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For my UbD template, I looked at a unit which teaches a new set of noun endings in order to express possession in Latin. Before the UbD model, my lesson primarily focused on the students ability to understand a Latin paragraph in which the genitive is found. However after setting my goals for the unit, I realized I also want them to have faculty of the genitive in their own speech and writing. This allowed me to plan the unit differently to incorporate more activities that will not only prove they know how to recognize and form the genitive but also use it in their writing. When the students are able to express original though in a second language, they can begin to see the progress they are making in the language.

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I looked at my biology unit on genetics that I will be teaching in some extend when i return to school in a few weeks. This unit has students learn about the process of meiosis, Gregor Mendel and his experiments on pea plants that gave us information on dominant and recessive genes and introduces gene linkage and crossing over which contribute to genetic variations. I really enjoy this unit because I find genetics fascinating and I think my enthusiasm for it comes through in the classroom. Before looking at this unit with fresh eyes it included a video for learning about meiosis, worksheets for Punnett square work, and group work. Re looking at this unit with UbD in mind I was able to incorporate Essential Questions that the textbook already has written. I added student choice through the Punnett square worksheets, students can now choose from 3 different worksheets for practice problems - one is Harry Potter themed, one is standard plant problems, and the other is made up alien traits. Now instead of just relying on quizzes and tests there is a performance task for students where they have to create monsters with unique traits and then show how those traits could be combined to create monster offspring. Although my unit was mapped out already looking at it through the UbD lens helped me to identify areas where i can add more student contribution, differentiation, and incorporate a performance task that i think will excite my students especially the ones who have creative talents.

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I chose to use my unit of Rights Week.  We have two of these per year and each grade focuses on a different "right" with mine being "rights of self."  This is very fun to teach because it's extremely interactive and requires the students to play a MAJOR role in the lessons.  I decided this year to make a video with my students where they write their own scripts based on a different right.  The students had to learn how to adapt an idea into a script.   They absolutely loved the work and loved seeing their own ideas come alive as they worked.  Reworking it with the UbD template helped to really view the lesson in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise thought of.  The assessment of each lesson was how I would talk with them and get a feel for where they were as they worked and seeing how their work was going.
It was great to start from the end though as I was able to rework it knowing what I wanted them to get out of each lesson, both individually and project-wise. I'm really glad I took this opportunity as I think it will help me in lessons in the future as well.

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I selected one of my favorite units to teach, Age of Encounters, a fourth grade BCPS social studies unit. The unit focuses on interactions among European explorers, African and Asian merchants, and Native American cultures in the 1400s and 1500s. I always enjoyed teaching this unit because students were easily hooked by the interesting content, including changing geographical knowledge, the rise of nautical technology, and the motivations which drove explorers to face the very real possibility of death. Prior to beginning the UbD Template, I recognized Baltimore County's use of a format which reflects the ideas of UbD. For example, each unit has Essential Questions and Standards which correlate to enduring understandings. Assessments are generally aligned to those standards and then learning activities support students' understandings and skills to achieve the learning targets or objectives. This approach to planning is also what I coach new teachers to use: begin with the standards to know where learning is going, view/adjust assessments to understand how students will demonstrate concept attainment, and then determine/develop learning activities to help students achieve success on the assessment. In this respect, UbD no longer seems like "backwards" design to me. In order to make the lessons more student-centered and engaging, I incorporated a variety of activities designed to address multiple learning styles. I also designed a variety of student assessment options as a project menu which offered students choice in how to demonstrate mastery.

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I decided to use Unit 1 of math for my subject area and project. Within this unit fourth graders develop the universal understanding of place value and numbers through 1 million. Students will use multiple strategies and resources throughout this unit. These include estimation, place value understanding, place value models, mental math computation, and strategies of using multiple operations. One activity that supports these is when students develop the ideas of place value up to 1,000,000. Learning each place and how they can use it throughout the unit. There are multiple activities in which students can show their skills which include multiple representations, writing about the reasonableness of the place value, and then engaging in practice activities. When looking through the UbD design it is helpful in understanding why these lessons are important and where they are going in the future. If my students do not have the the stepping stone of knowledge in the place value unit the continuation of learning throughout the year in math would be extremely difficult. When looking at the process, knowing where we are going, and misconceptions students are able to work through the unit at a pace where assessments are developed to enhance the learning process as it is happening. There is also the idea that when you know where your going and what you need to achieve as a class there are lessons in which you can spend more time on to achieve those goals. This process helps me investigate multiple things but what I enjoyed the most is how it can help with the planning process and where to go throughout the unit.

