Planning is a critical cornerstone of educators’ work. To increase effectiveness in lesson planning, this worksheet helps educators apply steps from strong instructional design to improve backward planning and increase opportunities for student application, practice, and feedback.
Based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, the UDL Guidelines serve as a tool to help educators and other members of the education sector implement best practices when designing teaching and learning experiences, with the goal of providing multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression to develop learners.
The Understanding By Design (UbD) framework is a planning resource that supports the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. UbD leads teachers through three stages when designing learning experiences:
Identify desired results (understanding and application of learning),
Determine assessment evidence (evaluation), and
Plan learning experiences and instruction (i.e., backward-planning)
By utilizing UbD, teachers can effectively engage learners in developing their understanding and application of key topics and content.
The ADDIE Model for instructional design helps educators to create meaningful learning experiences and training programs through five steps:
Analyze
Design
Develop
Implement
Evaluate
These steps can be used – sometimes in a nonlinear fashion – to ideate, create, and refine effective learning experiences.
This resource presents a framework (The 4Ps of Creativity) and protocol to help educators iteratively design new learning experiences that nurture student creativity. This tool also includes reflection and feedback protocols for students as well as leaders and coaches.
Cambridge Public Schools created asynchronous learning modules for their teachers to provide training around edtech tools and edtech integration pedagogical practices. Educators can “build their own” professional learning experience by combining modules and completing them at their own pace, and receive professional development credit after submitting a final task.
Cambridge Public Schools created a series of asynchronous learning modules that provided their teaching staff the option to select which edtech tools they wanted to learn more about, when/where they wanted to engage in training, and how fast they wanted to complete the module based on their skill and comfort level. Each learning module included teacher shares, a reflection journal, tutorials, how-to guides, and tasks to practice specific features or demonstrate mastery. Upon completion of a learning module, participants execute a final task and turn in a module submission form.
The asynchronous learning modules were built in Google Slides. This particular example is a learning module for Desmos, a popular math edtech tool.
Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) created asynchronous learning modules for their staff to receive training around specific edtech tools at their own pace and time. Instrumental to these learning modules were “teacher shares,” or videos created by CPS teachers explaining how they used an edtech tool in their classroom or context. The CPS technology team encouraged teachers from different content areas and grade levels to share their practice of the tool in order to demonstrate various use cases for each tool.
In this example, a high school physics teacher explains how she uses Desmos with her students.
Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) created asynchronous learning modules for their staff to receive training around specific edtech tools that they could complete at their own pace and in their own preferred time. At the end of each learning module, educators complete a final task that demonstrates their mastery and application of the edtech tool in order to receive professional learning credit. The CPS team created a universal module submission form that participants completed by either uploading a screenshot or file of their final task, as well as providing feedback on the learning experience.
Cambridge Public Schools created asynchronous learning modules for their staff to receive training around specific edtech tools that they could complete at their own pace and in their own preferred time. Each module included a “learning journal,” a document in which participants could jot down their ideas and takeaways as they worked through the module. This journal also included module-specific prompts that encouraged participants to explore and reflect further as they learned more about implementing the tool.
