UbD Stage #1

Grant Wiggins and Jay McThige created the Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units. Understanding by Design or UbD, was created for individuals who desire to improve their design skills. The UbD design template is broken into three stages and is based on eight key tenants. Two big ideas of UbD are understanding and design. The authors discuss that while all teachers want their students to understand what they are teaching, it does not mean that classroom instructions allow students to understand fully. They found that in many classrooms, the instruction received is surface-level coverage of the content based solely on the state or government's standards or relies heavily on textbooks' content. The authors discuss that many classrooms have an over-emphasis on short-term content instead of focusing on long -term understanding. They believe this is because the pressures of high-stakes testing influence many of the learning processes. UbD was created as an alternative to what is happening in classrooms. UbD is meant for students to have long-term achievement gains and for teachers to understand concepts that can be transferred and processed to students while giving them multiple opportunities to apply their learning meanifully. The authors state that the most successful teaching begins with a clear focus on the teacher's desired learning outcomes. Additionally, it will focus on the evidence that shows how much learning has occurred. Understanding by design has three stages of "backward design" created to plan curriculum units that would help include desired understanding and performance tasks that require the students to transfer their learning.