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Backward Design: A Strategic Path to More Engaging and Effective Lessons

8 September 2024/ By Zineb DJOUB

Supporting our students’ success is our ultimate goal, but we often focus more on the content we’ll teach, the activities we’ll conduct, and the materials we’ll use in class rather than on what our students truly need to achieve the learning goals. As a result, our lessons stem from methods, books, and activities we believe are relevant. But have we ever considered starting with a clear understanding of the desired learning outcomes and then working backward to ensure every decision and action leads to those goals? In this post, we’ll explore the powerful framework of backward design, its key elements and how you can use it as a tool to create more effective, engaging and creative lessons.

What is backward design?

Backward design is a framework for curriculum planning that was popularized by educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their book Understanding by Design (1998).

Unlike traditional lesson planning, which often begins with the selection of activities or content, backward design places learning outcomes and student understanding at the centre of course design and then identifies the ways the instructor can support the students.

This means that you’ll first establish the purpose of doing something before implementing it into the curriculum. Once you identify the learning goals, you can plan assessments and instruction around grounded learning outcomes.

So, this approach ensures that lessons, assignments, exams, readings, and other learning experiences are aligned with the desired outcomes, leading to more focused and effective instruction.

 The three stages of backward design

Backward design consists of three key stages:

Stage 1: Identify desired results or what students will learn

The first stage of backward design is to identify what you want your students to know, understand and be able to do as a result of a learning experience or at the end of the course/unit (e.g. students will be able to read and understand argumentative essays).

At this stage, it’s important to focus on the ‘big ideas’ in the course (knowledge, skills, and abilities) that students need to understand and master.

Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence

Once you’ve identified the desired learning outcomes, the next step is to determine what you will gather as evidence that students are achieving the learning goals of the course.

So, you’ll decide on the types of assessments and performance tasks students will complete to demonstrate evidence of understanding and learning.

Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction

The final stage of backward design is planning specific instructional strategies (learning experiences) to support your students. So, you’ll decide on the activities, materials, and instructional strategies that are best suited to accomplish these goals.

Following these stages, you can stay focused on what’s most important and make your lessons more purposeful and aligned with your goals.

However, backward design goes beyond those stages. It helps craft effective lessons and creates engaging and inspiring learning experiences that can last a lifetime.

So, how can you creatively apply backward design to lesson planning?

Creative strategies to apply backward design to lesson planning

Here are creative strategies to use backward design to create more engaging and inspiring lessons:

# Empower your goals

Your goals are the driving engine for your instruction. They should not be the means to an end, but the starting point for further learning and growing.

When planning lessons, you should not ignore students’ abilities, interests and backgrounds, as these are the core of every instructional decision we make.

So, to set effective goals, you must tailor them to not just meet curriculum standards but also to cater to different students’ learning styles and needs. This allows for more flexibility and differentiation, thereby increasing student ownership and engagement.

However, designing lessons that engage all students can be difficult to achieve, especially when the content does not seem appealing to them.

To this end, creating “stretch goals” is essential to challenge students to go beyond the basic learning outcomes.

This will help you design activities that allow students to explore, experiment, and expand their understanding in unexpected ways and so thrive in areas that match their strengths and interests.

When stretching your goals, make sure to include the 4Cs of 21st-century skills: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

For example, if the learning objective is to understand a historical event, a stretch goal could be for students to critically analyse diverse views on this event and present their findings through a presentation, cooperating with peers to construct a group project, or artistically reinventing a historical setting.

Further, involving students in the process of setting and evaluating learning goals can empower them to take ownership of their learning, understand better how their efforts relate to those goals, and monitor their learning progress.

To actively engage them in such a process, it’s also important to develop a growth mindset by reinforcing the idea that not meeting a goal is not the end of the road, but an opportunity to learn from mistakes and grow.

# Focus on mastery and growth

Within the backward design framework, assessments should be authentic. They genuinely measure the skills and knowledge the learning goals target.

The goal of the assessment process is to ensure students understand and can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned, even if they have more opportunities to redo their work or demonstrate their learning in different ways.

So, the focus is not on grading, but on ensuring mastery and growth.

Therefore, to align assessments with learning goals think about what constitutes student understanding and proficiency and how to collect such evidence before designing specific units and lessons.

Consider integrating various formative assessment methods such as tests, projects, presentations, lab reports, and reflection papers to collect different types of evidence and allow students to choose how they want to demonstrate their learning.

Besides, to maximize assessment for learning opportunities, provide constructive feedback that helps students improve and grow. Also, encourage them to document their learning journey, reflect and set goals to further improve.

# Infuse your lesson planning with creativity

Backward design can help you craft more engaging and inspiring lessons.

After setting your goals and assessment tools, it’s time to decide on your content and instructional strategies.

Here are some creative lesson hook strategies to boost engagement:

Use storytelling to drive your lessons: Start with a story—a historical event, a case study, or even a fictional scenario—that aligns with your learning goals. Encourage students to reflect on the story, solve problems, or make decisions, driving deeper learning through the narrative.

Incorporate real-world challenges: Identify a relevant problem or issue that connects to your learning goals and build your lesson around solving this challenge. This approach will make learning more relevant and foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Integrate gamification: To make learning more dynamic and fun, incorporate game elements (role-playing activities, quizzes, puzzles, etc.) into your lesson plans that align with your learning goals.

Use inquiry-based learning: Based on the learning goals, you can design questions and student-led investigations that encourage them to explore the content in-depth in a way that resonates with them.

So, instead of teaching the material, you can start your lesson with open-ended questions that guide students’ inquiry and foster deep learning. Then, provide the resources and support necessary to lead their inquiry.

Involve students in project-based learning: PBL is an excellent way to enhance the four C’s while aligning with backward design. To learn more about how to integrate PBL into your lessons, check out this post: 3 Key Characteristics of Project-based Learning

Flipped your instruction: Encouraging students to work outside of class time can help reinforce their understanding and mastery of content. You can assign videos of pre-recoded lessons or reading assignments, then devote class time to higher-order thinking activities such as discussions, collaborative projects, problem-solving, etc.

# Reassess and reflect on the process

Backward design is an iterative process. So, ongoing reflection and revision are necessary to refine this approach for future lessons. This might involve adjusting the goals, instructional strategies/and assessments.

Here are some examples of questions to reflect on your lesson plan using backward design:

• Were the learning goals clear and well-defined?
• Were they sufficiently challenging for students?
• Did the instructional strategies cater to the diverse needs of students?
• Was there enough differentiation and scaffolding to help students with varying levels of understanding?
• Are there any students who need additional support (e.g. through one-on-one tutoring, small group instruction, or reteaching key concepts in different ways)?
• What parts of the instruction did not resonate with most students?
• Did the assessments truly measure the intended learning outcomes?
• Did the assessment methods help students demonstrate their learning and improve?

 

Backward design is a powerful tool that can bring clarity, focus and purpose to your lessons. By starting with the learning goals and working backward to plan your instruction, you can focus more on creating meaningful learning experiences that go beyond curriculum expectations for your students. So, why not give it a try?