[Your Name Here]
IU Indianapolis
Lesson Planning 3.0
SEMESTER, 2025
DEPT-A200: Course Name
Professor
Team/Peer Contributors
Start With the End in Mind
Everything on this page was planned backwards. Before a single activity was chosen, this mini unit began with one question: what should these students understand, and how will they show it? That is the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework, and it is the spine of this artifact.
Write your unit overview paragraph here. Your audience is another teacher or a family, not your professor. In friendly language, tell them what this unit is about, why it matters, the major concepts students will learn, and how students will show what they learned in a meaningful, authentic product at the end of the unit.
Watch: Foundational Videos for Reverse Engineering
The best designs derive backward from the learnings sought.
Wiggins & McTighe, Understanding by Design
Forward design starts with the activities and works toward the goals. Backward design reverses that: goals first, evidence second, instruction last. The order is the whole point. It is what keeps a lesson from becoming an activity done for its own sake.
Stage One: Identify Desired Results
What do students need to walk away understanding? Wiggins and McTighe narrow it in three passes: what is worth being familiar with, what students should know and be able to do, and, the smallest and most important circle, the enduring understandings students should still hold long after the unit ends.
Stage Two: Determine Acceptable Evidence
How will I know students got there? What will I accept as evidence of understanding rather than recall? This is where the authentic summative assessment and the formative checks along the way get chosen, before any lesson is written.
Stage Three: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
Only now: what enabling knowledge and skills do students need, what activities will build them, and what materials and scaffolds will get every learner there? Each activity has to earn its place by serving a stated objective and its assessment.
Adapted from Ryan S. Bowen, Understanding by Design, Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, drawing on Wiggins and McTighe (1998). Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.
The Backwards Planning Process
Figure 1: My Backwards Planning Template
[Caption: replace this chart with an image of your completed backwards planning template. Name the unit, the grade level, and the Indiana Academic Standards it addresses, then point your reader to the one thing here you most want them to notice.]
[Caption: Always captons your artifacts! Give context to your chart, talk about maybe what the question was, lay out the data, anything that gives more context to your charts to make them meaningful.]
Next Steps: Maximizing New Skills
Here you can share why you picked this assignment. These reasons could be because you were most proud of it, spent a lot of hard time on it, it was something new, or an excellent showcase of your skills that will be helpful in the future. Your reader wants to know what it means to you, so share your hard work! Nullam placerat bibendum velit sit amet bibendum. Fusce est ipsum, euismod accumsan eleifend in, faucibus nec lorem. Donec eros velit, posuere vel efficitur in, ornare quis purus. Pellentesque vehicula vitae ligula auctor rhoncus. Curabitur at arcu et felis egestas laoreet quis nec nunc. Quisque congue est a lacus viverra elementum. Maecenas aliquet in mauris sit amet iaculis. Maecenas aliquam aliquet tellus vel condimentum. Duis sed eleifend nulla, id malesuada ipsum. Nulla eget venenatis urna.
Figure A.1: Chart Name
What I learned: Three Takeaways
Now that you have showcased and reflected back on your project, detail what this means for your future. How will skills and competencies you displayed here follow you to your next steps? You can treat this area as a goal setting space. Nullam placerat bibendum velit sit amet bibendum. Fusce est ipsum, euismod accumsan eleifend in, faucibus nec lorem. Donec eros velit, posuere vel efficitur in, ornare quis purus. Pellentesque vehicula vitae ligula auctor rhoncus. Curabitur at arcu et felis egestas laoreet quis nec nunc. Quisque congue est a lacus viverra elementum. Maecenas aliquet in mauris sit amet iaculis. Maecenas aliquam aliquet tellus vel condimentum. Duis sed eleifend nulla, id malesuada ipsum. Nulla eget venenatis urna.