Understanding by design... Backward Design.

In the "teaching world" we have to consider as many aspects and characteristics as we can see within the school environment. Reading the first chapter of Understanding by Design I found a quotation, actually it's a saying, that might help us, as teachers, to understand what we are going to do inside schools. It says: "If you don't know exactly where you are headed, then any road will get you there." It means in education that, no matter if we know what activities we are going to do, what kind of resources we will use, o even what we do like to teach, if we do not clarify the main goal at the end of the lesson, everything will be pointless. That's why we need to take into account backward as something essential at the moment we are planning our lessons.

Going forward through chapter 1, we can find a useful three-stages of backward design, this is what we need to keep in mind at the momento of putting into practice what we have learnt about being a teacher, but know in paper following a specific curriculum.

Stage one, represents Identifying desired results, that means we need to considers our goal at the end of every lessons and also, we teachers, need to make some choices, making the right decisions about content standards and review curriculum expectations.

Stage 2, which is called Determine acceptable evidence, related to assessments. In this stage we need to consider our desired goals from students in order to design an evaluation that could fit their learning processes. In this way we could see if the desired learning and understanding have been achieved.

Stage 3, puts together the two staged mentioned before, plus experiences and instruction. Here the main idea is to keep in mind every single information that we have obtained from students, topics, assessments and desired results. At the very moment that we are going to plan a lesson these elements must be involved in order to make it meaninful to our students.

For me this reading has been sifnificant, because it will be helpful in future and it is an aid to edify my own teacher identity.

The end.