Curriculum design experts Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins have reviewed thousands of curriculum documents and unit plans across a range of subjects and grades. In this book, they identify and describe the 25 most common problems in unit design and recommend how to fix them--and avoid them when planning new units. McTighe and Wiggins, creators of the Understanding by Design® framework, help you use the process of backward design to troubleshoot your units and achieve tighter alignment and focus on learning priorities. Whether you're working with local or national standards or with other learning goals, you can rely on their practical and proven solutions to promote deeper and better learning for your students.

Curriculum design experts Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins have reviewed thousands of curriculum documents and unit plans across a range of subjects and grades. In this book, they identify and describe the 25 most common problems in unit design and recommend how to fix them--and avoid them when planning new units. McTighe and Wiggins, creators of the Understanding by Design® framework, help you use the process of backward design to troubleshoot your units and achieve tighter alignment and focus on learning priorities. Whether you're working with local or national standards or with other learning goals, you can rely on their practical and proven solutions to promote deeper and better learning for your students.

How can today's teachers, whose classrooms are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before, ensure that their students achieve at high levels? How can they design units and lessons that support English learners in language development and content learning—simultaneously? Authors Amy Heineke and Jay McTighe provide the answers by adding a lens on language to the widely used Understanding by Design® framework (UbD® framework) for curriculum design, which emphasizes teaching for understanding, not rote memorization. Readers will learn the components of the UbD framework; the fundamentals of language and language development; how to use diversity as a valuable resource for instruction by gathering information about students’ background knowledge from home, community, and school; how to design units and lessons that integrate language development with content learning in the form of essential knowledge and skills; and how to assess in ways that enable language learners to reveal their academic knowledge. Student profiles, real-life classroom scenarios, and sample units and lessons provide compelling examples of how teachers in all grade levels and content areas use the UbD framework in their culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Combining these practical examples with findings from an extensive research base, the authors deliver a useful and authoritative guide for reaching the overarching goal: ensuring that all students have equitable access to high-quality curriculum and instruction.

How can educators leverage neuroscience research about how the human brain learns? How can we use this information to improve curriculum, instruction, and assessment so our students achieve deep learning and understanding in all subject areas? Upgrade Your Teaching: Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience answers these questions by merging insights from neuroscience with Understanding by Design (UbD), the framework used by thousands of educators to craft units of instruction and authentic assessments that emphasize understanding rather than recall. Readers will learn - How the brain processes incoming information and determines what is (or is not) retained as long-term memory; - How brain science reveals factors that influence student motivation and willingness to put forth effort; - How to fully engage all students through relevance and achievable challenge; - How key components of UbD, including backward design, essential questions, and transfer tasks, are supported by research in neuroscience; - Why specific kinds of teaching and assessment strategies are effective in helping students gain the knowledge, skills, and deep understanding they need to succeed in school and beyond; and - How to create a brain-friendly classroom climate that supports lasting learning. Authors Jay McTighe and Judy Willis translate research findings into practical information for everyday use in schools, at all grade levels and in all subject areas. With their guidance, educators at all levels can learn how to design and implement units that empower teachers and students alike to capitalize on the brain's tremendous capacity for learning.

Develop a solid foundation for teaching and learning with this definitive, step-by-step guide to curriculum design and evaluation.

Designing and implementing daily lesson plans can be among the most frustrating and time-consuming aspects of teaching—a tedious exercise that places artificial restrictions on student creativity and engagement with learning. In this game-changing book, author and instructional coach Michael Fisher shows teachers how they can free themselves from rigid and ineffective busywork by replacing lesson plans with learning journeys that are guided by the students’ abilities, interests, and skill levels rather than by pre-selected checklists of day-to-day benchmarks. Loaded with tips, strategies, and detailed real-life examples, Ditch the Daily Lesson Plan is the perfect guide to crafting student-centered learning experiences at all levels and across the content areas.

Deeper learning has been defined as “the skills and knowledge that students must possess to succeed in 21st century jobs and civic life” (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2013). Assessing Deeper Learning: Developing, Implementing, and Scoring Performance Tasks examines the role of performance assessment to facilitate student attainment of the core competencies of deeper learning. The book details a journey that a large school district undertook to create a system of performance tasks designed to assess students’ proficiency in critical thinking, problem solving, and effective communication. Chapters devoted to the development and implementation of the district’s high-quality performance tasks and rubrics highlight successes and lessons learned during the journey. Additional chapters focus on such topics as types of performance assessments, instructional methods that promote student engagement and deeper learning, policy, and how teacher leaders can drive this innovation to serve the teaching, learning, assessment, and accountability needs of schools. Assessing Deeper Learning: Developing, Implementing, and Scoring Performance Tasks was written for teachers, administrators, superintendents, and policy makers to better understand the challenges and opportunities afforded by using performance assessment to promote deeper learning.