Lesson Planning

     11 months. For 11 months now we've been lesson planning the same way- clarify objectives and find a lesson to go along with it. Differentiate the lesson and provide an assessment. But then this week in my Social Studies and Arts class, my professor drops something completely new on us: Understanding by Design. As I flipped through my UbD book, I was a bit overwhelmed by all of the charts that I saw and thought, "I'm going to hate this. This is going to be awful."  

     Once I figured out the concept of UbD, I decided it wasn't all so bad after all. In fact, it's a pretty great idea! Rather than clarifying objectives and planning one lesson at a time, UbD, also known as "backward design", is about planning entire units with clear end goals in mind. In the first stage, teachers determine their desired results. These can be based on content standards, strategies, big ideas, or even weaknesses that your students have. From there, you decide what evidence the students will provide to show that they have mastered the content. Finally, you plan the individual lessons that will help lead the students to achieving those goals. So yes, it seems backward, but it makes a lot of sense and I'm really excited to try it out. 

     The overarching idea of my class so far has been about creating meaningful, well-planned lessons that integrate social studies and the arts with other curriculum areas. So what does it mean for a lesson to be meaningful and well-planned? To me, a meaningful lesson is one that engages students, allows them to explore and create knowledge about a concept, and can be connected to past and future experiences. A well-planned lesson ensures that the objective of the lesson in truly being met, that surprises or changes to the plan can be accounted for, and that students actually come away with something useful.