Bringing it into Focus:

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Bringing it into Focus

• Gaining clarity On Our Goals

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Bringing it into Focus
Key Terms

• Essential Question

A Question that lives at the heart of a subject
or curriculum that promotes inquiry and
uncoverage of a subject.
Understanding
Insight into ideas, people, situations, and
processes manifest in various appropriate
performances.
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Bringing it into Focus
Key Terms

• Knowledge

Facts concepts that are learned and taught.
Skill
Complex procedures that the student will be able
to do
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Bringing it into Focus
Key Terms

• Big Ideas

The core concept or ideas that serve as the focal
point of the curriculum. Big ideas are
important, enduring, and transferable.
CoreTasks
The most important performance demands in any
field
Goals specifying what students should know and be
able to do in various disciplines.
Standards
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Backward Design is goal directed.

• UbD is a deliberate approach to help designers
  avoid the mistakes of the
• twin sins.
• Aimless coverage of content
• Isolated activities

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The Template for Stage 1

• Establish Goals (G)
• What understanding are desired? (U)
• What essential questions will be considered? (Q)
• What key knowledge and skills will students
  acquire? (K, S)
• See page 57 in the text UbD

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Standards and Unpacking Them

• Common Problems
• Too many
• Too big
• Too small
• Too vague

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Unpacking Standards

• Content standards are unpacked to identify the
  big ideas and core tasks contained within.
• Provide a Focusing Lens.
• Look at the Key nouns, adjective, and verbs to
  focus on priorities.
• Cluster specifics under umbrellas containing
  big ideas and core tasks.

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What exactly is a BIG IDEA?

• This provides a focus lens for any study.
• They add meaning by connecting and organizing
  facts, skills and experiences.
• This point to ideas at the heart of understanding
  a subject.
• Big Ideas require uncoverage.
• This is transferable to many other questions and
  issues.

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BIG IDEAS are

• Broad and abstract
• Universal in application
• Represented by one of two words
• Timeless they carry through the ages.
• Represented by different examples that share
  common attributes.
• Erickson, 2001. p. 35

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Clarifying Content Priorities

• BIG IDEAS and Core Tasks
• Select the ideas and specify the transfer tasks.
• Important to be familiar with
• Identify the knowledge and skill needed for
  understanding.
• Worth being familiar with
• Identify knowledge that student should be
  familiar with.

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Tips for finding BIG IDEAS. . .

• 1. Look carefully at state standards.
• 2. Circle the recurring nouns (ideas) and verbs
  (tasks) in standards documents.
• 3. Refer to existing lists of transferable
  concepts.

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More tips

• 4. Ask one or more of the following questions
• Why study . . ? So what?
• What larger concept, issue of problem underlies .
  . .?
• How is . . . used and applied in the larger
  world?
• What is the value of studying . . . ?

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And one more tip . . .

• 5. Generate big ideas as an outgrowth of related
  and suggestive pairs
• This indicate the types of inquiries that must be
  made (compare and contrast).
• This suggest the kind of rethinking necessary to
  understand the ideas and find them useful.

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Framing Goals for Transfer Tasks

• Core Tasks
• Most important performance demands in any field.
• Embody our education aims.
• Transfer involves authentic challenges at core
  tasks.
• Successful transfer happens when students can
  perform well with minimal guiding/cueing by
  teachers.

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Clarity in Complex Core Tasks

• Goals will be intellectually vital and coherent.
• Overarching goals serve a criteria for deciding
  what to emphasize and what to omit.
• Consideration of each academic area encourages
  attention to ongoing results.

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