The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units

Great book for any teacher/future teacher

Recommended for all teachers

The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units is written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe and is published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). It is written for educators who design lessons and learning units for grades K-16 using the backward design approach. This book is a guide for creating those units. It provides downloadable templates for most subject areas, that will help walk the reader through each stage of the backward design approach to curriculum planning. Understanding by Design focuses on the "big ideas", important ideas and the ability to transfer that learning.Briefly, backward design, and the templates included in this book, follows 3 stages of planning. The first stage is to identify the desired result for learners. The second stage is to make a determination of what evidence is necessary to indicate student understanding has taken place. The third stage is to plan the learning activities and instructions that will align with and lead to the identified desired result, from stage one.The book is broken down into modules. As indicated by the authors, if you are familiar with Understanding by Design (UbD) and the basic ideas then skim the first Module. If you are not familiar or have not read Wiggins and McTighe's previous books on UbD then you will want to spend some time with the first Module to ensure your understanding of the concepts and big ideas. Those who have read the other books might find the guide a nice companion to the other books. It is not necessary to read the others first, but it would help with a deeper understanding of the concepts particularly if you are not a classroom teacher or are a pre-service teacher.The remaining seven modules each assist the reader in building and understanding the UbD approach to planning and thinking. The final Module H addresses Learning for Understanding. This module addresses stage 3 and the desired results identified in stage 1 - "to help students acquire targeted knowledge and skills, make meaning of big ideas, and effectively transfer their learning in the future". I found this module particularly interesting as we examine what we want learners to understand and transfer. I agree with the authors when they state that many students have come to expect that all learning is acquisition and recall, based on life experiences. Instruction for understanding builds on the learner's understanding of the content by challenging the learner to understand at a deeper level rather than adding more content.The book provides a path and guide for curriculum improvement and student understanding. It is not meant to be a daily planner but rather to approach the backward design by units of instruction where understanding and transferable learning are the focus.This would be a great book for educators to have as a resource. I found the book very interesting. Thinking about the end result first just makes sense to me. It's much like planning a trip. I know where I want to land now how am I going to get there and what are the steps to making that happen so that when the journey begins all the pieces are in place and the fun begins!

I had not bought a UBD book in many years and wanted to refresh my memory of the process. I found the guide very useful and there were a lot of great tools online as well.

Excellent resource for teachers in training and supporting experienced teachers as well.