The Backward Design

Yesterday I entered the 3rd session of Principles of Effective Teaching and Assessment (PETA). Then I learned something new, about The Backward Design. I said “what kind of creature is this?”

Then I just followed the flow of that day’s class. The backward design seemed so scary for me. It’s due to the term was sooo sophisticated :(. But then by the time my lecturer explained it I became chiller because it’s not as scary as I predicted. This design is really important to make a lesson plan. As a teacher I must make the learning activities fun but has an obvious target. Well actually that is most of teachers’ problem. They make the learning activities very fun, for example: students go to the strawberry garden. They see the strawberries, take them and eat them. Then what? What did they learn from that activity? Does it have clear purpose?

So then we must make a design using the Backward Design. Here’s the diagram:

 

So all of those components above must be synchronized, and we can’t emphasize only in one component. When my lecturer asked me to make a lesson plan based on that design, I myself still found it very difficult to make it. Then I asked my lecturer “Ma’m, how to make a perfect lesson plan?” She answered that there will no such a perfect one. We must learn all the time to construct the better.

From my experience above, I realize that me as a teacher cannot stick to a theory. The world’s changing, and so is the knowledge. Keep learning hard! 😀