We Get What We Plan For

Andrea Reichenberger contributed this thinking. Click here to read more about Andrea's work.

I’m a planner. Others will argue that I overplan, but I’m comfortable with that.  First, I think about the end goal and then I think about what evidence I’m going to use to assess whether or not I am getting close to that goal. Lastly, I plan the baby steps I need to implement along the way.  As it turns out, this is the philosophy of “Backwards Design.”  I love the concept of Understanding by Design (UbD). Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins have developed a thoughtful format that guides teachers to purposefully plan for student understanding.  Get it?  Understanding. By. Design.

What I’ve learned over the years is that when I don’t plan, I don’t get the learning I want to see from my students.  As I work with teachers through backwards design, I am reminded of how important it is to think through the goals of our planning and ask ourselves if they are meaningful and authentic.

What is it that we want the students to know and be able to do by the end of our units?  

What standards are we REALLY covering?  Which do we need to put more focus on within the unit?

How will we plan our assessments and performance tasks so they lend themselves to transfer those learned skills and knowledge outside of the classroom?

What daily goals or learning events do we need to plan for in order to guide our students toward that understanding?

How will we provide our students the effective feedback they need along the way?

I have to remind teachers that the planning process isn’t linear. I found myself modeling my thinking in front of one English teacher and then again in front of a class of 26 teachers from around the district. Not only did I need to think through the Big Ideas or Enduring Understandings (Students will understand that…), the essential questions, the standards, and the assessments all at the same time, I also needed to make sure I was using them all to keep my focus.  As I did, some of them changed.  I did not create my end of the unit activity and hope that everything aligned. I ended up revising, deleting, and creating several times along the way.

This work has resulted in many “aha” moments.  We are learning that we don’t plan a unit around a textbook or around the title of a book. We need to design them around the skills and the understandings we want students to come away with. Essential questions need to be open-ended and thought provoking. We are also discovering that when we don’t plan with big ideas or enduring understandings in mind, it is almost impossible to differentiate our instruction for those who require it.

Even though UbD provides several tools for teachers to use, we don’t have to use them. I encourage teachers to use the tools which work best for them. It is more important that they take the time to think through the plan.  It is exhausting, but well worth it. It hurts my heart when I hear teachers say “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” or “Can’t we just buy a textbook?” We went into this profession for a reason.  What kind of messages are we sending to our students if we decide that we are done planning our curriculum units or that we don’t want to think too hard?

If we think through our planning for student understanding, we will get exactly what we planned for.