Ubd Chapter 1 & Modules A & F

Ubd chapter 1 focused on the idea of backwards lesson planning.  The chapter broke down the meaning behind why and how teachers should implement this form of planning into their everyday routine.  Understanding by design is what Ubd stands for and there is a lot of punch behind the three letter acronym.  Ubd claims that teachers are designers and that the way that we plan out curriculums should be based on: Planning lesson plans backwards; Focusing the design of the curriculum to meet specified purposes and most importantly students are learning is the curriculum is designed well.  

Ubd starts off with mapping out what you want your students to learn and what results are expected.  Also determining acceptable behavior as well as planning learning experiences and instructions.  This translated to me as "if you want to be a teacher your curriculums should be thought out well and prepared, if not you are in the wrong career."  Ubd is further broken down into filters as well as stages to more easily plan out curriculums.  What really stuck out to me from the stages and filters were:

- The importance of engagement of students.

- Assessment and evidence is needed to validate proficiency in your students.

- Plan, plan, plan.

-What materials and/or resources will you need for this curriculum?

-Establish standards and curriculum expectations.

What I really enjoyed about this method of curriculum planning was how easy it would be to fuse scaffolding and Understanding by Design together to create a master curriculum.  Understanding by design is in a way placing emphasis on scaffolding by, creating steps from the last step to the very beginning.

Module A went into "The big ideas of Ubd."  Which included:

- Research on learning and cognition that reflects the centrality of teaching and assessing for understanding.

- A helpful and time honored process for curriculum writing.

A big red flag that popped in my mind when reading this section was how great it was that I was being exposed to Ubd this early in my career.  Which will help me be able to create curriculums easily and have a way to see curriculums as a sort of timeline or how to step by step.  Judy Willis a contributor to Ubd explained that patterning is when the brain perceives patterns from information either learned previously or newly attained material.  The best remembered information is learned through multiple and varied exposures.  Also learning that is engaging will be the stored in long term memory. I really do agree with this section and was like "hell yea!" in my mind.  Mostly because I remember having those great high school teachers who would use different ways of teaching like recording a commercial activity or using real life examples.  Those teaching techniques still stick with me today while note taking days are blank from my memory.

One aspect of Module A that I did not like was the "twin sins"  where the author claims that teachers may confuse "hands on with minds on" and that teaching is sub-par when "marching through resources."  An example of each of these twin sins is what really lacked for me in this chapter.  It was not as clear as I would have hoped.

Module F covered essential questions and understanding.  I liked how there was a whole chapter on questioning.  I understand how questioning is truly essential to include into curriculums.  Questioning not only activates schema but it also acts as a cue which allows students to answer and understand better.  A quote from this module that really made me happy was: "Serious learning involves inquiry in the face of uncertainty (77)."

This quote just made me tingle with excitement because I would LOVE to create a community of learners where students were not scared to ask questions.  I think asking questions is a great way to learn and as long as we create a community within our classrooms having students seriously learn should be a piece of cake.