The Understanding by Design Guide to Advanced Concepts in Creating and Reviewing Units

UbD is a great instructional concept, but it tries to be too much and fails to deliver meaningful quality content for both new and experienced teachers. It almost seems as if Wiggins tries to reinvent what teachers should do but takes two steps back and says "use what fits your needs." The books were supposedly created to be read in any order, but each chapter references other chapters and graphics already used. Sometimes it appears as if Wiggins is trying to reinvent what was already made: Bloom's Taxonomy and verbs, different forms of formative assessment, and teaching practices that I am already aware of before I read the book.Much of the work consists of visual grids, forms, and graphs that sometimes make the concepts more confusing than helpful. The process of constructing lesson plans is further complicated by using abbreviations that serve little purpose other than to the lesson writer himself. In other words, unless your colleagues also understand your specific design, a UbD lesson plan would not be understood by even a well-trained educator. It attempts to create vague templates with so much room that nothing seems concrete, such as evaluative criteria, objectives, and daily lessons. Don't believe me? Just read the template about a driving lesson, there is no scoring guide next to its "criteria" to show level of performance. GRASPS is nearly the same.Furthermore, there is a danger in overusing the "understanding" method of teaching, especially in lower grades (K-5). There is so much emphasis on higher-level thinking that it takes away from the assessment of other knowledge in order to obtain "a mile deep and an inch wide" level of understanding. The author wants students to make meaning of their learning in a complex way rather than just recall the material. While I agree that students should learn in a meaningful way, the level of depth can be inappropriate for lower grades in given subjects as suggested, such as math.Summary:UbD can be best described as a way for teachers to organize what they already know how to do while adding a level of complexity to the process. Emphasis on content the teacher already knows. This includes unnecessary labels (AMT, WHERETO, GRASPS, Facets), lesson planning norms (rubrics, big ideas, essential questions, unpacking standards, differentiated instruction), and generic classroom instructional strategies (see table of content in "Classroom instruction that Works"). I bought this for a college class and felt that I got nothing out of this series, not even as a new teacher.

I could not find nothing new, anyways if you are looking for templates, the book is full of them. Anyways it is a workbook, not the book itself. If you are undecided maybe should buy the book only.

This is a much better designed book for both management staff that want to provide courses for their staff on curriculum developement and for staff that want to move themselves forward in curriculum development thinking.The modules can be followed as a series of units which helps planning Inservice Training.

Great book for learning about UBD

I purchased this guide as a supplemental addition to the course materials provided by the school, and it has proved to be a wonderful resource in my Instructional Design program. Highly recommend for those that have a lot available online and wish to have a ready-reference "at-hand."

Great book to learn about how to apply the UBD template to design units to teach.

This was exactly what I needed to finish my project

Great resource