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I decided to use the UbD template within Unit 4 of my Language Arts subject area. Within this unit, students learn about different animals and what makes them unique. Student also learn about identifying the author’s purpose for writing and practice writing opinion pieces. One significant activity within the Unit involves students researching animals and comparing what makes them unique. Students then write an opinion piece on which animal is more unique than the rest and use evidence from a given text to support their reasoning. After using the UbD process this activity was improved because students were given the option of what animals they wanted to research and how they wanted to research. Initially students were provided with the resources they needed to research a given animal. With the revision, students can choose what animal they want to research and are provided with choices in how to collect their research. I feel like after using the UbD for the lesson revision, I was able to think about given students a more meaningful experience within their learning and how I could differentiate parts of the lesson when needed. Another thing that I added to the revision after using the UbD process was incorporating more writing activities instead of students just stating their opinion. I wanted my students to begin understanding the purpose of looking back into a text to defend their opinion and felt they were lacking that with just stating their opinion versus writing it. Overall, I think the UbD process makes the lesson design process better and easier. When I know what the end goal of the lesson or unit needs to be, I can instantly begin thinking of ways to make the lesson or unit more student centered; i.e.- differentiation of activities, incorporating more creative opportunities, allowing for more student choice in learning.

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The series of lessons I redesigned was Unit 4A of the BCPS Algebra 1 curriculum.  The goals of the unit are to classify polynomials and perform operations on polynomial expressions.  When I have taught this unit before, I have had students complete guided notes and given paper pencil skill practice for students to reinforce their understanding.  Daily exit slips are given, and a quiz is given at the end of the unit to assess students understanding.  In the redesign, students spend more time discovering why the rules they learn apply to polynomial expressions prior to applying them.  This should build deeper understanding and ideally lead to less misconceptions.  Students also use algebra tile manipulatives to help transfer concrete skills to abstract thinking.  In the redesign, there is still lecture, but significantly less.  Paper pencil skill practice is replaced with digital practice so students get instantaneous feedback.  Other than instructional changes, the biggest change is in the assessment.  Before, there was just a summative quiz.  In the redesign, there is a performance task as well as a more authentic project relating this new learning to their birthday and allowing them to share their findings with their classmates.

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I selected Peter and the Wolf.   This is a unit that focuses on listening and identifying instruments of the orchestra as they relate to the character traits of characters in a story.  For this unit I have included four lessons.  Before the UbD process the unit was a series of activities.  There were listening glifs and coloring pages and matching games.    These were “fun” but not deeply meaningful.  After looking at these lessons with the end in mind, I discovered some of the activities were not beneficial and could be excluded.  I was able to focus our time and the tasks we were to complete so we were working towards a more focused goal.  For this unit students are introduced to the story of Peter and the Wolf.  Peter is a young Russian boy, living with his grandfather in a rural setting.  A cast of animals are introduced throughout the story.  Each character is represented by the sound of an instrument of the orchestra.  This piece was composed as a tool to teach children about these instruments and to help students understand timbre (the unique sound each instrument makes).  In this unit students are asked to think about the sound’s instruments make and the feelings those sounds evoke in them as listeners.  Sound evokes emotions in those listening to them.  Students can think about what they feel and why they feel the way they do about instrument sounds.  As they listen to themes which represent each character, students are asked to think about the selections the composer made.  Do they feel the composer made the correct choices or would another instrument have been a better choice?   They must always provide a supporting reason for their answer.  I feel this unit improved after reviewing it through the UbD model.  I took more time to think about higher level questions and why this unit provides a valuable learning experience.  Why is this meaningful?  What enduring knowledge do I want them to walk away with?  I removed some of the “busy work” and focused on those tasks that held the most meaning.  The tasks that would guide us towards the goal of identifying the instruments by their timbre and reflecting on how sound makes us feel (how it can represent feelings, emotions and character traits).   I feel the process has improved this unit, and my thinking as I wrote it.  It caused me to think deeper.  Why am I teaching what I am teaching?  What do I want my students to walk away knowing?  What value does this learning have?  How will/can the students use this learning in the future?  How may I build on what I have taught?

