In chapter I, “Backward design”, we firstly find an explanation of ‘Why backward is best’ and it is because of the consideration of understanding. It means we have to have a different point of view in front of our student’s conception, and how they will perform in a lesson (from results-focused to content-focused design). This conception will impact our students and how they will learn, for the reason that we will include in our design more “why” and “what for” to avoid confusing instructions or frustrating lessons, where or students do not learn anything. A bigger insight, from teachers when planning, has to be done, in order to get deeper purposes, facilitating the understanding process in students.
Another concept is ‘The twin sins of traditional design’, which is the lack of a strong design. The first sin is ‘hands-on without being minds-on’, tasks that do not take students anywhere (non-sense activities), it has no clear ideas neither achievement of learning. The second one is ‘coverage’, a teacher going through notes the entire class hour, decreasing the chances of learning experience.
Going forward, we have ‘The three stages of backward design’, which include ‘Stage 1: Identify desired results’. This stage is about expectations, purposes, or what we want to get with a backward design, making clearness more important. ‘Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence’ is the collected information in a unit that is used to consider how much understanding our students have. ‘Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction’. The third stage states that with the results (evidence of understanding), we can consider the most suitable tasks to be showed in class.
I want to be honest, at first it was really hard for me to understand what the author was refering about "The twin sins of traditional design, but after reading your comments is seems to me that they are clearer.
ResponderEliminarThe explanation that you give for the concept "Backward Design" makes it very easy to understand. Thinking about WHY I'm going to use that strategy or WHAT FOR I'm going to given this activity, makes the learning process much more meaningul.
ResponderEliminarI totally agree with the importance of planing a meaningful class. The concept of ‘The twin sins of traditional design’is well explained. I see the problems that teachers have when they plan a lesson and they frequently commit the same mistakes when they plan. Good JOb!!!
ResponderEliminarI agree with you and Cris with the idea of making the learning process more meaningful and giving students clear reasons about why they are learning a certain topic and what for. Students are always asking themselves why are we doing this activity? so, it is necessary that teachers should have a clear purpose and transfer it to students to make them an important part of the lesson.
ResponderEliminarAs I said in many other posts, the importance of having different stages is because it helps teachers to guide their planning. Moreover, Students see each lesson so clear, that they also have a sequence in their mind that let them to understand things better.
ResponderEliminari think you gave a very clear explanation on what the steps consist of. Backward Design claims for goals, but those goals will be learnt by guiding planning and activities from those what we want students to learn.
ResponderEliminarSchools are full of non sense activities because of wrong teachers' plans. Besides, most of the time we are immerse in the same scenario at the university when you have to face activities that are oriented to measure more performance than skills.
ResponderEliminar¡Ideas principales! Definitivemente veo la necesidad de tenerlas, especialmente por lo que señalas sobre el riesgo que corremos de confundir nuestros estudiantes en vez de enseñarles mejor. Este concepto de empezar con las metas, las ideas principales en mente, nos ayuda aclarar los objetivos y las metas para ambos los estudiantes y los profesores, faclitando, como dices, un mejor entendimientos en las mentes de los estudiantes como resultado.
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