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I decided to tweak the current unit that my students are learning about which is the Solar System. The major focus prior to the changes I made was to have students read about the Solar System and its elements and answer questions about it. I believe students learn best by doing and decided to add a component to the lesson that adds simulation and making an actual replica of the Solar System. The lesson is now more learner centered because the activities and experiences are designed for students to gain a deeper understanding of the content using developmentally appropriate activities.

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I am not in the classroom this year and so I found this assignment to be a little challenging. I chose a short unit on rhetoric from my AP Language course. The unit was only 3 lessons, which focused on an author's choice of rhetoric and how it can impact the reader. When I taught this lesson I wrote it to have only a brief lecture and then allow the student's to do various activities to grapple and work with the concept. I have backwards planned since I started teaching so there were very few modifications I thought this lesson plan needed. When I reflected on how the lessons went when I taught them, I think it would have benefited from becoming a 5 day unit, to allow students more time for incorporating the skill into their own writing, rather than just understanding the concept.

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I am not in the classroom this year and so I found this assignment to be a little challenging. I chose a short unit on rhetoric from my AP Language course. The unit was only 3 lessons, which focused on an author's choice of rhetoric and how it can impact the reader. When I taught this lesson I wrote it to have only a brief lecture and then allow the student's to do various activities to grapple and work with the concept. I have backwards planned since I started teaching so there were very few modifications I thought this lesson plan needed. When I reflected on how the lessons went when I taught them, I think it would have benefited from becoming a 5 day unit, to allow students more time for incorporating the skill into their own writing, rather than just understanding the concept.

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I went with a unit from my Computer Science class that involves teaching students how to use a programming language called Python to code looping patterns. The unit includes 4 lessons which each focus on a different loop style and what its used for. The overall purpose is to give students a major building block to coding their own programs by showing them how to use looping patterns to solve problems. In each lesson, they focus on a single looping patterns and have to create code that functions for expected outputs. Assessment completes the unit by the students demonstrating working code for the 4 different looping pattern types. After the UbD process, the lesson became much more focused on the results. The UbD process is interesting because of the backwards method, which in this case helped to eliminate some parts of the lessons which didn't really add much to the end result. Because of the essential questions, I also found myself adding a lot more to the lessons in order to help with student understanding instead of just rote knowledge acquisition. I can see how the UbD process makes a lesson better and more learner centered because it takes the learner into account during the entire process, instead of the lesson. Traditionally, I'd get to the end of a lesson and think "how do I test what I just taught", but the UbD process has me working backwards, which means I'm not wasting class time on things that are off topic or unfocused, and that everything done during the lessons has intention and purpose.

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I chose our science unit on creatures. Students were to identify the different categories of creatures. They were to complete an organizer of each creature and their important features. Students were to identify this information from nonfiction texts. My students were also learning about creatures and unique features in literacy so I kind of combined the two to give more of the UbD process. The goal for the students in this unit was to be able to identify creature categories and what features put them in those categories. I felt this was very simplistic and added somethings to make it more relevant for my students and more engaging. After I used the UbD process, I was able to create a goal that will address all areas of a learner. Students need to have a connection to what they are learning and be able to apply that understanding to something useful. By adding a writing component in my new plan the students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of how animals use unique features to survive and why that is important. My biggest take away from using the UbD process was addressing the learner. In order for something to be learner-centered you need to use the UbD process. This process allows you to think beyond the content you want students to learn and focus on using what they learn to real life challenges. What good is it if they know what features animals have if they can't use that knowledge to discover new things.

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I am currently wrapping up a section on quadratic functions in my Precalculus classes, so I decided to try and improve on what I had done by applying it to the UbD model. When I taught the lessons, I was met with a lot of obstacles including snow, extreme weather and many absences. Therefore, I did not get to make the lessons as exciting as I wanted to. As a class, we did two days of practicing graphing. Then, I was forced to squeeze the application problems into a few days with shortened periods. In my UbD template, I really wanted to stress using more exciting methods of teaching these topics. One thing I came up with was graphing with markers on poster-sized graph paper. I also decided a better way to culminate the lessons was to use a project rather than a quiz. Thinking about my method of assessment first really helped me to think about better lessons and learning activities. Therefore, my lessons would be more learner-centered and engaging for the students.

