Backward Design Plan Assignment

Purpose:
The purpose of this assignment is to assist you in learning to use Backward Design in your curriculum and lesson planning. This will also assist you by developing the necessary foundation for your following lesson planning assignments. The three steps to developing a backwards design are:
1. Specify what you want students to understand, know, and be able to do.
2. Detail how you will know they have accomplished this.
3. Develop a plan to get there (content, activities, teaching strategies).

Directions:
In this assignment, you will provide (1) a description of your class or caseload, (2) a description of your desired results (what you want your students to know, understand, and be able to do), and (3) a plan for assessing student knowledge, understanding, skills, and abilities. You will need to develop this plan for your classroom or caseload as a whole -- this is not the same as listing student IEP goals and objectives. Rather, it is a road map to your overall instructional plan.

1.) Class or Caseload Description:
First, you will need to describe your class or caseload. This should include:
the grade level(s),

• number of students,
• exceptionality categories of your students,
• gender breakdown (i.e. general percentage of female/male students),
• linguistic diversity (i.e. students who speak a primary language other than English or who use an alternative communication system)
• setting (i.e. inclusion, resource room, self-contained),
• content area, if appropriate,
• special program, if appropriate (i.e. CBI, E/BD, ISP), and
• whether you are co-teaching or other relevant unique aspects of your teaching context.

2.) Desired Results:
Next, describe what you want your students to learn this year. Consider, for example:

• By the end of the year, what students should know and be able to do? (Look at content standards and benchmarks, including, if appropriate, the New Mexico Expanded Performance Standards, for some ideas.)
• What is worthy of student understanding? (Don’t include everything you think you would like to “cover.” Consider what is really important knowledge and skills.)
• What understandings do you think should endure for long after your class is over? (What are the big ideas around which you will shape your curriculum and the really important understandings you want your students to walk away with.)

IMPORTANT: Make sure to provide a justification for each of your desired results. (Why do you want your students to know, understand, or be able to do these things?)

3.) Assessment Plan:
Finally, you will need to determine what evidence you will use to verify that students have achieved each of the desired results (each thing that you want students to be able to know, understand, or be able to do). You must list and clearly identify how you will assess each desired result. Each piece of evidence you list should include a complete description and/or a sample copy of your instrument. For example, it will not be sufficient to simply state “by observation.” If you wish to use observation, you need to indicate what specifically you will be observing for, how often you will be observing, who will conduct the observations, how the observations will be recorded, and how they will evaluated. Among the types of evidence you list, you must use at least three classroom-based assessment instruments, including at least two different types of criterion-referenced data collection instruments (i.e. checklists, rating scales, rubrics, curriculum-based assessment, task analysis).