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I chose to work on our Roald Dahl Author Study unit.  This is my favorite unit to teach and my teammates and I had already been discussing changes we could make to it based on teaching it in the past. I selected 5 lessons to revamp. By the end of this unit students should be able to describe how character feelings, actions, words, and motivations reveal their true nature and explain different aspects of author's craft. In the series of lessons I chose I to add or modify activities that would better allow students to explore the skills. The curriculum provides many worksheets and paper products for the students to produce, but I wanted to find ways to make the lessons more meaningful and engaging to them. Although I have taught this unit for a few years now, I have to admit that I taught each lesson in isolation rather than with the big picture in mind. Using the UbD framework took a longer time to plan, but it allowed me to ensure that each component of the lessons would be connected to our end goal and allowed me to remove the "work for the sake of having work."

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I did a unit in my living systems class called Super Bugs that begins talking about natural selection, variation, and speciation. Then it goes into how antibiotics give bacteria the chance to mutate to better fit their environment and survive, thus becoming resistant to antibiotics. Students have to use their knowledge about genetics and natural selection to explain why this is happening to their schoolmates and suggest not using antibacteria handsoap and try to not use antibiotics unless absolutely necessary. This unit is new, with the start of the NGSS for science curiculum. I think that adapting it to the UBD was easy and not really a hard task at all. It was made to be implemented this way, and gives teachers a great place to start in backwards mapping. The assessments and targets give you a place to start, and filling in the rest is a breaze, as long as you are student centered in your approach from the start. Science is all about doing, and taking informationa and applying it to the real world. It is exactly what LPC and UBD is all about! This practice helped me to break down the unit and better find tasks that align better with the standards and assessments. Those are given to us, and we have to use them, but how we get the students to those targets is up to us! So fun.

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I used the small series of lessons I did in my science class about the importance of the atmosphere and the impact of air pollution on the atmosphere. The end product was for students to make PSA posters about the effects of pollution, and the posters turned out really well. The students still point out the pollution that the Domino Sugar Factory adds to the air every time they see smoke coming from the chimneys from our classroom windows! The UbD template helped me to see that I needed to add more meaningful learning tasks to my lessons in that part of the unit. Initially, I had the students determine the composition of the atmosphere as a homework assignment, but upon taking a second look at the lessons using the UbD template, I thought that the learning would be better done during class. In general, UbD helps teachers ensure that the lessons are all meaningful in some way and are all connected back to the end goal. It ensures that you teach only lessons within the unit that are necessary to achieving that end goal.

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I decided to apply UbD to our unit on short stories. The original curriculum is not directly aligned to the PARCC assessment. My team has been rewriting this unit using the UbD model to align this unit to PARCC. When doing these revisions it was key to look at the PARCC assessment very closely. This series of lessons focuses on preparing students for the narrative task. It requires students to read and analyze "The Wife's Story" so they can complete a narrative task associated with this story. I needed to create questions that are PARCC style, look closely to the rubrics used by PARCC graders, and break down this essay for students.  I also added more opportunities for students to reflect on their own work. These reflections gave students time to really think about what they need to do to be successful on the PARCC test. I removed tasks that did not align to PARCC and added a lesson on author's style because prior assessments indicated that they needed help breaking this down.

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I took the first half of the Judicial Branch unit and applied it to UbD. I have taught this lesson a handful of times and I have never had the full experience until planning with UbD. Some of the lesson that we were teaching truly did not flow before so I removed some of the excess lessons that we used and made it flow so much easier. The UbD process definitely makes lesson planning easier because looking at this format is so much easier.  I thought at first it was going to be extremely difficult to backwards plan, but now that I was provided the opportunity to work with it backwards planning actually is not that difficult.

