Unit Overview

This unit aims to develop childrens understanding of cyclones and their effects. The
unit is designed for Year 6 students and will be delivered over a four-week period
involving six separate lessons. This unit has been developed using the Australian
Curriculum and some of the activities have been adapted from the Australian Science
Teachers Association (n.d.). To create congruence between the learning outcomes,
the assessments, and learning activities, Constructive Alignment framework has been
employed. Taking a constructivist learning theory, where learning is constructed by
students through engaging and meaningful learning experiences, and then applying
the principles of instructional design, which aims to align assessment objectives and
learning outcomes, constructive alignment is an outcomes-centred approach, where
the most appropriate assessment and learning tasks are devised to align with the
specific learning targets (Biggs, 1996). The version of constructive alignment used in
planning this unit is Wiggins and McTighes (2001) Understanding by Design (UbD).

The Backward design process

Understanding by Design emphasises that curricular planning should be student centred and planned backwards, beginning with the learning outcomes and working
in reverse, rather than the teacher-centred approach of beginning with a favourite
lesson or textbook and planning forward from there (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005; 2011).
This concept is labelled backward design, or backward mapping, and involves three
stages: stage 1, determining the desires results; stage 2, determining acceptable
evidence; and stage 3, planning instruction and learning experiences (Wiggins &
McTighe, 2001). Each stage will be explored with discussion on how each stage
applies to the unit.

Stage 1: Identifying desired results.

The first stage involves determining what students need to understand, know, and
what skills they should be able to execute, which are drawn from the national

curriculum (Wiggins & McTighe, 2001). The key concept for the unit is extreme
weather, with the big idea being how extreme weather impacts humans and
environments, and changes the Earths surface. With the units central focus on
cyclones, each lesson is based upon an inquiry question that pursues and investigates
the lessons learning. While the unit is predominantly in the curriculum area of Science,
it additionally includes English and the Arts. For English, the focus is on interacting
with others in the planning, rehearsing, and delivering of presentations (ACELY1710);
and creating persuasive and informative texts appropriate for specific audiences and
purposes (ACELY1714); while for the Arts, it is on the planning, producing, and
presenting of media artwork for specific audiences and purposes (ACAMAM064)
(ACARA, 2016). For Science, the focus is on how Earths surface is affected by
extreme weather (ACSSU096); how scientific knowledge is used to inform problem
solving (ACSHE100); and Science Inquiry Skills in the questioning and predicting of
problems (ACSIS232), the planning and conducting of investigations (ACSIS103), and
the communicating of ideas (ACSIS110) (ACARA, 2016). Between the three
curriculum areas, the General Capabilities cover Literacy, ICT, Critical and Creative
Thinking, and Ethical Understanding; and sustainability is the Cross-Curriculum
Priority (ACARA, 2016).

Stage 2: Determine acceptable evidence of achievement

The second Backward Design stage requires determining evidence of achievement.

Here the focus is on understanding how it will be recognised that students are meeting
the learning outcomes (Wiggins & McTighe, 2001). The Backward Design model
encourages the unit to be viewed as not merely a collection of activities, but rather a
collection of assessments that provide evidence that learning outcomes have been
achieved (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). In order to accomplish this continuum of
assessment, a wide range of assessment methods is required to enable feedback to
direct learning as the unit proceeds (Wiggins & McTighe, 2001). As Readman and
Allen (2013) emphasise, this range should include summative, formative, and
diagnostic assessments. This unit includes all three, and assessments have been
designed to create congruence between learning activities and assessments, which is
particularly important for effective assessment (Shavelson, Baxter, & Pine, 1992).

Furthermore, the units assessments accord with the following personal principles that
have been guided by those set by Australias state and territory authorities, AITSLs
(2011) Standard 5, and Readman and Allens (2013) Non-Negotiables.

Assessment should include meaningful feedback (Black, 2008; Hattie, 2012;

2009);

Assessment should be fair and equitable (Davies & Elliott, 2012);

Assessment should be aimed at engaging learning (Worley, 2001);

Assessment should be aligned with intended learning outcomes (Readman &

Allen, 2013); and

Assessment should be authentic (Readman & Allen, 2013).

