I think the following entry from WikiPilipinas needs revising. “Learning of facts”? Check also the last statement.
“Teaching for understanding” is the main tenet of UbD. In this framework, course design, teacher and student attitudes, and the classroom learning environment are factors not just in the learning of facts but also in the attainment of an “understanding” of those facts, such as the application of these facts in the context of the real world or the development of an individual’s insight regarding these facts. This understanding is reached through the formulation of a “big idea”– a central idea that holds all the facts together and makes these connected facts worth knowing. After getting to the “big idea,” students can proceed to an “understanding” or to answer an “essential question” beyond the lessons taught.
One of my initial concerns about UbD in my previous post is about not checking first if the bandwagon we jumped in to will run in our roads although I received a comment that said the DepEd did pilot it and are confident that it can. The results of the pilot I believe are not for public consumption. We just have to believe their word for it. But with this post at WikiPilipinas, I don’t know if it is clear to us what the wagon is. Here’s the next paragraph:
Through a coherent curriculum design and distinctions between “big ideas” and “essential questions,” the students should be able to describe the goals and performance requirements of the class. To facilitate student understanding, teachers must explain the “big ideas” and “essential questions” as well as the requirements and evaluative criteria at the start of the class. The classroom environment should also encourage students to work hard to understand the “big ideas” by having an atmosphere of respect for every student idea, including concrete manifestations such as displaying excellent examples of student work.
But I love the description of traditional method of constructing the curricula in the following paragraph. Very honest. But I can’t agree about the analogy with Polya’s.
The UbD concept of “teaching for understanding” is best exemplified by the concept of backward design, wherein curricula are based on a desired result–an “understanding” or a “big idea”–rather than the traditional method of constructing the curricula, focusing on the “facts” and hoping that an “understanding” will follow. Backward design as a problem-solving strategy can even be traced back to the ancient Greeks. In his book “How to Solve It” (1945), the Hungarian mathematician George Polya noted that the Greeks used the strategy of “thinking backward” by knowing what you want as a solution in order to solve a problem.
If I remember right, G. Polya wrote “look back” as the last step for solving a problem. It means you reflect on your solution and answer in relation to the problem. But wait, there is a problem solving strategy called “working backwards” which is probably what is meant here but as an analogy to backward design? Uhmmm …
Oh, by the way, “backward design” is a problem solving strategy?
Not that I’m happy we’re adapting Understanding by Design but who cares if I’m happy with it or not. There isn’t anything I can do in that department but just to help now to make sure we make the most of it. It is is a multimillion peso project. That’s our taxes. The one in WikiPilipinas is by far the only resource in the net for UbD Philippines. If you happen to know other related sites, please share.
Here’s one research about UbD in Singapore. Here’s my other UbD related post
I am a newly hired teacher in a private school and I attended a seminar about UbD. This thing is also new to me and the sad part is that I am required to UbDize my learning plan. I only attended the seminar for three days and until now it’s hard for me to teach because I really don’t know how to work with this thing they called UbD. Honestly, ang hirap talaga!
kailangan b ang ubd s elementary department kz ang hrap ituro s mga bata
how many of those who attended seminars on ubd (being paid by the school) understand how to use them in the classrooms? Was it tested in their own municipalities? Did they get a satisfactory results? If ever, why are there so many eyes rolling and head turning when this kind of schemes are mentioned? Why do our educt’l system keep on changing whenever a new name comes out especially when it sounds so foreign? Pls. educators have your pilot testing be known. Was it a success? It is very easy to say YES !!! Ask the students .
May i have the honor to ask for a request on the e copy about teaching science using the UbdD Framework
I am a student, and my school has recently changed into this kind of system. They have changed the grading system, the tests, and how they present the lesson. Personally, I am not satisfied with its outcome. Most students are having much difficulty in answering tests these days. Most are getting lower than usual and failing than compared to the preceding year. I don’t really know if the educators have mastered the technique yet but I can say that it is not improving the way we capture and understand the lesson for now.
They never mastered anything, especially here in our country. They just keep on adapting and changing things. They didn’t even pilot UbD.
The 22 Pilot Schools for the 2010 Secondary Education Curriculum…
http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Understanding_by_Design
I understand your side. It is not easy to adopt Ubd without understanding them fully.Iit is lke going to the battle not knowing your opponents.
i agree that there’s no way we can use ubd in curriculum planning if we don’t understand it. but even if we do, there’s no way we can prepare a lesson using ubd if we do not have strong knowledge of our content and by this I mean the real meat of the content, the important ideas. the latter is the more pressing problem right now. shouldn’t we articulate them first in our curriculum framework. at the moment our mathematics curriculum is a list of unconnected topics and competencies that merely requires knowledge of facts and procedures.
kindly send a simple format of UBD on my email, sapril_25@yahoo.com.ph …Please! A simple yet clear format showing all the necessary parts of this learning plan.
DepEd has its own interpretation of UbD and they’ve come up with a format themselves. It’s better that you get a copy of that format from them so you won’t get in trouble. I saw a book with those formats. People who attended their seminar got a copy. I hear it’s for sale but I don’t know where you’ll get it.
Disclaimer: I am not endorsing DepEd’s format or interpretation of UbD here. I think our adoption or adaption of UbD is diverting us from the real problems of our teaching and curriculum.
Can you please provide samples of ubdized learning plans in all subjects…
It would highly appreciated by us teachers…
thank you so much…
we have sample lessons for mathematics but they are not “ubdized” (by this term, i gather you mean in ubd format:-). why not ask Deped for samples because they’re the ones who want teachers to prepare their lesson using the ubd way/format.