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I chose to recreate my unit on landforms and water systems. My initial reaction was that it was difficult for more to create a unit using this backwards model. This was not something that I was used to doing. However, what I found from using this system of planning is that many of the lessons that I was using to teach about landforms and water systems, really didn't fall under the umbrella of the main goal for the unit. Over the years, I would have an idea or see a fun lesson on Pinterest and add it in. That's not to say that these were bad lessons, they just did not help students to reach the main goal of the unit. Using the UbD framework really helped me to condense this unit and make it more straight forward. I look forward to using it in the future with other units as well.

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The unit I chose was a series of lessons on community of learners. This unit was designed to be taught in the beginning of the school year. Many of the lessons include a read aloud, mini-lesson on a reading strategy, and a discussion on how the story relates to building a successful classroom community. Before applying the UbD process, much of the focus on this unit was on discussing what a community of learners is and how students contribute when working in a group, partner, and small group discussions. There was not much emphasis on the growth of individual learners. After applying the UbD process, there is a greater emphasis on learners self-assessing themselves and setting goals for the school year. This is important because students must realize that before they can actively engage in a classroom community, they must be able to reflect on themselves because they are constantly growing and changing. They must be able to view themselves as lifelong learners. The UbD process makes the process of lesson planning better because it ensures that all learning activities match the learning goals and objectives. With the purposes of a unit or series of lessons in mind, teachers better cater their instruction to meet the unique needs of their diverse learners because they understand the knowledge and skills they want their students to acquire.

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Before UbD, I taught a unit on the Blues to my 7th grade class in an effort to motivate my students and prepare a piece of music for the Winter Concert. I stood in front of the class and disseminated all of the information that they needed and told them what to do and play. We created an original blues song and performed it for the school and parents. It seemed to work out well. After the concert, we started studying Blues and Jazz performers. This worked well for this group of students. Then came UbD! What I thought was a well planned unit was actually just individual lessons that sort of fit together because it was based on the same topic of the blues. By using the UbD Template for my Unit the Blues, I able to develop goals that related to the MSDE Content of Standards for Music, list Enduring Understanding and Essential Questions that match my goals and direct the rest of the planning process for my Blues unit. Stating what Knowledge and Skills the students will acquire and then the Assessment Evidence serves as a guide for implementing the Goals of the unit. Once all of this is in place it is much easier to develop cohesive lesson plans that are learner-centered a progressive in nature. The students will play a much bigger role through collaboration, creating, and performing their own pieces.

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My class is currently working on the paper roller coaster challenge. During this unit, not only are students learning about roller coasters, but they are also learning about key physics terms such as energy, work, and power. A lot of my students take this class because they need it for a credit to graduate. Thinking about the Understanding by Design Process, I thought about how I could make these terms more meaningful to them instead of being used in a basic physics terminology. I am going to talk to the P.E. department to see if we can do a cross curriculum project. Students will be tested on their vertical leap, and we can measure how much power they generate in doing this. The U.B.D. design has helped me in also thinking more about the assessments that I want to use to measure student's understanding. I like the idea of having students keep a journal of the building process while they are doing this. It will give them an opportunity to self reflect, and also provide me an opportunity to measure progress, and address any problems.

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We just started our exponential and logarithmic functions unit this week. One of the important parts of the unit is Geometric Sequences and Series. I normally spend 5-6 days on this alone.  I stopped to look at the Performance Tasks that were aligned with this Unit, as well as, the test (and the PARCC).  I aligned my lessons towards preparing them for more task-oriented assignments vs. problem-oriented assignments. I really focused on what I wanted them to DO vs what I wanted them to KNOW.  I looked at every activity that I did last year with this in mind.  The major change that I’ve made was to remove so much of the unnecessary ‘stuff’ I taught last year because it has no purpose to our goal.  I removed a day showing students how to use the formulas.  What a waste… using LCP’s activities, students will be able to do this without me telling them.  I am in the process of changing one of the days that I normally spend doing 10 ‘real-world’ problems to just 2 problems that students collaborate on and go more in depth with.  I have changed all of the homework assignments to have a reflection piece. This is my new way to assess students.

