Planning your Class
For those of you who have some agency in planning your lessons/class activities with students, we recommend using the Backwards Design instructional framework. Backwards Design starts with defining the overarching outcomes of a course, class period, workshop, or even a presentation. Elements of the course are then designed with these outcomes in mind. This design method ensures that class activities (e.g., think-pair-share or group projects) and measures of learning (e.g., homework, quizzes, etc.) are aligned with what you hoped would be accomplished, which will help both you and your students remain focused and engaged.
One helpful question to ask yourself is “what do I want my students to be able to do, know, or understand by the end of this [course, class, workshop, presentation]”. A simple but effective approach, Backwards Design stands in contrast to methods that focus first on designing learning activities and assessments and then afterwards must find connections to overarching goals, or simply working through a textbook with no clear endpoint. Classes designed with such “forward-design” mindsets often struggle to make clear connections to the larger outcomes, and the step of defining overarching outcomes can inadvertently be entirely skipped.
Understanding the basics of Backwards Design can be helpful for your teaching even if you are not currently structuring your own course. For example, identifying the overall outcome of a particular lab activity or assignment can assist you in guiding students towards that outcome, where otherwise you may get bogged down with the details of the tasks.
Exercise
Translating Backwards Design into Class Planning
The following steps are those that Wiggins and McTighe (1998) identify for following the Backwards Design framework. Think about how you might apply these steps to re-designing the course you are instructing as well as how these same steps can be applied to structuring individual classes or lab periods.
Take 10 minutes to make your own plan for one of the lab or class meetings you will be teaching this semester. See an example of a class plan here and use this outline as your guide.
Important elements of a class plan include:
What your course will offer
Take a moment to think about how you would rank the importance of concepts covered during the semester. What are the big picture ideas you want students to learn? What are the skills they should master before moving on to more advanced study? Once you’ve identified these key elements, make them transparent to your students. You can do this by listing them in the syllabus (if you have permission from the course instructor/coordinator) or writing them on the board at the beginning of each class. Think about trying this for the entire semester and for an individual class or lab. The terminology often associated with these big-picture ideas are “objectives” or “outcomes”. It is important that you can measure if students have mastered these concepts and skills.
Assessment of students
How will you know if your students are able to critically analyze a piece of literature? How can you assess if they understand the process of evolution? You can give your students opportunities to solidify their understanding of a subject via formative assessments (low-stakes assignments that help students recall and synthesize their knowledge). These can be quick activities such as asking students to write a list of the main points of a lesson or a concept they still struggle to understand. Even in a pre-structured class, you can use these short, ungraded assignments to determine if your students understand the material. You may find it most helpful to implement these formative assignments before a scheduled exam or lab practical (these high-stakes, graded assignments are termed summative assessments) so that you can help your students prepare.
class activties & assignments
The next step of Backwards Design is to plan class activities that are aligned with the assessments and course goals. As a TA, you likely have little control over the content of individual classes. However, you might find it helpful for yourself and your students to look at each activity and think about how it is connected to an overarching learning objective. If you don’t see a clear alignment, think about how you could redesign the activity to better achieve the broader goals of the course.