Unit/Lesson Planning and Backward Design

Unit and lesson planning can be a daunting task for new teachers. It is a difficult task to deliver a lesson, a more difficult task to design an effective lesson, and perhaps an even more intimidating task to create a cohesive, effective unit that meets curricular standards. In my experience planning appeared easy and a mere formality. However, with some experience I noticed that lesson planning is not easy, nor is it effective if rushed. To create effective unit and lesson plans took ages with hours spent on revising lessons to make them more cohesive within the unit. But instead of spending all this time forcing lessons to work together, why not start with a common goal?

Backward Design
This strategy for developing unit (or lesson) plans starts at the end. That is, the planning process begins by deciding what you want the students to have learned at the end of the unit or lesson. As educators, we have a predetermined list of outcomes to choose from, the curriculum. In unit planning, educators can choose to begin with an overall or specific outcome. Each lesson, activity, guiding question or assessment activity should move toward that goal. But before we get further into backward design and the process of building a plan, you might be asking what the purpose of all this work is. Why go through all this formal planning when you're fully capable of delivering content without it?

Created by Mark A. Hicks
markix.com
For educational use only.

The Benefits of Unit and Lesson Planning
- Proper unit planning makes your lessons defensible, this is particularly important for new teachers or any teacher facing a performance review
- Unit planning should link your lessons into a cohesive group
- Prevents 'overteaching' where an educator might try to cover so many topics that the students walk away without a true understanding of anything
- Prevents 'underteaching' where the students are doing activities but the lack of a tangible goal means they don't get much out of it
- Guides feedback. Often educators have so much feedback to give that it can be overwhelming, sticking to an overall objective helps focus the feedback so students can actually improve in a few key areas
- Assists colleagues. While it may be unreasonable to expect substitute teachers to cover everything the regular teacher would, lesson plans and unit plans should be detailed enough that anyone can deliver them with some success. Unit plans can also be shared with peers who may be new teachers or looking to try something new in the classroom.
- Provides structure and routine in the classroom

Created by Dr. Nancy Francis, Brock University
For educational use only.

The Process
Okay, unit plans are a good idea, but how do I actually do it? Well we've covered the very beginning with backward design. From here, there are a variety of strategies but I'll focus on one designed for physical education.
1. Determine the curricular goal of the lesson
- Done using backward design
2. Select the goal for each lesson (should include the unit goal and potentially one more)
- The secondary goal should not be forced and only used if it's a natural fit
3. Determine the movement form (in other domains this may be the type of activity)
- How will the students meet the goal of the lesson? Through reading, a lecture, independent research, etc.
4. Movement themes (in other domains this could be overarching themes like: cause and effect, gender inequality, overarching principles)
- The theme should guide teacher feedback and questions
5. Review skills
- What skills should the students already have that are needed to complete this lesson. This can guide your pretest, warm-up or review
6. New skills
- What SPECIFIC skills will the students learn? The curricular goals are too broad, this portion narrows the goal down for a particular lesson.
7. Life skills
- Life skills are part of the physical education curriculum and must be taught through other objectives. In other domains these skills are either explicitly in the curriculum or can include the character development goals.
8. Teaching strategy
- Many may (and should!) be used within a lesson and unit

These steps are adapted from lesson plan outlines provided by Dr. Nancy Francis at Brock University.

An example of Lesson Planning using Backward Design

 

Posted by: Ross Morrison McGill on December 9, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPkwfLbzkM

Notice:
- Lesson objective are stated early and grounded in curriculum
- Engagement portion draws on preexisting knowledge (review skills)
- Keywords relate to objectives, in the process above they would be similarly guided by themes
- Teaching strategy has to be determined, in this case broadly as student or teacher led. Notice that each activity can have a different teaching strategy.

Conclusion
Planning is important. Whether it's to defend our teaching methods or improve student learning, planning is the first step to being an effective educator. Planning is challenging. Sure, creating activities and filling a period with action is easy but planning a curriculum based unit with cohesive lesson plans that maximize the potential for student learning is exceedingly difficult. There is an answer. Backward design helps guide lessons, eliminates time spent forcing lessons to work together, ensures curricular expectations are being met and helps reduce time spent planning without sacrificing quality. Using this design method you can be a better educator!

References

Finley, Todd. Planning the best curriculum unit ever. Edutopia. Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/planning-best-curriculum-unit-ever-todd-finley
Dr. Nancy Francis, Brock University. Personal Communication, October, 2015.