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Before UbD, my classroom was teacher-centered. I would lecture with PowerPoint flash some visuals to make it relatable to my students, but my students were very disengaged in the lectures. I would get a lot of negative feedback about how a certain topic related to their situation or lifestyle or science was irrelevant. They didn't  want to grasp the instruction or apply it to labs when simply given the information outright. Simply, it was a very rough year for me. After UbD, I noticed my students took accountability for their learning as well as challenged their partner's thought process on how they reached certain conclusions. The class shifted from teacher learning centered to student learning centered where the kids valued each other's voices and understandings of certain content. I noticed utilization of crossing over of content not just with science and math, but with literature , art ,music ,technology in the science class. They were making connections with other topics through science.

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The unit is on writing and graphing system of inequalities for a Sets, Functions and Probability self-contained class. The before provided students with no review or practice on how to write an inequality. There was an exploration that was complicated and would have caused my students to shut down in the beginning of the lesson. All of the lesson focused on graphing inequalities and a practice page on identifying if a point is part of the solution set. It did not include a real world problem in which they would be required to identify and explain the solution set in context to a scenario.  Using the UbD template, I used an exploration on Desmos that allowed them to identify what they noticed in an inequality and reflect on what they see. I added practice and resources that students could use to understand what they would be required to know to complete the task.  I added a real-world problem that I will guided them referring back to the skills learned (not provide the answers) for them to complete. The students were given homework that required them to look up keywords to determine the correct inequality sign and practice writing inequalities. The UbD template allows me to see that what was in the suggestions for the lesson did not provide students with the necessary skills to complete the Bridge Project. I was able to look at what they needed to know to complete the assessment and use it to ensure that the lesson had everything for my students to be successful. They will understand the material and be able to transfer the knowledge to complete the project.  I feel confident that the learning will support the outcome. I was the facilitator and they were responsible for their learning.

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Before UbD the/me teacher stood in the front of the class gave the students all the information on character traits, what they were, and how the character’s words, thoughts, and actions affected impacted their character.Then I would send them off to read a chapter and apply the lesson to the paper that was given to them. I would assess them on the character trait they picked and what evidence they would give to justify their answer. There wouldn’t be any collaboration, discussions, or deeper understanding of viewpoints.

After UbD I would give the students a character trait.They would have to discuss the character traits of a literary character and how their words, thoughts, and actions impact their decision making and interactions with other characters. They would have to justify why the trait was relevant to the character. It’s great seeing them discuss and argue the points especially if the trait was relevant but just outside their comfort zone. I differentiate the lesson by giving different groups challenging traits or basic ones depending on their skill. They would have to prove their point and talk it out with peers. The peers will be evaluating the answers and learn from each other not just me.

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My Unit was a volleyball unit that was left at my school over the years. The unit was "aligned" to the older Maryland and National Standards. There was no technology integrated and included a written test that was all multiple choice & T/F questions. Outdated rules were included in this as well. Skill acquisition was based off teacher instruction and practice.
Moving forward with the UbD model, I changed the desired result to be grade level appropriate for 8th grade. I was able to install a peer assessment in the unit provide students an opportunity the cognitive piece of the skill. This is used in my class at time to show that students who struggle with skill development at least understand and can explain the mechanics of a skill. In this UbD revamp, students are also able to watch a college volleyball game to break down strategies and skills as well. This unit can have the ability for a pencil and paper test but i went with the route of using essential questions to prompt students to put themselves through scenarios to process and explain why certain tactics would be used. The final assessment is based on all of the knowledge gained being put into a self-managed game. These games are used to assess the psychomotor and affective parts of PE.

