Understanding by Design Understanding by Design is a lesson planning framework that is of great utility to a starting teacher.

This could be used across disciplines and across grade levels. It helps a teacher to create a well-defined and purposeful lesson considering important elements such as assessment elements, general and specific outcomes, and activity flexibility to account for learner diversity. It asks questions about how the lesson will engage and keep learner attention. Lesson planning can be a daunting task, especially fitting lessons together and planning a whole unit. The Understanding by Design template and overview that are attached above are greatly valuable to guide lesson planning and teaching. This template helps new teachers like myself to organize their planning and facilitates mindful and deliberate teaching. This is also a good way to help develop learning targets to share with your class. This will help the students to develop metacognitive skills through which they can gauge their own learning. Metacognitive thinking is an outcome outlined by Alberta Education (2005, 2006, 2007, pp. 9).

References: Alberta Education (2005, 2006, 2007) Programs of Study: Social Studies Kindergarten to Grade 6. Retrieved on March 10, 2014, from: http://education.alberta.ca/teachers/program/socialstudies/programs.aspx Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe. (2005). Understanding by Design, Overview of UbD Design and Template. Retrieved on March 10, 2014 from: http://www.grantwiggins.org/documents/UbDQuikvue1005.pdf