Book Review Understanding by Design

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd Ed). Prentice Hall.

I read and am reviewing the book Understanding By Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Wiggins and McTighe both worked successfully for many years as educational consultants around North America. Working together and on their own they began to address the idea of assessment and worked to design a plan which they feel will help teachers and students have a more authentic learning experience, and have an experiene that has a measurable goal in mind.

Thus the Understanding by Design(UBD) template and this book. I was first introduced to this concept in 2002 while working with a group of educators to create media literacy standards and sample lesson plans for North Dakota. We used the UBD template to create our lesson plans. At the time I had only been teaching a couple of years and the whole idea seemed crazy. Now after re-reading and revisiting the book and the idea, it seems extremely valuable.

First and most important before talking about any other part of the UBD template is the "essential question". Even if you have never heard of UBD or Wiggins and McTighe you have heard of the essential question. It is the kind of question that doesn't just elicit a yes or no answer but asks its answerer to dig deeper, to find the answer and to gain knowledge and skill while looking for the answer. If you read this book for no other reason, please read the section on essential questions!

Understanding by Design is often called backward design it is beginnign with the end in mind. As a teacher creating a unit on The Tragedy of Julius Caesar rather than figure out all the worksheets, study guides etc you will use to lead up to the test you will begin by listing the "enduring understandings" you want the students to have. I know it seems crazy but it does make sense. Was it Mary Poppins that said "begin with the end in mind"? By beginning with the enduring understandings--the one, two, or three ideas we want students to take away from the lesson and then building in activities to meet those understandings all parts of the lesson become more connected.

The next step is determining acceptable evidence. What activities can our students participate in to help them get to the essential understanding. This obviously looks different for every lesson, and may sometimes be the standard paper and pencil worksheet, but if you are really working toward all of your students reaching the essential understanding the learning activites woud provide a cornicopia of evidence, an essay, a web page, a collage, and a test might all work together as part of one unit and relate evidence of students achieving the essential understanding. Another point the authors make is that evidence should be collected over time and in many different ways.

The third step is to plan the learning experiences and instruction. In step two you decided what evidence you deemed as an acceptable demonstration of students grasp on the essential understandings. This third step is where many of us traditionally start our planning. What will our students read, write, watch, do in our lesson. Each item listed in this area should be able to be attached to one of the products that will demonstrate acceptable evidence. This could mean that it is background reading about the topic, it could be library research, it could be viewing a presentation of the play, but one thing is clear--if the activity cannot move students toward creating a work that demonstrates acceptable evidence of their essential understanding it does not belong in the lesson.

As I said earlier I did not fully appreciate this book the first time I was introduced to it. Now being given a second chance to work with the Wiggens and McTighe information and having ten years of teaching in my background has lead to a perfect storm of sorts for me. The authors lay out their idea in very simple to understand language, with explainations and also "misconception alrerts" at several stop points throughout the book. They acknowledge their skeptics and also do their best to explain, and then explain again, and then one more time how UBD works and why they feel it is successful. There are vignettes about how it could be and how it is being applied in classroom today.

I think especially in this day and age of many of us needing to be able to match our classroom work to a state or national standard at every turn using the UBD template for lesson design would allow for an easy synthesis. I personally have been struggling to find my way in the classroom, I have felt out of touch to some extent with my students, and have not felt good about what I was accomplishing the Understanding by Design book has given me a new lease on lesson planning and a reason to head back to school in August and give it another try!

If you have experience with UBD please share in the comments section, I hope to continue to share my experiences as I put UBD to work in my own classroom and I look forward to hearing from all of you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBt_GjOYXYM