Chapter 9: Bringing it all Together: Curriculum and Instruction Through the Lens of UbD and DI

Chapter nine was about putting differentiation and backwards design together in the classroom. It gave a complete unit, guided by nine principles, that uses both differentiated integration and understanding by design together and showed how/what it would look like in the classroom. There are also examples of how to differentiate the lesson to tailor to needs of your students. The chapter stresses how important it is for teachers to differentiate for students when it is needed and to constantly give feedback, because that is how students learn and grow. There are several indicators that show a true UbD/DI classroom: a comfortable learning environment, a curriculum that integrates big ideas with all the multiple intelligences, peer and student evaluations, and a caring teacher that teaches and connects the big ideas while hooking and keeping the attention of students. The end of the chapter discussed how teaching UbD is no easy feat, but the trick is to keep on keeping on and it will become easier and the teacher will become more adept at it.

Most of the class said that this chapter was really helpful and appreciated how all the loose ends were tied together. We enjoyed looking at the unit and how it was broken down into easy, manageable pieces. The indicators were nice because a teacher can look around the classroom at the students and the environment to how to things are going and not have to give an evaluation. The example of how to differentiate was really nice because it shows exactly what to do, especially since we all know that we will have to do this on the spur of the moment, eventually. I think my favorite part was at the end, because it was encouraging us to keep persevering even though this was going to be difficult, because it will get easier and when we help those students learn, it will be well worth it.