Summative assessment
In the second stage, the summative assessment, which assesses the end goal of the
units learning, is planned. There are two summative assessments in the unit, which
take the form of Performance Tasks. Performance tasks serve an important role in the
UbD unit, since they require students to demonstrate evidence of the understanding,
proficiency, and knowledge learned throughout the unit (McTighe, 2015). Performance
tasks have seven typical characteristics:
1. They require the applying of skills and knowledge, rather than simply
recognition or recall;
2. They are open ended;
3. They are authentic in context;
4. They enable evidence of understanding through transfer;
5. They are multifaceted;
6. They can integrate more than one subject; and
7. They are evaluated through established rubrics and criteria (McTighe, 2015).

Furthermore, they require identifying the audience to be addressed, have a specific

purpose in relation to the audience, and they enable students to personalise the task
(Wiggins & McTighe, 2001). Each of this units performance tasks are multi-staged,
both with production and performance components, and are designed to have
students connect and apply their learning throughout

the unit in real-world

applications. While the first of these has the students write a newspaper article on the

impacts of a past cyclone, the second requires creating an informative presentation to

deliver instructions on what the public should do to prepare for a cyclone.

Stage 3: Plan learning experiences and instruction

The third, and final, stage of the Backward Design process is the planning of
learning experiences and instruction. Having identified the learning outcomes
and the required evidence of learning, instructional activities and learning
experiences are now devised, with a number of key questions considered
(Wiggins & McTighe, 2001):
o What skills and knowledge will enable students to reach the units end
goals?
o What activities are appropriate for equipping learners with the necessary
skills and knowledge?
o What is required to be taught, and how would it best be taught, to meet
performance goals?
o What resources and materials are most suitable to achieving these
goals? and
o Is the design, overall, effective and coherent?
These questions are designed to ensure a strong relationship between the learning
outcomes, the assessments, which in this stage are those diagnostic and formative,
and the learning activities. Each of the six lessons in this unit and their activities are
intended to progressively develop students conceptual understanding, reasoning
skills, vocabulary, and skill acquisition toward what is necessary for them to
successfully achieve the performance tasks. The activities throughout the unit take a
student-centred, inquiry-based, and constructivist approach that requires students to
do their own research and find the solutions to problems in collaboration with peers,
which encourages deep learning and helps students to develop the skills required for
self-guided learning (Etherington, 2011). However, it is the diagnostic assessments
and formative assessments that are particularly important, since they enable the
teacher to direct, and redirect, learning toward the intended outcomes.

Diagnostic Assessment
This unit has two connected diagnostic assessments and are employed to determine
students current understanding, prior knowledge, and existing misconceptions.
McTighe and O'Connor (2005) compare the importance of diagnostic assessment at
the beginning of a unit to a physicians examination prior to prescribing a course of
treatment. The reason, they state, is that since students will have different levels of
existing understanding and skills, with some deficient in particular areas or harbouring
misconceptions, the teacher needs to clearly identify what will need to be taught, how
it will need to be taught, and how to link the content to the learners talents and
interests. Featuring in the first lesson of the unit, the two diagnostic tasks are the KW-L charts and the Concept Maps, which are used to determine students existing
knowledge, understanding, and misconceptions about cyclones.

Formative assessment
This unit employs a range of formative assessments that have been selected to serve
specific functions of assessment. As Dylan William (2011) asserts, teaching is
essentially three key processes involving three types of individuals. The processes
involve determining where students are with their learning, determining where
students are going, and determining how to get students there; while the three types
of individuals are the teachers, learners, and their peers (William, 2011). The five key
strategies for formative assessment, which serve as the specific functions for the units
formative assessment, are combed with each of the roles to form the matrix seen in
Figure 1 (Leahy, Lyon, Thompson, & Wiliam, 2005).

Where the
learner is going

Clarify and
Teacher

share learning
intentions

Where the learner is

How to get there

Engineering

Providing

effective

feedback that

discussions, tasks

moves learners

and activities that

forward

elicit evidence of
learning
Understand
Peer

and share

Activating students as learning

learning

resources for one another

intentions
Understand
Learner

learning
intentions

Activating students as owners

of their own learning

Figure 1. The five key strategies of formative assessment (Wiliam, 2011, p. 20)

As can be seen from the unit table, each formative assessment has a corresponding
code, seen in the Assessment Strategy Codes table, which is aligned with each key
strategy of formative assessment. A wide range of formative assessments, sourced
from (Wisheu, 2014), have been employed to cover each of the five strategies in
addition to targeting the learning outcomes. A list of these and their purposes can be
seen in Appendix 1. There are, however, two formative assessment practices that will
feature in each lesson that have not been recorded in the table due to their continuous
nature; namely, observation and listening, which are considered a teachers most
powerful tools of assessment (Brennan, 2015; Readman & Allen, 2013). Listening and
observation will be on-going and assess students working, discussing, reflecting,
questioning, answering, participation, and assisting of peers (Heritage, 2010).

