UbD Chapter 3

Having only learned a basic overview of backward design in Chapter 9, reading a whole chapter about it was very informative. I learned a lot about the very intricate specifics that go into planning a lesson, and I think backward design is something that would be very useful in my future classroom, because it puts the focus on what the student needs to learn instead of what the teacher wants to get accomplished. Hearing about the problems that teachers encounter when they are trying to cover all of the required content was a little daunting. I know that as a student, I have a tendency to get too in depth with a certain topic and miss out on other important topics because my mind is so focused on what interests me. Now that I know that I will likely have trouble fitting everything I need to teach into the curriculum as it is, I will have to be aware of my tendency to skip some things in favor of others and adjust my curriculum planning accordingly. I liked the part of the chapter where the author said that backward design allows for different methods of assessment to be used to measure the same results. This takes into account the varied learning styles of students and prevents students from doing poorly on assessments just because they are not particularly strong in a certain intelligence. This is something I definitely want to bring into my classroom someday; I want my students to be assessed fairly, and I want to find ways to measure success that are based on a student’s strengths, not their weaknesses.