Backwards Design

Backwards Design involves planning a lesson backwards or looking at the assessment first rather than how you are going to teach it.  Majority of my college courses focused on this so when I started this program, I found the aspects of backwards design quite easy.

It makes complete sense to have the assessment piece first, so that as teachers we can know exactly what we are going to assess our students on and what we want them to know.  I feel that backwards design is really becoming a part of the daily routine at my school being that we are using a standards based report card for the first time this year.  Because of this change, we need to have assessments that correlate directly with our report card and we are in the process of creating common assessments in all subject matters.  With this process and having all of our assessments designated for each subject area, we are using the assessments to plan our instruction and how we are going to teach it.  This process makes so much sense and I can't imagine how to teach without backwards design.

Action Research Abstract

My current action research is around whether ability grouping during literacy instruction improves student's reading scores compared to only using whole group instruction.  I have to keep all 31 of my homeroom students for literacy instruction in my room.  With so many reading levels and abilities, I have formed 6 reading groups based on assessment data from the beginning of the year.  I have a weekly schedule for how many times I meet with each group based on their learning needs in reading.  I will still be teaching some whole group lessons or a mini lesson in reading to the whole group weekly.  To measure student's progress in reading in regards to whole group instruction and small ability group instruction I will use assessment in whole group as well as the small groups and then compare them.  I will use my observations, MAP scores, and daily work to evaluate progress in reading.  I am hoping that my small group instruction each day will improve my student reading achievement scores.