BACKWARDS PLANNING
STEPS IN BUILDING A UNIT OF STUDY

adapted from the Rochester City School District
Unified Science Curriculum and various publications of
the Coalition of Essential Schools

Source: http://home.rochester.rr.com/instech/Steps.html

• Identify the content standards --what students should know and be able to do by the end of the unit. (This is why we call it backwards planning.) Link these to the District's overarching goals and related standards as appropriate.
  
• Decide on a concept to serve as the unifying theme of the unit (science and social studies concepts lend themselves to integrative planning). Choose a "big idea," a significant issue, major event, or serious problem. (Try to come up with a motivating "hook" to arouse interest in the unit.)
  
• Devise an "essential question." --a "big picture" question that you want students to be able to address after they have thought deeply about the concept.
  
• Formulate "sub-essential questions" --additional questions that tie to the essential question and help students to maintain their focus and clarify their thinking.
  
• Determine the kind of performance assessment(s) that will best demonstrate students' meeting the content standards. Depending on the length of the unit, there may be multiple assessments leading to a culminating task that integrates the sub-tasks.
  
• Design engaging activities or tasks to lead students toward achieving the standards. What teaching strategies would foster the acquisition of the knowledge and skills you identified.
  
• Create rubrics for each performance assessment. Spell out the criteria by which each part of the assessment will be judged.
  
• Rework the components--questions, assessments, tasks, and rubrics to make sure they are complementary and that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts.
  
• Review student work carefully and think about strategies that might improve the quality.
  
• Revise the unit tasks, assessments, and rubrics as appropriate.

MORE ABOUT CONCEPTS

Concepts are:

• Abstract and Broad
• Universal
• Timeless
• Represented through different examples, with all examples having the same attributes
• Significant ideas, phenomena, intellectual processes, or persistent problems

To illustrate:

CONFLICT (all of the examples share the attributes of opposing forces and of friction)

EVOLUTION (all of the applications would deal with incremental change over time)