Week 7

Blog Questions for week 7

• What is good curriculum design? How does UBD support effective curriculum design? How does continuous improvement apply to curriculum design? Use the handouts as references.

"The purpose of schooling is not to make every child learn everything that is in the official curriculum. It is to help students acquire the competence to be active, valued members of their communities."

Curriculum design is the structure, scope, sequence, content, and skills taught by an educational body. Good curriculum design purposeful, deliberate, creative, operates on many levels, requires compromises, may fail, and has stages. 

-Curriculum design is purposeful.  The main purpose is to improve student learning and clearly state what the real purposes are.

-Curriculum design is deliberate.  It should be an explicit process that clearly identifies what should be done, by whom and when.

-Curriculum design should be creative.  Students should have opportunities to think critically and creatively throughout the unit.  The saying that a student should have their "feet on the ground and head in the clouds" gives a visual of learning. 

-Curriculum design operates on many levels. Curriculum at each level must be compatible with other levels. They design should be natural stepping stones to the next. 

-Curriculum design requires compromises.  It is understandable that parts of the curriculum will not be accepted by everyone. Compromises will need to be taken to meet certain expectations.  

-Curriculum designs can fail.  Components of certain parts of the curriculum may fail or educators may reject different parts of the curriculum.  The idea that curriculum should be continuously improved and corrected is part of the philosophy.  

 A major component of curriculum design is a good assessment program, which will allow teachers and administrators to evaluate how students are progressing and where they need to go. The curriculum can then be adjusted to respond to students’ needs, improving and strengthening it. Curriculum design, then, is not a one-time process. 

The Understanding by Design offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Its two key ideas are contained in the title: 1) focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer, and 2) design curriculum “backward” from those ends.

UBD supports effective curriculum design by giving the teacher the ultimate plan for a unit.  Teachers have the complete understanding and philosophy of what is considered "mastery" and "understanding" of the given content.  Knowing exactly what the the Essential Questions are keep a strong focus for student assessment.  

• Read this article from AFT on the principles of professional development. What was the hardest part of writing the UBD workshop today? Why do you think that is?
• "Professional development is an essential element of comprehensive or “systemic” reform. The nation can adopt rigorous standards, set forth a visionary scenario, compile the best research about how students learn, change textbooks and assessment, promote teaching strategies that have been successful with a wide range of students, and change all the other elements involved in systemic reform—but without professional development, school reform and improved achievement for all students will not happen" 
• This rings true for me. I feel that I have not been given proper training in the UBD format that is widely used and accepted by many teachers in our district. Understanding what is an essential question is the heart of UBD and an area we struggled with the most. After some research, I have found some guidance.  One meaning of "essential" involves important questions that recur throughout one's life. Questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature and arguable, such as What is justice? Essential questions are those that point to the big ideas of a subject.  Lastly, "essential" refers to what is needed for learning core content.  In this sense, a question can be considered essential when it helps students make sense of important but complicated ideas and knowledge.
• A question is essential when it: 
1. causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content;
2. provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions;
3. requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers;
4. stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons;
5. sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences;
6. naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subject