Understanding Backward Design

As a student in teacher education, it has been interesting to learn about new ways of teaching. Recently we have been introduced and "submerged" - if you will - in the idea of backward design and the positive aspects of this new way of reviving the curriculum to ensure all students are truly grasping what is required of them each year.

In an nut shell, backward design is essentially figuring out what needs to be accomplished before setting out to accomplish it, at least thats how I see it. For example, as a student in teacher education, hoping to one day become a teacher myself I think I approached my goal in a backward design type of way. In high school, as many students do, we were required to start thinking about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Some people knew right away, or had already been thinking about for a while. For me, I wanted to be a event planner! So in a backward design sort of way, I knew what I wanted my end goal to be so I went about figuring out how I could get there. I knew that going to college for an event planning program would be my way of knowing that I know how to be an event planner, but what did I have to do to get to that step? Well in high school co-op was an option at my disposal so I took the opportunity to get my feet wet and see if event planning was something I truly wanted to do. Turns out it wasn't...my co-op experience was certainly not all I thought it would be.

At that point I had to sit back and really think (again) about what I wanted to do when I grew up. At this point I was in grade 11 and with high school quickly coming to an end, I was concerned that I would choose to quickly and be disappointed again. With that being said, I decided to finish my co-op experience in a Grade 3 classroom, simply because it was at my disposal and it seemed like a safe option. I hadn't really thought of being a teacher yet. However, once I completed that co-op experience I knew that teaching is something I absolutely wanted to pursue. Once I knew this, I went to my guidance counsellor and we devised a plan for me to reach that end goal. This, to me, is backward design in its true form. I knew what my end goal was, knew what school I had to go to in order to accomplish this goal and, in turn, knew what classes I needed to take in my last 2 years of high school to complete this goal.

http://www.bowlandmaths.org.uk/photos/hotundercollar.jpg

With this story in mind, I think a picture of what backward design is, is starting to come into view. It includes only a few steps, as described by Drake, Reid and Kiloton (2014), all of which are extremely easy to accomplish.

1. First we need to find out what is the most important for our students to know, do and be. This information comes from the curriculum documents all teachers are extremely familiar with. 
2. Next we need to determine how we will know when they (students) know it? .... Do you follow? In other words, we (as the facilitators of curriculum: teachers) need to know when our students have grasped what is required of them to know, based on what we thought was important in step 1. Are we on the same page? This step is when we would decide on a rich performance assessment task (RPAT) that is a culminating assignment that will show us that our students have fully grasped what is of them. 
3. Lastly (and arguably most important), we need to know what we have to teach our students every day in order to ensure that they are able to show us that they know what we expect them to know. I.e. what do we teach our students every day so that they are able to demonstrate the know, do and be of the curriculum in the RPAT at the end of the unit? 

https://kencito54.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/backward-design1.png

That was a lot of information, but once in practice it is very simple. Jennifer Dorman, a Grade 7 and 8 teacher at Skowhegan Area Middle School, used backward design in her classroom upon attending a conference led by Joey Hawkins and Jane Miller in the summer of 2014 (Dorman, 2015). She stated that she was not satisfied with her students writing and found that implementing backward design in her classroom improved her students writing dramatically. Jennifer took a different approach at the backward design, describing it in the following steps:

1. Develop a guiding question before starting the unit. 
2. Use only activities that will help answer the guiding question.
3. Use public notes that all students have access to (i.e. Google Docs)
4. Show students a variety of sources (relevant to the unit), providing them with multiple points of view. 

This is essentially the same as the steps presented first for backward design. The guiding question Jennifer presented before the unit is what she sought out as most important upon reviewing the curriculum. This guiding question will essentially encompass what is the most important to know, to do, and to be in the curriculum. Secondly, she says to use only activities that will help answer the guiding question. Again this is similar to the idea of creating a task that will allow teachers to know when his/her students have mastered the important components of the curriculum. Lastly, Jennifer doesn't end with determining what to do day-by-day in order to ensure the first two steps can be done, but rather she explains the importance of providing students with relevant documents they may need throughout the unit as well as showing students multiple points of view relative to what they are learning in order to foster critical thinking and a deeper understanding of the material. 

References

Dorman, J. (2015). I wasn't satisfied with my students' writing. So I learned a new way to teach it. The Point, Bangor Daily News. Retrieved from http://bangordailynews.com/2015/10/25/the-point/i-wasnt-satisfied-with-my-students-writing-so-i-learned-a-new-way-to-teach-it/

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21^st Century Learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.