An Integration of "Backwards Planning" Unit Design with the "Two-Step" Lesson Planning Framework (2009)

is 'backwards planning?' In their 1998 publication Understanding by Design Wiggins & McTighe put forth an innovative, concept based unit design format known as planning. Backwards planning calls for educators to begin with a nominal list of essential questions all students must answer by the end of the unit. With this clear end in mind, teachers then design the assessments of those understandings, followed by carefully crafted lessons to achieve this set of objectives. Since Wiggins & McTighe's curricular model terminates at lesson creation, the question for many educators becomes can I continue this goal driven approach when creating individual lessons? This is where the synthesis of this model for unit planning and the two step model (Flynn et al., 2004) for lesson planning becomes ideal. How can backwards design be applied to individual lesson planning? After unit goals and assessments have been established, teachers must design and implement lessons to meet both unit and lesson objectives. As with unit design, each lesson must begin with a 'learning target' or goal that both teachers and students can use to judge their achievement during the class period. This learning target, considered along with lesson based assessments of student performance, enables teachers to carefully sequence every learning experience within a lesson to reach a desired end. Flynn et al. (2004) have labeled this careful sequence of learning experiences the and exploratory phases of a lesson. Educators must ask themselves, What do students need to have accomplished by the end of the lesson? (discovery phase) and what scaffolds are required for students to reach that end? (exploratory phase). To provide the reader with an experience by which further discussion of the synthesis of backwards planning and the two step model can take place, consider the sample lesson below. This lesson took place in a seventh grade mathematics class. The lesson's goal (learning target) states that all students will be able describe how the properties of polygons are affected by dilations. While considering the six scrambled steps of the lesson, classify each activity by placing an e next to those that should occur early in the lesson, an m next to those that should occur in the middle of the lesson and an 1 by those that should occur late in the lesson. After considering your sequence, we will explore the sorts of lesson planning decisions that a teacher looking to apply the backwards planning approach to individual lessons must make and how these decisions ultimately impact student learning. does backwards lesson design look like in the classroom? The remainder of this article will consider how the extension of Wiggins & McTighe's backwards planning model to a lesson design model plays out in secondary classrooms. We will use the sample mathematics lesson on dilations as the basis for our analysis, as we consider how this backwards lesson planning model can be utilized in one's own practice. First consider those events you labeled with an 'T', those which were slotted as most appropriate to occur late in the lesson. Flynn et al. (2004) call these activities the of a lesson. These are the culminating activities designed to demonstrate a transfer of understanding and which elicit conceptual (schematic) change. They provide closure to the lesson, allow for student feedback and checks for understanding. The events of the discovery phase tie directly to the lesson's learning target as they are the means by which teachers and students judge competence of the day's objective. Though they occur last in the lesson, from a backwards planning perspective, this is where educators should begin the lesson planning process. Just as unit assessments mirror the unit's goals, the activities in the discovery phase should mirror's the lesson's goals. …