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I decided to focus on my current third grade math unit, Fractions. By the end of this unit, students will be able to understand and represent fractions (less than, equal to, and greater than 1) using visual models and number lines, understand fraction equivalence, compare fractions (with the same numerator, same denominator, benchmarks, and on a number line), and transfer their understanding of fractions to measuring with a ruler and data collection/analysis with line plots. Each lesson includes an instructional model, suggested assessment, and many activities to choose from. The county requires the students to complete a tiered pre-assessment (to determine the proficiency level for the standards) before the unit begins and a two-part assessment at the end (one part is a written test that focuses on the reasoning and application of skills and the other one is on the computer with multiple choice responses). Before taking part in this assignment, I would say I normally follow the timeline of the curriculum and use the resources I have created in the past when teaching this unit. I would look for any updates in activities or assessments, and I had a general understanding of what my students needed to accomplish because of teaching this unit for several years. When I started using the UbD template, the “where we are going” became clearer to me. Math is not my favorite subject to teach so using this process helped me better understand the skills my students need and how they connect to one another. One of my teammates and I began dissecting our entire unit and asking ourselves, “did the activities we were using really help our students achieve the goals we were working towards? Were we providing enough opportunities for our students and us to assess their progress? Were the activities, goals, and assessments really aligned?” I kept the progression or timeline of topics/skills the same as it was before I used the UbD template, but I added more tiered tasks relating to real world problems, hands-on activities, performance-based checkpoints, and check-in/self-assessment and reflection opportunities throughout the unit.  I made sure the activities and assessments I chose aligned to our standards and goals, as well as linked to our essential questions. I also noted ways to transfer the learning in this unit to other content areas, such as measuring distances during our science Safe Racer Unit. I think the UbD process makes the lesson design process better because it requires the teacher to look at where the students need to go FIRST and then provide activities to help them get there, which will allow students to transfer these newly acquired skills because of the connections that were made. It is hard to help the students gain a deeper understanding of a topic if the important connections that need to be made are getting lost or disconnected because the goals, assessments, and activities do not align. Using this process also makes the unit more learner-centered because you are planning with the whole learner in mind (the “WHERETO” acronym really helps make sure the activities are purposeful and not just “nice” or “fun”).

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As I am currently wrapping up the Unit Plan task to complete my graduate portfolio, I applied the UbD process to my U.S. History World War 1 Unit Plan. The purpose of this unit was for students to be able to identify and effectively communicate the causes of World War 1 and the lasting impacts of World War 1 on Europe, the United States, and the larger international community. Though this is a U.S. history course, it was important to me that students approach World War 1 with a global perspective because they had not previously studied the Great War in World History. One key activity included in this lesson was a trench warfare simulation where I staged my classroom to look (as much as possible) like trenches with mines and barbed wire. Students entered the classroom, donned helmets (either German or U.S.), grabbed a soldier ID card that told them which soldier they would be impersonating, and crawled behind their “trench” to watch scenes that included enemy shellfire, a gas attack, and trench invasion. After each scene, students took turns reading from their soldier’s letters, which were genuine letters written by WW1 soldiers about trench life. Another key activity involved inquiry stations on the U.S. in World War 1, where students visited each of five stations and interacted with various artifacts at each station to answer a guiding question provided on that station’s exit ticket. Each station’s artifacts related around a central theme, such as “economic influences”, “resistance to war”, or “unrestricted submarine warfare”. At the end, students participated in a group discussion to share their takeaways from each station before composing individual video summaries for homework. Though I had not been introduced to the UbD model before I designed this unit, much of my teaching has already followed the steps of this process, and so I more or less used this activity to demonstrate how my unit follows the UbD model rather than significantly revise the activities or assessments. However, I will continue to use this template in future planning because I really like how it differentiates between enduring understanding and essential questions, and especially how it breaks down the assessment design process into knowledge, skills, tasks, and then other evidence that does not fit neatly into those boxes.

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The unit that I chose to apply the template to was the current science unit that I am teaching. We are doing a heavily adapted version of Safe Racer. I chose this unit because other than adapting the materials/lessons the unit has already been created. It was a good example to see how UbD can be applied to a unit/lesson and how it can improve the lessons. Students are learning about different scientific forces and apply what they learn about forces to create a "racer" that goes the furthest/fastest while protecting an egg on a pre-made track. Students now will have more choice with what materials/shapes/weights go on the racer. Before I did not give students enough options for their racer. I also removed questions about videos/readings and gave students more hands on activities to allow students more opportunities for discovery. I also realized that the adapted plans for my unit were not as appropriate for my students, part of this has to do with the original unit not being created for my students. My lesson now has more student engagement which helps minimize any behaviors my students could have exhibited. My principal always tell us to make sure the assessment matches the objective, I was never told how to do that I have had to really figure that out on my own. Now after applying the template, I have a better understanding of UbD and how to backwards plan.

