Another level of learning…

By nature, I am a planner (no surprises there), but much to my dismay, after reading about Backward Design planning, it dawned on me the process I had been following for the majority of lessons I planned thus far were in actuality not designed following any type of plan. Instead, what I had been doing was simply filled in the blanks making sure key elements that had to be included in the lesson plan were included. My thought process was engaged and my plans were not bad, purpose, goals and objectives, process of instruction, and assessment were all there. The difference was they generally do not have much depth and I wondered now if the students learned much.

Another eye opener for me was when I read the example lesson plan for the unit on “Apples” in the Introduction of the book, I was impressed with the description of all the activities that were planned and was even thought to myself how those related activities were good examples of interdisciplinary connections. When Wiggins and McTighe noted that the lesson was an activity-oriented design that was “hands-on without being minds-on”, I went back and reread it using the 3 stages of Backward design as an evaluation criteria. Immediately, I saw that it was a lesson with a lot of fluff with very little substance to promote meaningful learning. I have to admit that I was disappointed in myself that the fluff “hooked” me.

The only time I used a process to design a lesson that was most similar to Backward Design planning was in the Science course from Summer Session I. We were required to plan a lesson using the 5 E plus lesson plan format. The planning process followed closely with the Backward Design planning stages where objectives and assessments were established first before the learning activities were planned. That plan was not easy to develop. In addition to length of time involved, a lot of research for subject content had to be conducted. I do have to say though, having to establish first the objectives and assessments made planning learning activities much easier and the research time spent was in fact very rewarding. I now have more knowledge about the Human Skeletal system than I care to admit. Science, a subject I never had much interest, now has more appeal to me because of the time I spent in boneing up my own knowledge.

The 3 planning stages of Backward Design planning makes perfect sense to me. Until the desired outcome to instruction is clearly defined and measurement of learning established to make certain what the teacher set out to teach was indeed learned through meaningful activities aligned to objectives and assessment, a lesson plan will not have much depth. I like the Backward Design planning process. Much time will be required to think through and develop the Big Idea for the lesson. However, once an end result is clearly established, I am convinced the rest of the planning will follow. It will be a challenge for me, but I look forward to developing a whole unit of lessons.