Backward Design Unit

Backward Design:

This semester I planned my first backward design unit on rocks and minerals.  This was definitely a learning experience. There were times when I felt great about how my students responded and learned using this structure and there were times when I felt myself go back to explicit instruction (I know a balance is needed but it was interesting how easy it was to go back to old ways).

Planning with the standards:

I have become better at planning with the standards over the last few years. With this unit I knew exactly what I needed to cover but I thought of it more like how can I present these ideas so the kids discover and explore these ideas. When I plan with the standards in mind I feel like I know what path to take and stay more on track to cover certain information.

Utilizing Essential Questions and impact:

The essential questions were new to me and this is an area I would like to do better with next time. I presented the questions to my students at the beginning of the unit and we started off with a discussion. I felt like since I posed these ideas as questions my students were more engaged in discussions and ideas because I was asking for their input instead of just presenting big ideas. I also felt like my students knew it was ok to ask more questions about what we were learning and at times it was ok to go off on a tangent (still within the topic of rocks) and I encouraged it. I found my students asking more questions because I was posing questions to them. One thing I would like to work on next time is continually going back to the questions and adding more ideas and building off of previous thoughts.

Creating assessment prior to teaching:

Since I created the assessments before, I knew and had a better plan for what I was going to teach and what activities I was going to do.  I knew I had to teach certain ideas before they could do some of the assessments. For a few of my assessments my students had to take what we learned and build off of it. They knew before the assessment that they would have to use their own ideas to create a book about the rock cycle. We had a brainstorming session and then I let them create their own. I was surprised how creative and thorough they were while still showing what they knew about the rock cycle.

Comparing BD to planning without the end in mind:

While creating a unit using the backward design structure I felt each of my lessons were connected and more focused around one or two ideas. We continually came back to similar ideas and made connections to what we had learned a few days ago. When I’ve taught lessons without using BD I felt my lessons were very isolated and didn’t build connections to other lessons.  My BD unit also gave more time for student input rather than me presenting information. Since I posed our lessons in question form or started out with essential questions, the students were able to tell me what they know or have learned.