Understanding by Design

Knowledge Worth Understanding

• Enduring
• At the heart of the discipline
• Needing uncoverage
• Potentially Engaging

Students Understand Knowledge/Skill

• Use the knowledge in authentic situations and understand the background of the knowledge

Curricular Elements for Understanding

• Principles, laws, theories, or concepts.
• Counter-intuitive, nuanced, subtle, or otherwise easily misunderstood ideas.
• The conceptual or strategic element of any element.

Content that hasn't been questioned is like courtroom claims that are never examined leading to opinions and beliefs instead of knowledge.

Essential Questions

• Go to the heart of the discipline.
• Reoccur naturally throughout one's learning.
• Raise other important questions.

Unit Questions

• Provide subject- and topic-specific doorways to essential questions.
• Have on one "right" answer.
• Are deliberately framed to provoke and sustain student interest.

The key to understanding by design is to cause rethinking through appropriate inquiry and performance.