UBD & Me

I learned many crucial aspects of curriculum development. I learned about the idea of developing curriculum, units, and lesson plans using backward design. I recognized the difference between understanding and knowing. I used to think that knowing and understanding were the same. I now know that just because you know something doesn’t mean you really understand the concept. I learned the importance of developing and focusing on the goals and that the goals guide you during the process. The goals must be determined before planning curriculum or lesson plans. I discovered the six facets of understanding and practiced applying those concepts in the curriculum project. They are all important to fully understand the big ideas. I now know what essential questions are, their importance in bridging other disciplines, while focusing on the big ideas, and found that developing these questions are very helpful when teaching. There are many types of questions that can be used for each of the six facets when checking for understanding. There are three assessments and a format (GRASPS) to follow for developing effective assessments. I applied this to assessments that I currently use and found it very helpful. I also used it for my UBD project lesson plan. I learned about planning for learning in stage III by using the WHERETO elements and applied these elements to my UBD lesson plan to guide my instruction and learning activities.

I also gained knowledge in developing mission statements focusing on beliefs and values rather than a description and realized that missions should be specific highlighting the most valued beliefs of a school. The mission statement for the new teacher program was my part of the project. I researched many missions and realized that many schools or institutions have different beliefs or value certain aspects of education more than others due to their specific situation. A mission must be specific you your needs focusing on what is most valued or what needs the most attention for a particular situation or point in time. For instance, since there is a high rate of teacher drop outs, were participated in a highly important project; to develop a curriculum for servicing new teaching to help them through their first year teaching experience. Throughout the years of implementing the program, the program designers will most likely, through reflect on what was most effective about the program and what it was lacking.

I learned the difference between knowledge, skills, and dispositions. I try to focus on this when critiquing my instruction. I am now aware that there is also a difference between intended curriculum and the taught curriculum. This understanding is important when in an administrative position knowing that interpretations can lead teachers away from the true intentions of the resources but can also allow teachers to be creative and adapt to meet their individual needs of students and class. In addition, the difference between rubrics and grading schemes.

I learned that developing curriculum is not an easy process and that it takes much time and cooperation with other colleagues who must come together in sharing their vision to determine the goals that must be met prior to beginning the understanding by design process. I look forward to putting my “understanding” of understanding by design to use when developing curriculum and planning learning experiences.

World Language

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards

Time Frame: World language should meet a minimum of three times a week for thirty minutes.

Two Main SectionsCommunication
a. Interpretive Mode
b. Interpersonal Mode
c. Presentational Mode

Students communicate in at least one world language in addition to English.

Interpretive Mode- the students are able to understand and interpret cultural context spoken and written, i.e. “one way” communication such as reading, listening to texts, movies, radio, television and speeches.

Interpersonal Mode-Students engage in direct oral and/or written communication i.e. “two way” interactive communication, conversing face-to-face, or exchanging personal letters or e-mail messages.

The Presentational Mode-Students present, through oral and/or written communications, information, concepts and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers with whom there is no immediate personal contact. Some examples would be “one-to-many” i.e. making a presentation to a group or writing an article for the school newspaper.

Culture
a. Cultural Products
b. Cultural Practices
c. Cultural PerspectivesUnderstanding of the perspectives of a culture through experiences with products and practices.

Cultural Products-The products of a culture may be tangible (e.g. a painting, wedding veils, boiled peanuts, a pair of chopsticks) or intangible (e.g., street maps, a system of education, graveside eulogies.) The culture standard focus on how these cultural products reflect the perspectives (attitudes, values and beliefs) of the culture studied.

Cultural Practices-The practices of a culture refer to patterns of acceptable behaviors for interacting with members of other cultures. Two example of the American culture are clapping a teammate of the rear as a sign of congratulations for making a touchdown, or shaking a presenters hand after a well spoken speech. The culture standard focuses on practices derived from the perspective (traditional ideas, attitudes, and values) of the culture studied.

Cultural Perspectives-Perspectives of a culture would include the popular beliefs, the commonly held values, the folk ideas, the shared values, and the assumptions widely held by members of a culture. The perspective of a culture sanctions the cultural practices and creates need for products. The perspectives provide the reason for “why they do it that way”?” and the explanation for “how can they possibly think that?” Since practices and products not only derive from perspectives, but sometimes interact to change perspectives, this fundamental component of culture must be incorporated to meet the culture standard.

Strengths
a. Reflect more clarity.
b. Standards are organized according to modes of communication that place emphasis on the context and purpose of communication.
c. Standards and indicators emphasize connections with other core content areas to facilitate contextualized and purposeful language learning, transfer, and true understanding in preparation for real life experiences.

Weaknesses
a. Time to satisfy recommended days and minutes per week.
b. Does not provide the big ideas within the progress indicators.
c. Does not provide possible misunderstandings to ensure specific understanding are met.
d. Fails to provide necessary essential questions or enduring understandings to guide lessons that satisfy progress indicators while ensuring understanding of big ideas.

