Title of Lesson: What are the Five Steps Involved in Backward Design Lesson Planning? Part Two

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices. This is one of many lessons we will be sharing on teaching Judaic content, lesson planning, models of teaching, differentiated and individualized instruction and learning activities designed to transform the classroom into a Jewish community of cooperative learners. The title of this lesson is “What are the five steps involved in backward design lesson

planning?” Since there are 13 elements in each lesson plan we will divide this lesson plan into five parts. Here is the first part of this five-part lesson on the five steps involved in Backward Design lesson planning. The second part of this lesson follows.

Introductory Activity: (Initial exercise to focus on the objective/learning outcome)

The teacher poses this question to his or her students: “Have you ever taken a long automobile trip (e.g. a two-week family vacation)? How did you or your family determine the distance to travel each day by car? Did you need to make any adjustments to your itinerary?”

Developmental Activity: (Set of procedures or steps to reach the objective/learning outcome)

1. Facilitate a classroom discussion on the questions posed in the introductory activity (i.e. Have you ever taken a long trip? etc.) making certain to include the concept of backward planning or planning with the destination or end in mind. Then make the point that today we are going to apply the concept of backward planning to lesson planning. Explain that Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe have applied the idea of backward planning to lesson planning through what they call, Backward Design; that is planning lessons by first determining the enduring Jewish knowledge or understanding of the lesson. Then explain the five steps of Backward Design lesson planning that are described which you can find on this post.

Note: We will be using these four steps of the Presentation Model of Teaching.

Step 1. Get students ready to learn, and clarify the objective/s of the lesson. (This was discussed under item 1 under suggested motivation.)

Step 2. Present the advance organizer.

Step 3. Present new information.

Step 4. Check for understanding, extend, and strengthen thinking skills.

2. Present the advance organizer: The teachers says: “The ‘Backward Design’ approach of Wiggins and McTighe includes five steps. We will introduce each step in a systematic way, providing time to explain and give examples of how each step can be applied. Let’s start with the first step.”

3. The teacher presents new information to the students by first distributing the handout at the top of this post, The Five Steps of Backward Design Lesson Planning.

In the next post we will share the third part of a five part lesson on Backward Design lesson planning.