Activity # 3 Backward Design

Reflect on how this process will help with your science and technology program
planning. What did you like about the template? What would you add?

If I understood correctly, the backward design process and sample template helps
an educator to use the “big ideas” (or let’s say, curriculum expectations), intending,
to indicate what changes should be brought about in students’ understandings so
that relevant instructional activities can be planned in order to achieve those
expectations.
I will be honest here, I did like the template of backward design in theory and I am
sure, it has many advantages if practised correctly, but I was overwhelmed to see
the Step # 3. May be, because I saw this concept for the first time and I am not
very sure how time consuming would be the process of completing this template.
Nonetheless, I can not ignore the advantages that backward designing in science
and technology can have on students’ learning. Here are some that I can think of:
1. Backward design and planning can really help achieve the major goals of a
science and technology course -

2. Teachers will be able to answer students’ questions like “why we are

studying a particular topic or a factual detail of a unit?”
3. Students will not likely be lost in complete hands-on activities, instead they
will be able to acquire the real context and understanding from that activity
4. I think in science and technology courses, we tend to give present lots of
factual details to students and they generally get lost. Using backward design
template will avoid that as the step #1 of the template will take care of the
actual reason behind those details.
5. The backward design template can be used in planning instruction, science
and technology lessons and daily activities with a clear goal of achieving
 “understanding” with a focus on what the overall “gain” from the unit
should be.
6. Last but not the least, assessment activities will be thought of and designed
before the actual lesson is planned. This will help me to design student-
centered instructions which will ultimately help the students to be know
exactly what they need to know to achieve the overall content expectations

I liked the one-page design of the template as it captures the big ideas to
focus on, guides the planning in a 3-step way and that it is visually
appealing. The step 2 – planning assessments is great and the step 3 will
make the instructions highly organised with the end goal in mind. This
template is already quite comprehensive (the sample on Nutrition lesson),
that I can not think of what else can be added at the moment. I would
probably like to read the thoughts about my fellow teachers here, and may
be then I can contribute as to what can be added to the backward design
template.

I will once again admit, this seems like to be a great idea to use, however,
how much of it is actually practised by teachers in reality, I am not sure of.
For me, this is a brand-new concept that I would love to try and practice for
some of my lessons, if not all (until I get a hang of it)