Resources
1. Becoming Citizens of the World. By: Stewart, Vivien. Educational Leadership, April 2007, Vol. 64 Issue 7, p8-14, 7p

2. CHAT WRAP-UP: FOREIGN-LANGUAGES EDUCATION. Education Week, 4/19/2006, Vol. 25 Issue 32, p35-35, 1p

3. U.S. World Language Program Models. By: Heining-Boynton, Audrey L. Educational Leadership, Dec2004/Jan2005, Vol.62 Issue 4, p29-29, 1/2p

4. Words and Worlds: World Language Review. By: Deterding, David. Language & Education: An International Journal, 2008, Vol. 22 Issue 1, p79-82, 4p

5. Sustaining linguistic diversity within the global cultural economy: issues of language rights and linguistic possibilities. By Rassool, Naz. Comparative Education, May 2004, Vol. 40 Issue 2, p199-214, 16 P.

Assessment through the Student’s Eyes

I read an article in the Educational Leadership magazine called “Assessment Through the Student’s Eyes”. This article discussed how students should have a part in the assessment process and that assessment should not be used to “sort the winners and the losers” but learn from and pin point the areas of difficulty to determine the how to make all students winners. I thought the article was very enlightening. I thought the idea of students taking part in the evaluation process is so important. I would think it would allow for greater understanding of what is required of them which will also give students a sense of comfort. I was recently asked the question for my end of year evaluation, “what is one area you would like to improve in?” I mentioned that I would like to improve in implementing quality assessments that cover the broad range of content standards to be used in the limited time given as an elementary specialty teacher. I now would like to add to that by creating and implementing assessments that include the students in the evaluation process. I just wonder if this is practical in my situation as an elementary physical education teacher.

I once took a course in advanced motor learning for physical education and the professor asked how many of you actually assess learning. I was surprised to see that not one person raised their hand. These teachers were teaching all year long without evaluating the performance of students or their ability to impact learning. Their response was that time was an issue. I document students learning in everything that I teach, but I find it very difficult to accomplish what I would like to by the end of each unit. This is usually due to the fact that evaluation (especially more advanced and effective assessments including student evaluation) takes time away from teaching, practice, and demonstrations which are essential to learning physical skills. In addition, the time and environment that is expected to be given per week is not regularly given to the teacher and students especially when student are being pulled in many different directions.

I think I do a pretty good job of accomplishing what I need to and still go above and beyond by teaching and assessing learning content in preparation for the next year, but it is still a great challenge due to the actual time given. At times I feel like learning is rushed and I want to give students more practice, but there isn’t enough time to adequately learn the acquisition of skills throughout the year. Lately it seems like more and more is expected of teachers and students, yet time and financial assistance is not given. Just recently our district re-wrote our contract increasing the amount of class sections for specials which will limit our preparation time, as well as, our ability to prepare environment and equipment for different grade levels in between classes or rearrange class periods due to special events that occur each month. I know that time will not change and I have to make the best of what is given. I am however, thinking of ways to evaluate learning more efficiently by creating more user friendly assessment strategies which will hopefully allow time for implementing the articles recommendation by including the students in this evaluation process.

Yes, but…

I found this chapter to be an interesting reminder of my own misconceptions. The idea of covering the content is something that I am challenged with throughout the year. I feel I cover content pretty well especially when considering the challenges elementary PE teachers face. For instance, instead of just focusing on the content for each grade level, I tend to overlap the grades so that students can review what they learned the previous year and continue from that point. I also do that because we have two other teachers at my school that may not have covered that area which makes a review very necessary before progressing to the next level. Because of over lapping lessons, I feel like I’m teaching twice the amount. I do notice that it is necessary though because when I discuss basic topics that they should have learned years ago, they just don’t remember, never understood it, or they were never even taught it. If I was the only teacher I would know what was accomplished and know where to continue.

In addition to this obstacle, time is always an issue. This year we had a problem with students being pulled out of PE for music. This is an issue because in the state of New Jersey, students must receive 150 minutes of health and PE instruction per week. They are currently only receiving 80 minutes per week of PE on a good week. At the same time, I learned this year how strict NJASK testing was for the examiners. Our faculty had to be certified to be examiners and was given a booklet of rules to follow that seemed very strict and caused a lot of stress for many teachers, especially since there was a teacher in the district who was sued for something very technical. The state actually came in to observe the test administration. It amazes me that this is taken so seriously but state mandates are not.

Other obstacles come into play that take away from the state mandate such as band and instrumental lessons, special services, GT, assemblies etc. This is without mentioning the days that students are not feeling well enough to participate in physical activity, they are just not prepared, or the gym is not clean in time after lunch. This makes our challenge worse because time is even less than expected. It just seems that these inconveniences are not taken into consideration. This causes frustration when you feel like you have to cover everything and only if you do cover everything you are doing your job. I definitely related to this because sometimes I feel like the more I cover the better. I notice, at times, I sometimes don’t take in the consideration of students understanding as much as focusing on the teaching, lack of time, and the need to move on to the next unit. I feel we are trained to believe more is better. This year we had a specialist come in and teach one lesson in a discipline with no additional lessons. Not much can be gained from one lesson. That is like spending one day learning addition in math. It looks good on paper that we are covering new and different areas throughout the year yet we are failing to “emphasize depth versus superficial coverage” and focus on “conceptual understanding” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The conclusion I came to was to focus on big ideas which will overlap content and core standards creating transfer to other areas. In the end this will provide deeper understanding of the big ideas and cover a broad area within the limited time that is given.