Feedback, Recording, and Reporting

Feedback
Just as assessment is an essential component in the planning of learning experiences,
feedback is an essential component of assessment. Feedback is considered perhaps

the most important tool at teachers disposal (Hattie, 2009; Hattie & Timperley, 2007),
and a key mechanism in ensuring learning targets are reached (Jackson, 2010).
However, for feedback to be fully implemented, it must employ the following three
components (Fisher & Frey, 2009):

1. Feed up, which means clarifying the goals of learning so that both teacher and
students have the learning goals and purposes in focus and remain on track;
2. Feed back, which is the response given to students about their work in relation
to the learning outcomes; and
3. Feed forward, which is the adjustment teachers make to future instruction and
learning experiences based on the information they receive through formative
assessment.

Feedback can be categorised into evaluative feedback and descriptive feedback.

While evaluative feedback involves providing a value judgement, such as approval,
disapproval, or reward, which can have the effect of influencing how students feel
about themselves; descriptive feedback references student achievement in relation to
the learning goals and aims to help students improve, making it the preferred of the
two (Carlisle, 2009). The feedback used predominantly in this unit will be that of
descriptive feedback, and will employ three types of prompts suggested by Clarke,
Timperley, and Hattie (2004):
1. Reminder prompts, such as, Remember what we discussed about How
could you make it more?
2. Scaffold prompts, for example, How about trying to use this function to
describe it?
3. Example prompts, such as, For example, you could try using.

Additionally, if feedback is to be effective, four elements need to be carefully

considered: timing, when it is given and how often; amount, how much information is
given; mode, written, oral, or visual; and audience, whether for a group, the class, or
an individual (Brookhart, 2008).

Recording

While assessment helps teachers gather information, teachers cannot always simply
rely on memory to recall what has occurred within the learning environment, and,
therefore require to record pertinent assessment information. Recording is the
mechanism by which teachers

capture significant interactions, events,

and

assessment data (Headington, 2013). While every lesson in the unit has objectives
and assessments, not all assessments will be recorded, since this can become selfdefeating, particularly if what is recorded is not intended to be reviewed at a later date
(Headington, 2013). The general purpose of recording is to, firstly, monitor progress
in relation to the learning goals; secondly, to provide information that students, their
parents, and teachers can utilise to enable feeding forward; and, thirdly, to
demonstrate what learning has occurred (Butt, 2010). Furthermore, it is important that
a range of recording tools and strategies are used (International Baccalaureate
Organization, 2009), and this unit uses the following forms to record information:
Photographs and videos Creating visual documentation provides evidence
of learning which can be shown to family, and enables students to reflect on
their work and accomplishments (Lewin & Shoemaker, 2011; Seitz, 2008).
Anecdotal records Detailed narratives provide a rich source of information
that can be used to feed forward, provide families with information, and deliver
a meaningful picture of progress (McFarland, 2008). Throughout the unit,
Confer (2016) will be used to record these notes.
Rubrics Evaluating performance in relation to the learning outcomes.
Recording forms:
o General Assessment Form Enables the assessing of the class or
groups in relation to a single learning outcome, making notes in order to
feed forward and adjust instruction for particular individuals or groups
(Headington, 2013).
o Focussed Assessment Form Provides a table for making notes on
the quality of students achievement in relation to each learning outcome
throughout the unit (Headington, 2013).
o Self-Assessment Form The self-assessment form provides students
with a framework for self-assessment and reflection after completing
their performance tasks (Headington, 2013).

Reporting
The final element to consider in this unit is that of reporting. Reporting childrens
learning in this unit will be an important factor, since parents are an integral part of the
learning process in schools (M. Clarke & Pittaway, 2015). The aim of reporting is to
enhance student learning, and should therefore be meaningful, motivating, detailed,
explicit, and varied in its delivery (Brady & Kennedy, 2015). The first communication
with parents will be a leaflet prior to the commencement of the unit explaining what
content will be covered over the four weeks and the performance tasks that students
will be completing and assessed on. In addition to creating interest in the topic, this
will create awareness of what to expect in terms of any support that may be required.
The second type of reporting will be delivered in the form of work samples from the
unit and the finished performance tasks, which will be accessible through the class
website, showcasing the students achievement. The third form of reporting will be
through reports, which contain marks relative to the summative assessments and
include written feedback from the anecdotal records and recording forms.