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My lesson focused on the engaging kindergarten students to become beginning readers and to understand that words carry the meaning in text.  I used my districts standards to complete the UbD template. Before my lesson was organized based on the unit, materials I needed and the information was all located in different parThe template helped me to see the end goal in mind. Which I will explain this to the students. This will encourage the students to become engaged and accountable for their learning. One the essential questions is, "How do I read?" Children who enter my classroom actually ask this question because they are interested in learning to read. My curriculum have many of the components that are needed for UbD, however they are not organized according to the template, which lays it completely out for both the teacher and students to understand our goal. Some activities to achieve the goal of reading was reading a variety of books and having group discussions. The essential questions would be our focus as we went through the activities to identify the things that are needed to help us read. The students will then work in groups to create role plays or illustrations of their readings of text. These fun activities will also be used as my assessments of the lesson.

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This was a math unit provided by my county. This unit is on counting and place value. Before planning using the UbD process the information was vague and was kind of hard to organize based on the amount of information given. It gave a lot of resource, Performance Task and Assessments. The documents were split in different files in one folder. The unit had all the components of the UbD but not organized. Some of the resources offered are not being used because they not organized to go with the lesson you use it with. When I taught math I would find some of my own resources or make them up because I could not find them.

After planning using the UbD Template there is order and I can see very clearly what I have and what I need to add as the lessons progress. What students need to know is write at the top so the focus is not lost. The questions I needed to ask were listed which helps me to ask higher order questions during the lessons.  The lessons are all together so I can see the flow of the lessons and if I need to change the order of lessons or even take a lesson out during the teaching process. It is written in list form so it's straight and to the point. My County did a good job giving all the components of the UbD. I just had to organize it better.

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I chose our fairy tale unit. This is our next IB planner for Pre-K, so we are going to be spending the next two weeks tweaking it. The purpose of the unit before was for students to figure out what makes a story a fairy tale. In the past, it was only two weeks of lots of different fairy tales crammed in. We would read a fairy tale a day and do an activity to go along with it. The activity was usually a craft or worksheet that focused on a story element. We did not have time to read the fractured versions. The Baltimore City curriculum was very dry and boring. The final assessment was a worksheet where students had to draw about their favorite fairy tale and tell why it was a fairy tale. BORING!

The UbD process helped me to refine the lessons and make them much “meatier”. I liked backward planning and looked first at the old assignment. It was boring and did not give students any real choice or cater to different learning styles. The new assignment is much more challenging in they must consider all the elements of a fairy tale to create their own. They now they get their choice of writing, drawing, or acting out the fairy tale. Students can also collaborate with a partner or chose to work independently. Where as before everyone worked independently. The questioning was very basic in the unit. What is a fairy tale? What happened in the story? The new essential questions introduce students to new vocabulary and really make them think. They also tie in on a more personal level with the students as well providing more opportunities to create connections to real life. I was able to add in different types of activities that would offer something for each learner whether it be hands-on, audio, or visual. The UbD process really enriches lesson planning by allowing for students to know and work towards learning goals through the entire lesson instead of just being tested on them at the end. Students are much more able to transfer their in-class learning and experiences to apply it to their everyday lives. The lessons seem more cohesive, engaging, and less teacher instruction.

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Already one of the most engaging units I teach, my unit is focused on grocery shopping and ordering food in a restaurant. Before the UbD process, my unit loosely followed the stories and sequence in the textbook. Students read a series of stories that take place in a grocery store, then a restaurant, then a CD music store (ha!). From there, students did a variety of activities to introduce and practice vocabulary related to these topics. Then they watched videos and used other online content to practice listening to authentic conversation in these settings. The unit ended with a vocabulary quiz and a group skit. After applying the UbD process, I was able to focus my activities on the essential questions and goals. I trimmed out the book readings (outdated and not authentic) and added more interactive activities that move students toward the end goals, and even gets their families involved. Students have more choice and more independence about which vocabulary they need to learn and what is most useful to them in their current lives. All of the activities are clearly linked to the essential questions, so students will understand the purpose of each and hopefully find them relevant and engaging. The UbD process helped me to streamline this unit to what I really want the students to know and be able to do at the end. I was able to assess each activity and assessment I have used in the past to make sure that it contributes to that goal (and remove those that did not), and allowed me to see the gaps in my lessons and activities where I could add more learner-centered, student- driven activities. The entire unit is much more authentic after applying the UbD process, and I think students will be more motivated to learn and participate as they see how what we are learning will help them in the real world.

