Backwards Learning?

Four years ago when I was beginning my first classroom teaching position, I was introduced to Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. The concept was completely new to me, and not something covered in my teaching courses (completed 8 years before this job), but pretty quickly began to make a lot of sense to me. Planning starting with standards, creating assessments, creating learning activities focused on those assessments, and always providing clear, specific learning targets has been one of the pillars of our instruction at this startup school, so I've been doing my best to keep this practice in the forefront while planning learning in my classroom.

Recently, I've been playing around with the idea of applying this format to the way students learn in my classroom. Getting students to manage and direct their own learning has been something I've always wanted to do, but I've been struggling with getting it to work in practice, especially with how to manage and assess student progress in a more open-ended environment. When I introduce this kind of activity to my students, they often joke that "Mr. Jon never teaches us anything". I would (and do) argue that it's much more difficult to plan activities where students have to form their own understanding than it is to just tell them how to do it. I also think (oh hell - I know) that classes where students explore are more engaging for them and for me, both in planning and delivery.

At the end of every year since I've started, I say to myself, "Ok Jon, you made some good progress this year. You've got some great resources put together; you designed some great activities, and some that need some work, but you know what that work is. All you've got to do so you're not working an extra 12 hours every weekend is stick with what you've done before! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, don't change everything you do AGAIN! PLEASE!!!" But I haven't been able to make myself listen to myself yet.

So, here's what I'm thinking:

Start with the "test"

Start the unit with maybe a little intro about the standards, and some overall learning targets. Then provide the students with the "test" - a series of assessment questions that are basically the unit test I would normally give at the end of the unit. A student's job over the course of the unit is to 

• Figure out how to do the problems - What skills and understandings will they need to solve these problems? What resources will they use to learn those skills and gain those understandings?
• Explain (written, oral, presentation) the concepts they learned - What academic language do they need to put what they're doing into words?
• Produce their own (hopefully better) problems

Learning Activities (optional?)

For the "meat" of the unit, I'm thinking I just stick with what has gone before. Provide some structured learning activities that will help students build the skills and knowledge necessary to address the "test" problems. The idea is that knowing the kind of problems they're working towards, students will be able to make connections between the things they're doing in the activities and the overall objectives of the unit.

I'm playing around with the idea of making these activities optional. If a student wants to follow her own path (and has a good idea of how to do this), or wants to work on his final product (more about that later) after showing me he already knows how to do the problems, I think I'm fine with that. I need to think about how to manage this part a little bit more. I also don't want students to miss out on activities that work on collaboration and communication skills, so there will probably be a mix of optional activities and required activities.

The Product

Here, I'd like to start with a rubric. Our school uses a 1-4 standards-based grading scale.

1. Students showing an emerging level of understanding have difficulty approaching the task productively. They struggle to find and use effective strategies and resources.
2. Students showing an approaching level of understanding can usually answer the assessment problems, and similar problems, correctly with some guidance. They are in the process of finding effective strategies and resources to build their skills and knowledge. They are in the process of expressing their understanding using appropriate academic language and mathematical terminology.
3. Students showing a proficient level of understanding can consistently answer the assessment problems, and similar problems, correctly with occasional, limited guidance. They have found some effective strategies and resources and used them to build their skills and knowledge. They can consistently express their understanding using appropriate academic language and mathematical terminology, and use appropriate mathematical and technology tools to communicate their understanding. They are working on producing their own problems to address the targeted skills and knowledge.
4. Students showing an exemplary level of understanding can consistently answer the assessment problems, and similar problems, correctly and independently. They have found effective strategies and resources and used them efficiently to build their skills and knowledge. They can consistently express their understanding using appropriate academic language and mathematical terminology, and use appropriate mathematical and technology tools in creative, innovative ways to communicate their understanding. They can produce their own problems that address the targeted skills and knowledge.

So, what I'd like to see from students, at the very basic level, is the assessment problems solved correctly showing work. Further, students should be able to explain in appropriate language the reasoning shown in their work; this is especially important for my mostly ELL students. Top level students should be able to find some creative way to present their understanding to me, and perhaps to the rest of the class. A bonus would be for students to produce their own problems that would address the targeted standards; I've found that when students can pull this off, it gives them a really deep understanding of how math problems work, and helps them respond to them in the future.

Prove it!

There's no way around it: students, especially students on their way to the IB diploma program, have to be able to show their understanding in a formal testing environment. I'll wrap up the unit with a formal test, potentially including student-produced problems. Here, I'm playing around with the idea of letting students take the test when they're ready (or at least early if they're ready). After they've shown an ability to respond to unfamiliar questions, they can either move on or work on enrichment activities. This part really worries me: having a class (or five) full of students working on different things sounds like too much for me to manage right now.

Feedback please!

If anyone's reading this, I'd really appreciate some feedback. I have the feeling that someone out there has tried this kind of thing before; there might even be a name for it that I don't know. Anyone working on this kind of idea now? Is it stupid, unlikely to work, pedagogically inappropriate or wrong? Challenge me, question me, give me advice, point me at resources, etc. 

Thanks for reading.