Backward Design - Week 2



Backward Design is defined as ‘planning your lessons based on your long term goal’. Don’t allow the students to write your lessons. Write your lessons and use the student’s interaction and responses as an opening to give over the for the teachable moments within the lesson.
Many teachers have a hard time answering the question of ‘what is your long term goal’. It is vital to know your goal, and create a lesson that is leading to your goal. Our aim as teachers is to train our students to complete tasks independently. It is common among teachers to create short term goals, that are not targeted towards the larger, long term goal for their students.
A goal needs to be explicit, it cannot expect the students to know the topic, but rather, a goal should express what skill you want your students to acquire and gain from the content you are teaching. Good teachers use the content material to get their students to think creatively, and critically, instead of just memorizing facts and equations. Textbooks are not goals, they are resources that can be used to help towards your goal. A teacher must determine how her resources will assist her students to reach their goals, and use resources accordingly.
Backward design, designs your lessons based on the long term goal. Plan assessments and instruction based on the goals you have for your students.  The lessons must support and lead towards the goal.  For example, I want my students to be able to write an informative and descriptive paragraph. In order to accomplish this goal, I will introduce these two concepts to them in an interactive lesson, with statements they would need to differentiate between them, if they are informative, or descriptive, I may choose some kind of activity to involve them in this discussion, and get them to think critically and differentiate between these two concepts. After they fully understand what informative and descriptive is, they will be required to apply their knowledge by writing two paragraphs about the same topic using the two ways of writing. To accomplish such a goal, there needs to be critical thinking involved, so they understand the nuances between the two kinds of writings.
Backward design seems to be an amazing way to plan out my lesson plans. Following this method, my students will succeed in accomplishing tasks independently.

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