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My unit was a writing unit provided by the county. The unit it very vague. It comes with the standard and a few requirements to meet the standard.  The lesson was to read a few book review written by students online, then chart what they had in common. The assessment was to read them a book and have the students write a review without my help.
The UbD process makes the unit much more meaningful. We played a fact verses opinion game so the student would know the difference. After that, the students started talking about things they like and don't like and one reason why. Then they have to write about things they like/dislike and give reasons. This relates it more to the real world for them. We would do class evaluations to critique our peers . We would then read many book reviews. As a class, we would create a book review with provided sentence starters. Then students would be tasked to create their own book review. At the end of this unit students would not be only able to write a book review, know the difference between fact and opinion. They also will be able to voice and write their opinion about any thing and provide reasons.

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My unit was a series of books and lessons that discussed the environment.  The books all had to do with different types of environment.  Some books included were nonfiction books and others were fiction books.  The original unit had students just reading and answering questions about the different environments.  Some of the books had not much to do with the impact of actions of students.
The UbD process helped me take these lessons a little farther and connect them with the effects of people and our actions to the environment. I had students take what they had learned from the texts and their environments and connect it to where they would like to go. This allowed students to connect their learning to real life experiences and give evidence of where they would go and why. I also added in that students would show what they could do to impact that particular environment. These thoughts and changes made the lessons more cohesive and has the students connect all of their learning from each lesson to their culminating event. Students needed to take a little information form each essential question/activity in order to complete the culminating event.

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My Unit was just a series of books and lessons that discussed and taught the same standards as the UbD unit. However, not all of the books were only about weather and we had to balance weather discussions with books about baking bread and random other topics. The original unit was semi connected but it was hard to teach the weather science portion when we were reading books that had NOTHING to do with weather!
Our activities were mostly the same, but once I could link them together in a UbD manner, it became simpler to plan so teaching it would be sublime. The books that don't have to do with weather were removed, I could choose new books and activities that linked better with the existing texts.
The UbD process is more seamless while planning. If you plan with the end in mind, you can have more rich and meaningful lessons. It's the same as how you begin any lesson, but for a whole unit. When you teach, you explain the learning goal first and you come back to it at the end of the lesson to ensure that students met that goal. When you apply that method to how you plan all of your lessons together, you make your unit more cohesive and meaningful.

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Series of Lessons is Fluently Adding and Subtracting within 1,000.
Thinking about my lessons before applying the UbD process, I did not think about my essential questions as often as I should. I would ask my students lower level thinking questions. The questions were questions that were a question and answer session rather than utilizing my essential questions to create deeper understanding with my students. For example,  "Does 368 number have 3 hundreds?" This is a very simple question for my students to answer. When the students were adding partial sums, I was able to utilize formative assessments to see if they were understanding how to use partial sums to add.
Activities-
Building models with hundreds  blocks to add multi digit numbers.
Utilizing partial sums to add
Utilizing standard algorithm to add
Utilizing partial differences to subtract
After I started utilizing the UbD process, I started to utilize the essential questions. At the beginning of the unit, I would introduce the essential questions. I would remind the students of what the big idea was for the essential questions. The essential questions should be revisited over and over again. These questions are open-ended and thought provoking questions. By the end of the unit, I want my students to be able to think about What are standard procedures for adding and subtracting whole numbers. Throughout the unit, they would be exposed to many strategies that would help them.
The UbD process makes a classroom environment more learning centered for many reasons. One reason is the students are learning from one another. They also have multiple opportunities to think about their thinking. The essential questions, allow the students to make their own meaning. The students feel that they are an active member in their learning community by being able to share their own thinking.