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Backward Mapping Strategies for Social Studies Planning
Purpose of Backward Mapping
Like engineers, architects, and artists, teachers are, first of all, designers. The textbook may or may not provide an adequate roadmap to meet increasingly significant national, state, and local standards. These standards set measurements for the end results or goals of learning.
Backward mapping can be a useful tool to accommodate outcome-based learning. Like the sculptor who chips away everything that is not the sculpture, the teacher using backward mapping has the end product in mind.
Steps to Backward Mapping
The planner (designer) starts with the goals and works toward assessing for understanding.
1. To identify the desired results, ask:
- What knowledge is most important?
- What understandings or skills will endure?
- What are the big ideas that have value beyond the classroom?
- Is what I am about to teach significant in the discipline?
2. To determine what students can and will learn, ask:
- To what extent does the idea or process require an explanation of the abstract?
- To what extent does the idea, topic, or process offer potential for engaging students?
- What suitable simulations, debates, inquiries, or other activities can I use?
- What materials and resources are best suited?
3. To think like an assessor; ask:
- What assessment tools will measure this learning effectively?
- What is the objective content that should be assessed?
- What skills or understandings should be measured? How?
4. To implement the design in a lesson, ask:
- What is the most important concept to be taught today?
- What is the most effective method for learning this concept?
- How is this concept connected to what was learned earlier?
- How can I connect this concept to the next (or future) lesson?
State Standard: Geography
The student understands how people, places, and environments are connected and interdependent. The student is expected to compare ways that humans depend on, adapt to, and modify the physical environments using state, national, and international human activities in a variety of cultural and technological contexts.
Course: American History
Topic: The Textile Industry Begins in New England
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Step 1: Identify the desired results
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Important knowledge
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Step 2: What students can and will learn |
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Abstract
How to engage students
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Step 3: Think like an assessor
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Assessment tools
Quiz content
Skills
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Step 4: Implement the design
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State Standard: Government
The student understands the American beliefs and principles reflected in the U.S. Constitution and other important historic documents. The student is expected to
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Step 1: Identify the desired results
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Important knowledge
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Step 2: What students can and will learn
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Abstract ideas
How to engage students
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Step 3: Think like an assessor
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Assesment tools
Test
Quiz Content
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Step 4: Implement the design
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Social Studies Professional Development Series includes five DVDs, each focusing on a different category of educational teaching strategy. Each DVD includes classroom footage, guest educator commentaries, and a downloadable PDF guide for using the program. The lessons are designed to be used at school sites by mentors, coaches, or leadership personnel and focus on teaching techniques and strategies appropriate in the secondary social studies classroom.
Success with English Learners Learn about creating a classroom environment conducive to language learning, building a dynamic oral culture, managing classroom activities, and building vocabulary.
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