strategies, Differentiated Instruction, Environment, Motivational Set and Continuous Engagement)

30. UbD Stage One Unpacking the outcomes

31. Outcomes and Indicators FOCUS IS ON LEARNING • An outcome is a statement of what students are expected to know and be able to do by the end of a course in a particular area of study. Outcomes are not optional. • Indicators represent the breadth and the depth of the outcome and are representative of what students need to know and/or be able to do in order to achieve an outcome. • Doctor example

32. Why unpack outcomes? • To fully understand what is required of students to understand the outcome… • To determine what teachers need to know to help students demonstrate their understanding of the outcome. • To invite teachers to design personal, powerful learning and assessment experiences that will engage students and help students learn the outcome. To Clearly See the Learning Destination!

34. Triangulation

35. Big Ideas • A Big Idea or Big Question (it can be formed as either a statement or a question) is big enough and important enough that we would hope our students continue to reflect on it for their entire lives. It is also big enough to likely be explored in more than one subject area and could be part of classroom discussions and reflection for the entire year.

36. Essential Questions • Essential Questions are also important questions that should prompt many answers and deep reflection. These kinds of questions should remain important for months at a time and will probably lead to connections for students in future learning. They often link to the curriculum and ask students to reflect on why the various outcomes are important. In a unit of study, there will be several essential questions that frame student learning

37. Enduring Understandings • Enduring understandings are similar to essential questions in their depth. They are statements of understanding we hope students will come to as a result of the learning experiences they have in our classes. They, too, link more directly to the curriculum and the reasons for exploring the outcomes. They often begin with, “Students will understand that…” There should be several enduring understandings we hope students come to in a single unit of study.

38. Previous examples Essential Questions Questions to invite thinking. • When do you use capital letters? • What is an improper fraction? • What is the definition of democracy? • What is an invertebrate? • How does message impact craft, word choice and structure of texts? • How do I know how to revise? • How can different numbers show the same amount? • Can undemocratic practices exist in a democratic society? • How does classifying organisms help us make predictions?

39. Module 1 Outcome: apply principles and techniques for unintentional injury prevention to ensure safe work performance in the welding area. • Do: Demonstrate the proper procedure when reporting an unintentional injury. • Know: 1) How to recognize an injury 2)Places in the shop where injury is most likely to occur. • Understand: 1) That critically analyzing potential risks everyday prevents injury 2) That analyzing risks takes time and consideration. • Essential questions: 1) How can I prevent injury? 2) Why should I take time to examine my environment?

40. RW 7.1: Explain the role of barter, trade, and sharing in traditional economies in Canada and the circumpolar and Pacific Rim countries. • Do: Describe local community examples of barter/trade/sharing • Know: Definition of barter, trade, share, resource, industry; details of local community commerce • Understand: That barter, trade and sharing were the basis of traditional economies and they are still part of our modern economy. • Essential question: 1) How has bartering, trading and sharing affected economies in the past and present? 2) How can I recognize them?

41. Nutrition break

42. English Language Arts • There are some additional supports available to assist with the planning in this subject area. • There are steps that we take prior to thinking about knows, dos and understands  we need to create contexts for thinking about these elements of UbD • The outcomes don’t quite tell us enough.

43. Group think • Together let’s examine the given outcome and practice determining know, do, understand and essential questions.

44. Debrief • What are the most straightforward parts? • What are the most challenging parts? • What comes directly from the curriculum? • What aspects of unpacking are not directly from the curriculum?

45. Working with what is already there • In your groups, look at an outcome that is already unpacked. • Compare it to the outcome in the curriculum. • Where did the information come from? • What does an unpacking sheet allow you to do? How does it inform your practice?

47. UbD Stage Two Assessment

48. Two considerations • Assessment Tool – in the NESD, we have primarily adopted a rubric as the preferred tool. It is based directly on the outcomes. • Assessment Event – the many ways the outcome can be measured.

49. NESD Belief Understanding is not yes or no; it is a matter of degree. It is a continuum!

50. Rubrics… • Clarify the learning destination before day-to-day planning occurs through establishing criteria. • Help students to see exactly where the learning is headed. • Can be used formatively as well as summatively. • Articulate how learning can continue.