Backward planning is an essential part of not overloading students with content, and creating an engaging lesson for your students. Teachers have a difficult time juggling the depth of content they’re teaching, meeting standards, and still engaging their students. Some standards are too strict or too open ended, leaving teachers to decide how to focus their units, and sometimes missing the mark on standards all together. With planning backward, teachers take a step back, and first focus on the big ideas of a particular unit, for example what standards their going to focus on. Then they apply assessments, to know if they have achieved their learning targets, or standards. The last stage is then planning actives and instruction. By backwards planning, it is easier to focus on the bigger picture, and not get swept away with specific content that may easily become irrelevant to the unit altogether.
Through this chapter, it was interesting to see how educators can change teaching style and still make sure they are meeting the standards. As a teacher, I think it will be an important part of my job to meet standards. However, I also would like to find creative ways to teach my content to kids who have Individualized Educational Programs, and who are English language learners, etc. It’s imperative that I meet the standards, and can still make my content engaging for students, so that hopefully they will develop a love for history because of my passion for the subject, and for them.
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