Reflecting on the Process

I realize the difficulty of designing such a program for new teachers and the challenges a team faces when trying to change the way they write curriculum, plan lessons, and teach those lessons. In addition to this, time becomes a very important issue. I had a discussion with my principal about my new teacher project and she was surprised with the accomplishments made on this project considering that there is currently a team working on a similar project for the district that will take them all year to complete if they are lucky.

There must be a clear understanding of the UBD framework in order to productively and efficiently progress through the stages of backward design. I found that challenges were added when deciding on assessments, their sequence, and how these assessments relate back to the big ideas and essential questions that were developed months ago. I realized that we had to focus on fewer questions and come up with the most crucial essential questions necessary to make this program a success and a valuable professional development experience for new teachers. The other challenge was choosing the most essential assessments that could be completed in 10 meetings. We had compiled many different assessments and are faced with the challenge of deciding what are most important to our goals for the program. During the process of developing this new teacher curriculum program I realized the importance of determining the most critical big ideas to support the foundation of the UBD processes by focusing on the desired results. If the big ideas are not reflective to what must be accomplished, it is difficult to continue to design the assessments and learning experiences that will satisfy the crucial desired results.

Thinking like an Assessor

The idea of thinking like an assessor influenced me to think about the tasks I give and the questions one must ask to be sure the task is authentic. The first question asks to think of the kinds of evidence needed. The second question asks to think of the characteristics in student responses, or performances that should be examined. The third question asks whether or not the evidence demonstrates a student’s knowledge, skill, or understanding. I also began to think of my previous learning experiences and how it differs from today. I remember teachers expecting us to study information and repeat it. At times I remember studying information that I didn’t even understand but I memorized the words and that was enough to prove that I understood. Thinking like an assessor as in UBD encourages the idea of hands on and minds on tasks that support goals and criteria that are necessary to demonstrate deep understandings. The key is learning for application. If the knowledge given can’t be applied, then what’s the point? There should be a reason beyond grades. Performance tasks present students with a problem to challenge their skill and understanding. The analysis of the understanding of this final product is determined by using appropriate standards and evaluative criteria which should be discussed previously with students. In order to create performance tasks and determine if they are meeting your goals, the GRASPS task design can be helpful. When reading about performance tasks and GRASPS task design, I was tempted to try to incorporate and apply this concept to a core project that I give students in physical education. At the completion of their gymnastics unit, the fourth and fifth grades are asked to design and create a routine including skills previously taught. I immediately thought of this project (probably since we are doing it right now) and decided to use the GRASPS prompts to determine my projects authenticity. I also thought it would be a good idea to use these prompts to further discuss the project at its introduction and use it at the completion of the project to refer to when completing their self evaluation rubric. It was helpful to practice it and to understand it by actually doing it. I just realized that I’m practicing what I am being taught from UBD!

The enduring understandings that teachers must grapple with

There are many challenges teachers must overcome when trying to teach students to truly “understand” not just “know”. Understanding is represented by a multifaceted view. True understanding is said to explain, interpret, apply, have perspective, empathize, and possess self knowledge. I wonder how often teachers actually think about and incorporate these facets when planning lessons. Implementing the essential questions including topical and overreaching questions and knowing when to use one over the other is also difficult. These essential questions that make connections and transfer to other areas take skill and time to develop. It would take some practice to get your mind thinking in this way when planning lessons and during the three stages of UBD. I would think topical questions are used more by most teachers. Although topical questions are helpful, they do not ensure transfer. On the other hand, implementing only overreaching or open questions may mislead discussion away from understandings and core content. The challenge is to use the appropriate questions during the appropriate time. This can be difficult. I don’t think I have kept these areas in mind when designing lessons, however I was surprised how much of these concepts I have been implementing all along without realizing it when reading about essential understandings and crafting understandings. Teachers must realize that enduring “understandings” use discrete facts to focus on the bigger picture and provide transfer to new situations. A more broad strategy enables application of ideas to other situations. According to Wiggins & McTighe (2005), understanding requires students to consider, propose, test, question, criticize, and verify. How often teachers actually require or expect students to understand at this level? I often wonder why I usually can’t apply a concept that I have learned previously when I understood it. Maybe I truly did not understand it. Maybe it’s not just because I seem to forget things easily. Maybe it’s because I didn’t truly learn it. In order to require students to learn and understand at this level would take a major reevaluation of ones teaching to redirect lessons and concentrate on essential questions and understandings. This will also allow students to make valuable connections and enable transfer to other areas. These ideas seem to be a lot to “grapple” with especially when writing a curriculum according to UBD, but imagine how much easier it would be for a teacher that has a curriculum to follow that was designed according to UBD.