Creating High-Quality Units with Understanding by Design

ngozi njoku: Arrived on time more than expected

United States on Jan 21, 2021

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

Canada on Oct 14, 2016

PugPeople: Although tedious (nature of the material), it is a great blend of old and new Wiggins and McTighe. I do like the realistic explanations throughout.

United States on May 20, 2015

Cynthia S: 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...

United States on Jul 15, 2014

Barb: 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.

Canada on Aug 10, 2013

Elvin Ortiz: This is a useful text for planning lessons or units that follows up the UbD text written by the same authors. It is not a book about philosophy or learning theories. It's only about what principles and questions teachers should take into account when planning. There is no rigid following of a template or guidelines. What are the principles espoused by W & M? That lesson planning should be geared toward "understanding" rather than rote memory, and that it should begin with desired results, then move to assessment techniques, and finally, to the activities. This process is called "backward design." If students "understand," then they may be able to transfer the acquired knowledge to solve problems and make decisions, making learning more meaningful. The authors also discuss the four learning goals - transfer, meaning, knowledge, and skills - and the three stages of learning - acquisition, meaning-making, and transfer. These latter three did not appear on the original UbD.

Although the authors discuss many of the ideas covered in the early UbD text, the templates, the dialogues, and the guiding questions make this text an excellent complement to that first text. This is...

United States on Nov 06, 2011

Diane Kempley: I purchased this book to help with desigining a masters course in curriculum, instruction and assessment. I have the first version of UbD. It is much more detailed. This edition is a great overview and does provide a new more relevent template of the UbD plan. There are also many resources for making connections. I highly recommend it for the teacher, principal, or college student who is looking for a process to make the connection of curriculum, instruction and assessment.

United States on Jun 30, 2011