Backward Design

I was first introduced to the idea of backwards design during my education class for my BS.  I didn't know that was what the teachers were doing, but I now recognize that was what they were doing.  Every day, we would answer three multiple test questions individually and discuss the answers as a class.  These questions were then compiled to form our final test.  The only rule they had was we couldn't write the question down word for word.  You would think that everyone would get 100% but we didn't.  I think that I tried to learn the concepts better because I knew what we were suppose to focus on and what was expected.  It took a lot of the guess work and stress out of the class.

I also had an English teacher that interlinked her small assignments.  At the end of the semester, we needed to have a major research paper.  By the time we were officially assigned the paper, we had done a lot of the small intimidating parts, like the research.  It was nice how she had a vision of what we needed to do and the assignments did feel like busy work but something we could learn to help us be better writters.

Since then, I have learned that backwards design is creating your end project, like a test or major project, to help decide how to build up to that skill level.  I have recently tried to use this approach in my class.  I start every semester by writing out a daily schedule in a calendar format and matching the standard, objective, ILO, and page numbers in the book to that day.  This has helped me stay focused on topics I should be teaching and how long I have to spend on it.  I have also identified some assignments and activities that didn't really cover the material but I thought was fun to do.  I have tried to replace them with something that applies more to the topic and is still fun to do.  I noticed that my students have stopped asking me what the point of the the assignment, activity, or even discussion is because I know and they as more informed about the reason before we start doing it.

 

Backward Design Reference: http://www.uen.org/Rubric/rubric.cgi?rubric_id=451