Customer Reviews

Understanding by Design: Professional Development Workbook

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book complements in practical form the ideas presented in Understanding by Design (UbD). I am using this book as a guide for the design of courses online in higher education. Both have been a wonderful aid to rationalize the amount of resources that I must include in the courses online that I am developing. They are effective tools to determine in concise form and practices the synchronous or asynchronous activities that must make the learners as it demonstrates the intentions reached from the "big idea". I recommend them widely to obtain the deep learning.

This book not only provides clear examples of the work that it supplements, it is effective for planning beyond lessons alone. It enables one to plan for school wide or system level comprehensive approaches. An excellent application of the "Begin With the End in Mind" as advocated by Stephen Covey's work.

I have used this resource again and again when working with teachers who are either just starting out with unit design in a UbD framework, as well as with those who are quite familiar with the model. The templates and other tools are user-friendly and make the application of UbD much more straightforward than using the original text alone.

Clear user friendly guide for effective use of UbD for planning.
Understanding by Design: Professional Development Workbook

This book is priceless when designing lessons "backwards"! I found it to be more useful and comprehensible that the actual text "Understanding by Design". This workbook is worth the money to ensure your teaching focuses on what is significant! It has many examples in different content areas and BIG IDEA explanations that will help you understand how to apply backward design to your area of specialty.

Understanding by design was recommended to me by one of my teachers. This book helped me understand how to approach lesson planning. Backwards design is an excellent way to design curriculum. The templates are very helpful, and almost mindless even. You just have to know what your goals are, and the templates help you do the rest.
I think they should come up with a computer program to make it even easier, but hey, writing is good practice. I rated it four stars, because I haven't found some of the information int he back too helpful- of course I haven't thoroughly read it. I guess it's there for something, but I'm a stickler for not including unnecessary information.

This is an excellent workbook that can really help anyone who teaches get right to what's important in curricular and lesson planning. It incorporates standards and yet is still "teachable."

More than 1/4 of the way through but it has good "stuff" so far. Some of it may appear, at first, to be those kinds of things that seem so logical that everyone should have thought about it. Well worth the purchase.

I bought this book as a textbook, but am finding it to be a valuable tool in a teacher's repertoire to make lessons thought provoking and transferable.

The workbook without the prior publication, Understanding by Design by McTighe and Wiggins, is useless.