Reflection: Backwards Mapping and Standards

It's very important to understand the standards and apply them while teaching. The standards gives teachers a basis of what the students need to know. Without the standards it would be difficult to pinpoint what skills and knowledge are being taught. In this blog I am going to write a reflection on backwards mapping and standards.

Backwards Mapping Reflection

Backwards mapping was an effective way to make up the lesson plan. It helped tremendously because when you work off evaluating the end goal or what we call the standard, it ensures that the plans and procedures that you are outlining in your lesson plan will make sure that the goal is met. The first step in the backwards mapping strategy is to evaluate the standard and end goal and ensure that you understand all that is required for the student to learn. This can be done by breaking down the standard as well by evaluating what the big ideas or nouns are versus what skills or verbs that the students must know and be able to do. I found that breaking up the standard this way really allowed me to understand the standard in a more concise way. Sometimes the standards are written in a confusing way that does not clearly outline the skills each student is required to know and what ideas they need to learn. The second was to evaluate on how I would make sure that students are understanding the content. By thinking up of the evaluations that I need to give to the students to test their knowledge I can then think of how I can prepare them properly to finish these assignments. This is an adequate way to ensure that the students are not going to be given a written assignment, homework, or quizzes in which they are not prepared for. The last step is to make exercises and activities for the students to learn the content. This is last because now we know exactly what this needs to consist of in order for the students to reach the goal and pass the assessments. 

For example, if I am teaching a physics class and one of the standards is to be able to understand Newton's Second Law of Motion. I must take into consideration all different types of students in my classroom. Some students are going to be visual learners whilst others may be a kinesthetic learner or an auditory learner. I must evaluate my class and ensure that all learning styles are accommodated. In order to ensure that this has been done I can make different assessments to test their knowledge. For example I may give the students a writing assessment to test their knowledge. I can also give the students a project to work on that involves building or testing an experiment. Another assessment I can make is an oral presentation given by group presentations. By knowing my goal and breaking it up to know what exactly I want my students to do I can then make adequate assignments and assessments for the students. 

These processes helped me to further understand standards because the assessments, student proficiencies, and learning activities are what make up the entire classroom time. Standards are the basis for the classroom and lesson planning. Without the standards there would be no set structure or goals. I learned that the standards are what lesson plans should be based off of. The lesson plans consist of the student proficiencies, activities, and assessments. By going in order by the backwards mapping method I found that it was very thorough and a great method for lesson planning.