What Does Good Lesson Design and Planning Look Like?

"Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose." Charles Eames

The most important part of the learning process is the designing learning experiences for students that meet the goals that they are intended to teach. That is why the way design is important from the way you construct the objectives all the way to the final assessment that you use for the students to demonstrate their knowledge of what was learned. The lesson planning and design process has many similar threads in how lessons can be created. Boiling the main ideas that the students need to grasp into main ideas and then using these main ideas is the best starting point for beginning lesson design. Then creating and scaffolding learning activities that introduce, reteach, reinforce, and assess these main ideas make up the lessons.

Wiggins & McTighe have an excellent framework for the unit and lesson design process in their book Understanding by Design, (UbD)which is now in its second edition. It should be used or referred to in your future methods courses, however below is a simple visual that demonstrates the approach to layering lesson design in three major parts that encapsulates the UbD approach. The "enduring" understanding are the first tier and are the most essential elements of the unit, followed by the important to know and do the second tier, and then the worth being familiar with are the third tier. The entire unit that you design for any given subject, content area, topic, interdisciplinary, theme, etc… can be broken down into these three tiers. After this backwards be design step is done, then teachers can create meaningful learning activities that can be used in a successful learning unit. Below is a quote that encapsulates this approach. Read it and then respond to this posting by communicating your thoughts about lesson planning and design and how this approach might be helpful in about three to five (3-5) sentences. Then respond to a classmates posting in a substantive, meaningful way.

"The goal of UbD is merely to ensure that learning goals and evidence of learning follow a deliberate design so that all teachers regardless of genetic gifts or dispositions or sense of devotion or dedication are able to impart real learning based on understanding and not merely on rote knowledge or aimless recall." Wiggins & McTighe, Understanding by Design.