UbD Template

UbD Template

1. reflects the principles of sound curriculum, provides a helpful organizer for developing effective unit plans, and helps us avoid common weaknesses in unit designs.

2. way of thinking—of clarifying learning goals and how to more likely achieve them —“by design.”

3. Stage 1: Clarifying Desired Results. Key goal: understanding. To “understand” has two general connotations: (1) applying your understandings, knowledge, and skill effectively in new situations results in successful transfer; and (2) making inferences and grasping connections, to culminate in understanding.

   • Transfer: The ability to transfer is arguably the long-term aim of all education. You truly understand and excel when you can take what you have learned in one way or context and use it in another, on your own
   • Meaning: An understanding is not a fact (though it may sound like one) but a “theory” in the broadest sense; it is the result of inference—the developing and Module B: The UbD Template 15 testing of ideas by learners, with teacher assistance, as needed—culminating in an idea that seems useful and illustrative to the learner.
     • Understandings are the hard-won ideas of modern expertise; they can’t be “covered”; they have to be “uncovered”—explored and considered—to be understood because they are not usually obvious and are prone to misunderstanding by novices