Reverse design

Hey 👋

What a week. In commemoration, we’re kicking off a new series on effective planning (before I down tools for August)…

Big idea 🍉

As teachers, getting planning right is paramount. It not only makes a big difference to student learning, but also to teacher workload.

However, effective approaches to planning are not always obvious. For example, in the early years of our career, some teachers (myself included) find ourselves planning by first trying to 'identify a good activity'.

Whilst this can be an important part of the process, it's not always the best place to start. Activity-led planning can lead to incoherent learning and foster a false sense of teacher security—where students are busy but not necessarily making progress through the curriculum.

A stronger approach is to begin with the end in mind. This is called 'reverse design' (or backwards planning) and entails first asking ourselves:

A) What do I want my students to have learnt by the end of this session?

And then spending more time trying to answer this than we think we should. Reverse design is about striving for excessive clarity on what we want our students to know and be able to do as a result of our teaching. The clearer we are about where we want to go, the better chance we have of getting there. One of the best ways to force this clarity is by asking ourselves:

B) How will I know if they've got there?

As Daisy Christodoulou points out in her book Making Good Progress... "assessment operationalises curriculum." Asking ourselves these 2 questions before thinking about activities can increase the likelihood of learning happening and make your planning more efficient. Win. Win.

NOTE → When we do get onto thinking about activities, we should take the shortest path.

🎓 For more, check out this chapter from Understanding by Design, by Wiggins & McTighe ⤵️

Summary

• If we’re not careful, we can fall prey to ‘activity-led’ planning.

• Starting with the end in mind (and then thinking about how we might assess this) is often more powerful.

• When we get our approach to planning right, we boost student learning and reduce teacher workload.

Little updates 🥕

• Pre-print evaluating teacher-made digital flashcards in nursing education → finds users significantly outperform non-users in exams, highlighting their potential to improve academic performance.

• Working paper comparing student-led vs teacher-led math(s) teaching → finds teacher-led methods correlate with higher student performance (HT Prof Hendy).

• Analysis of successful groups of schools in the US → suggests that high behaviour standards can have a substantial positive impact on learning outcomes and equity. Peps summary thread here.

• Study exploring how homework impacts learning in math(s) and science → finds that frequent, short homework sessions improve achievement in maths (daily) and science (3-4 times a week), and benefits all students equally.

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