UbD Lesson Plan Template | Fillable PDF | Word | RTF
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Understanding by Design (UbD) is a specialized learning model that seeks to improve student learning through engaging the students in complex tasks and assessing their knowledge. Using a UbD lesson plan template, you can outline clear learning goals, engaging activities, and ways to assess student knowledge to implement the model effectively.
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This nationally recognized method is based on several ideas:
- The best way to determine how well the students are learning is to assign tasks requiring them to explain, apply, and interpret information.
- Assessments of students should be measured and used to adjust curriculum to improve learning.
- “Backward design”: Teachers plan lessons by determining learning outcomes first, and then finding materials to support those outcomes, rather than finding the materials first
Stage 1
Beginning to write a UbD lesson plan―backward design―requires teachers to determine the learning outcomes for their students. You can look to the Common Core State Standards to see what goals your daily lessons should be geared toward. You could also include the major ideas and questions that fall under the heading of the learning outcome in your plan. For example, a lesson involving Greek literature could help fulfill a learning outcome such as understanding themes, and you could pose questions such as “What is the definition of a classical hero?”
Stage 2
The next part of writing your plan requires you to create “performance tasks,” which are assessment tasks that will allow students to demonstrate understanding of the content. These should be designed at the application level on Bloom’s taxonomy or higher. To continue the above example, students could be instructed to write a short poem or narrative that demonstrates something they believe about the world or heroes.
Stage 3
The last stage of creating a UbD plan is the learning plan. The learning plan consists of the activities and materials you will use to teach the content necessary for students to fulfill the learning outcomes. Here, list the chapters or titles of any books students will read, as well as any other materials used during the lesson.
As this stage covers what you will be doing in the classroom, schedule each part of it so you can complete all the activities you want to. Like other types of lesson plans, creating an engaging introduction that connects the material to the students’ existent knowledge can pique their interest and improve learning. Then decide what sort of reading, lecture, audio-visual, writing, and verbal activities will be most effective in teaching the learning goals. Plan to close each lesson by summarizing the material and connecting it to broader goals and themes of the course.
Remember to consider your students’ learning styles, and create activities that allow them to test ideas while learning the material.
Sources
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