Understanding by Design Instructional Planning Framework

Part 1: Understanding by Design - Stage 1 Established Goals: What content standards and program or mission-related goals will this unit address? The mission related-goal to be addressed in this unit is to enhance students’ ability to make sense of problems and work towards solving them. In this regard, the relevant ISTE Standard to be addressed in this unit is Standard 1: Creativity and Innovation. Additionally, the unit will address Pennsylvania’s Common Core State Standard CC.2.3.2.A.2 for Mathematics.

What standards, competencies, and outcomes will this unit address? Based on PA’s Standard CC.2.3.2.A.2, the competency to be addressed in this unit is the use of understanding of fractions to partition shapes into halves, quarters, and thirds (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2014). Students are expected to be creative and innovative in partitioning shapes in different sizes based on insights they have obtained from fractions. Through this process, the unit is expected to enhance students’ problem solving skills.

What habits of mind and cross-disciplinary goals, for example, 21st-century skills and core competencies, will this unit address? The 21st-century skills and core competencies to be addressed by this unit is improved problem solving skills. This will be achieved through enhancing students’ comprehension of learning material and creativity and innovativeness. Transfer: What kinds of long-term independent accomplishments are desired? Students will be able to independently use their learning to apply mathematical concepts and techniques to solving multi-step and non-regular problems in real life scenarios.

Meaning: Understanding What specifically do you want students to understand? What inferences should they make? Students will understand that mathematical concepts, techniques, and procedures can be utilized systematically, correctly, clearly, and succinctly to solve real-world problems. They will use these concepts, techniques, and procedures to enhance their creativity and innovativeness in problem solving. Essential Questions What thought-provoking questions will foster inquiry, meaning-making, and transfer? Students will understand that proportional relationships can be identified and used in problem solving settings.

They will also understand that a proportion can be used for two or more similar objects and different shapes can be created using ratios and proportions. Acquisition: What facts and basic concepts should students know and be able to recall? Students will know that the relationship between many geometric shapes or figures can be understood through ratio and proportion, which are critical concepts towards formulating scale drawings. They will also know that similarity is essential when comparing shapes and determining perimeter and sizes.

What discrete skills and processes should students be able to use? Students will be skilled at ratio and proportion, which are crucial mathematical concepts that help to understand similarity and congruence. They will also learn how to use mathematical procedures to address problems in a systematic and succinct manner. Students will also be skilled at how to use symbols, generalizations, standard notation, graphing, and mathematical rules and representation in scale drawing.

Part 2: Narrative Analysis The design of this instructional unit will be based on some relevant theories, which will provide the theoretical framework for the unit. One of these theories is the Multiple Intelligence Theory, which postulates that people have various kinds of intelligences and the conventional psychometric views of intelligence are significantly limited (Cherry, 2018). Constructivism theory will also be utilized in this instructional unit since it considers learning as an active and constructive process.

Using the Multiple Intelligence Theory, the unit will focus on logical-mathematical intelligence since students will use knowledge from the learning material to engage in reasoning and critical thinking for problem solving. On the other hand, constructivism will be incorporated in the unit since the various mathematical problems provide opportunities for students to develop their own understanding of the real-world based on learned concepts.

The learning outcomes for this instructional unit have been selected on the basis that students at this Grade level need to enhance their problem-solving skills as they progress to other stages in their academic development. The mathematical concepts and learning tasks in this unit are applicable to real-life scenarios, which implies that students’ ability levels will be improved through enhanced problem-solving skills. When teaching this instructional unit, my instructional approach will shift from a traditional one to a personalized approach.

In this case, I will utilize a student-centered rather than teacher-centered teaching approach. When planning for the lesson, students’ needs, goals, learning abilities will be taken into consideration and used to shape instructional strategies. In-class learning activities will be student-centered whereas out-of-class activities will involve engaging students in tasks that help to reinforce the learned concepts in the classroom. The development of Stage 1 of Understanding by Design has involved the use of DuFour and Eaker’s four critical questions of learning.

Using these questions, I developed the learning goals and expectations after examining the students’ learning needs and relevant Common Core Standards. Based on these goals/expectations and the learning content, I identified the most suitable instructional approach i.e. student-centered instruction. I.