DI, UbD, & WWIS (Oh My!)

My head is spinning a bit, but I’m very pleased I chose the panel discussion as my first session. The authors, Carol Ann Tomlinson (DI), Jay McTighe (UbD), Grant Wiggins (UbD), and Robert Marzano (WWIS)—along with ASCD moderator Ann Cunningham-Morris—guided attendees through an overview of each framework, and then the authors answered specific questions based on their fields of expertise.

Even more important, the authors pointed to the elements that connect their frameworks to one another. In a nutshell, here’s what I learned:

• Differentiated Instruction (DI): Teachers need to differentiate their approach to encompass the diverse needs of students, according to Tomlinson. “Students need to understand that they are important; therefore, as your teacher, I’m only going to teach you important things.” This has to be rooted in best practices.
• Understanding by Design (UbD): McTighe and Wiggins discussed how the identification of your students’ needs for differentiation can only be achieved through the “backward” design approach. Specifically, this means clearly identifying your goals for the understanding you want your students to achieve; from there you can accurately define your goals. Lastly, then, you design your lesson or curriculum.
  
• What Works in Schools (WWIS): Marzano then emphasized the need for three critical intervention pieces to come together to identify the content underneath the framework. The school, teacher, and student all have parts to play; to achieve this, Marzano recommends a rubric that identifies levels of learning. These levels are clearly different than grade levels and place more emphasis on scale before assessment. “Formative assessment has to align properly with our goals. If the goals are fuzzy, the understanding will be too.”

Obviously, this barely scratches the surface of these fully developed frameworks. To get the full essence of this session, look for the DVD of this panel discussion to be available for purchase later this summer (check the ASCD store). I plan to learn more about DI, UbD, and WWIS as I attend more sessions on these different frameworks. Stay tuned for more posts this weekend.

For those of you already integrating these frameworks into your teaching, please share your experiences. For those of you who are interested in doing so, what are some of your biggest challenges?

Submitted by Carole Hayward, Director, ASCD Newsletters & Special Publications.

Comments

[Jacquelyn Wolfgram]

My biggest challenge in implementing changes to increase learning are class size, space size, and time. I teach 30 first graders in a Catholic school, in a relatively small classroom. There is no room for circle time or to have centers set up and ready to go. Although I do have an assistant in the classroom we do not have the outside resources available to assist us with chilren who have learning issues - it is up to us to accomodate them at all times and this is where most of our one on one time is spent, taking away from the other students. I do believe in inclusion, however, it is very difficult to remediate several students effectively in a class of this size. The other obstacle is lack of time. Our curriculum is set up so the reading and math lessons are to be completed on specified days of the week, the students attend 7 specials throughout the week, and then I have to to fit in religion, social studies, and science each day (forget about reading aloud for pleasure, to the children) - this leaves little time for anything else, making teach, test, and do your best as Prof. Wiggins puts it, the saying of the day. It is discouraging, but I continue to try to incorporate differentiation into my classroom, despite these obstacles.

[Matthieu Yangambi]

Differentiated instruction and understanding by design are effective teaching strategies mostly for multicultural and urban schools. If implemented effectively, students performance improve consistently. However, if the class is too heterogeneous, applying these strategies become difficult and exhausting.

Matthieu Yangambi, Ed.D.

[Kim Cornwell]

In regard to Mr. Yangambi's comment, the more heterogeneous a class is, the more difficult the the task. It is accurate to say that a class with a wide range of skill levels may require more preparation when the instructor initially teaches a lesson. Let's not forget the purpose of differentiated instruction is to make the curriculum meaningful and accessible to all students. However, the teacher should not have to recreate the wheel when he or his collaborative group teaches this lesson again. The more experience an instructor has in lesson design, the more tricks he will have in his bag.