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I decided to apply UbD to the unit on Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Because this is one of the longer novels we read in the 10th grade curriculum I noticed a lot of class time was wasted by reading in class which left very little time for more meaningful activities and lessons. The purpose of the unit is to identify how an author’s style can provide insight to their culture although most of the lessons I taught revolved around reading comprehension rather than skills the students could apply and build from. Once I revised the unit using the UbD process I focused more on the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. UbD forced me to omit the lessons that did not support my end goal. My lessons transformed from less reading comprehension to more application of skill. Chunking the text allotted more time for more meaningful lessons that support UbD and the overall purpose of the unit. Using the UbD template and referring to WHERETO helped me decide which lessons were learner-centered and which lessons I needed to reconstruct.

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I took the Night by Elie Wiesel unit from my curriculum and applied UbD to it. I had previously backward mapped this unit with one of my 10th grade co-teachers but we had struggled with staying true to the curriculum and making all the lesson fit nicely towards the end of unit assessment. The purpose of the unit was to study the culture and effect of the Holocaust, but the lessons did not always meet that purpose, for example a lesson exploring the figurative language in poems. After using the UbD template I feel that I know which lessons from the curriculum are key to reaching the end of unit essay assessment. I can take out and get rid of the curriculum lessons that are not focused on the key ideas I identified. Previously I had not identified which ideas from the curriculum I most truly wanted to focus on, but the UbD had me do that. It focused my unit into oppression and identity. Because I have a clear understanding of the key ideas of the unit, I can better plan and focus lessons which in turn will help my students have a clearer idea of where the unit is going, and how they are going to get there. I opened up some space in my unit plan for extension activities, for examples, I want to see if the students are interested in applying the idea of 🤬 to modern day times and conduct research about the 🤬 that exist today. This research project would be great for student choice, student interest, and student background information, and it was not originally in the curriculum.

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I used the UBD template for my digital citizenship grade 4 unit. This unit originally has you do the pre-assessment once and go through each lesson and end with an assessment for each lesson. However, the UBD template helped me because I was able to organize the assessments and activities that I thought would be more beneficial to the class I was teaching such as one of my 4th grade classes needs more time with technology tools so I was able to incorporate this into more of their lessons compared to another 4th grade class that is more familiar with the use of technology. This also reminds me of what the students need to know and what I need to teach in order for each student to become successful. This is what I learned from the UBD template activity.

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I used the UbD template to back map my current unit on argument writing.  I had already back mapped the unit with my content partners, recommending that we begin by analyzing arguments about space exploration, lessons which had been moved to a different unit in the latest revision of our curriculum, but fit better with the standards and assessment of this unit.  After being guided through the process of researching and outlining an argument on that topic, students will begin researching a topic of their own choice.  Before writing their argument, they will analyze propaganda techniques used in speeches made by world leaders during WWII in order to use similar techniques in their own arguments to supplement their logical appeal with emotional appeal.  After writing their individual arguments, we decided to have students work in groups to create a PSA about their selected topic.  Since that is new this year, using this template to back map the unit pointed out additional skills they will need to acquire with storyboarding and MovieMaker to plan and create their video.  Adding that assessment also helped clarify the overall purpose of the unit since it provides a better opportunity for students to utilize the propaganda techniques covered in the unit than a written argument.  As a result, I was able to clarify the enduring understandings and added new essential questions about propaganda and audience to help put the learning activities into a clearer context.  By labeling each of the learning activities for acquisition (A), making meaning (M) and transfer of learning (T), I was also able to ensure there was a better balance of activities and to sequence activities so that students acquire the necessary knowledge for each new skill along the way to developing their argument and PSA.

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I chose to do my second unit of the year "Medieval Europe," which encompasses the political/social structure, the Catholic Church, inventions, art and architecture, and daily life. Before using the UbD, I essentially would just go down the list of activities, with my own modifications, and then do the assessment. The way this unit changed for me is that I was able to change the assessments in order for them to match better to the activities, and what the students absolutely needed to know. The biggest change for me is when I did the WHERETO. This allowed me to understand why I was having the students do these activities and how they tied into the end product. I was able to ensure that the material was covered in order to be successful on the assessment. By starting at the end and working your way back the lessons become more tailored to the students needs, and your needs as a teacher. It allows teachers to better understand what and why they are doing things in the classroom. This gives a level of transparency to the students as well, as they also begin to understand why they are doing certain things.