Understanding by Design

After reading about Understanding by Design and Backward Design, I have a better idea of how I can effectively plan units and lessons.  It makes sense to begin with identifying what I want students to learn, then find evidence that can support this learning, and finally decide what activities and experiences will help my students learn.  This semester, some of the topics in my education classes have been overlapping, which has been beneficial. One example of this overlap was using backward design to help me in a unit outline assignment that I had to complete this week for SED 406.  I learned in 406 that objectives and assessments should be aligned. Using the backward design approach from this week’s reading, I was able to first decide how I wanted to assess students on a unit, then specify the objectives for the unit, and finally plan what would be done each day during the unit.

            After completing the unit outline assignment in SED 406, Dr. Kraus gave me feedback on an objective that stated “Students will understand Mendel’s experiments and how they led to his principles of inheritance”.  He said that the word understand should not be used in an objective.  After reading about understanding by design, I came to realize why I should not have used the word understand in my objective.  In Module F of the reading, the author discusses that understandings “are not teachable facts. Understandings are inherently abstract, usually not obvious, sometimes counter intuitive, and possibly misunderstood by students,” (pg. 81). Therefore, understanding something cannot be assessed or measured.  Students can learn facts, but in order to understand something, the facts must mean something to the student. Understandings are important in designing a unit; however they are too broad to be used in a more specific objective of the unit.