Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers

Our hope is that this blog will become a forum in which people can exchange ideas on how to recruit, develop and retain exceptional Jewish educators through mentoring and e-mentoring students, teaching candidates, and teachers in our day and supplemental schools. The present focus of this blog is to empower Jewish teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, consultants, and staff developers to integrate web technology (i.e. web tools and apps) into their teaching and teacher training.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Sample Application of Writing a Backward Design Lesson Plan Incorporating Evidence of Understanding

Step Three: Decide Upon What Evidence of Understanding Students Need to Demonstrate to Prove that They Comprehend the Enduring Jewish Knowledge of the Lesson

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to demonstrate how the five step process of Backward Design (*Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) can be incorporated into lesson planning.

Assumption:

We will create a lesson plan to welcome a student or co-teacher into the fifth grade day or supplemental school classroom of a mentor teacher.

According to the Backward Design framework of *Wiggins & McTighe the third step is to decide what evidence of understanding students need to demonstrate to prove that they comprehend the enduring Jewish knowledge of the lesson.

At the top of this post you will find a sample backward design lesson plan template into which the enduring Jewish knowledge, Hachnasat Orchim, welcoming guests, a set of essential questions, and the evidence of understanding are written.

*Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

On the next post we will discuss what student skills and classroom activities students can do to demonstrate that they both understand and can apply the enduring Jewish knowledge ( i.e. Hachnasat Orchim) of the lesson.