Welcome to the D11 Understanding by Design wiki. This wiki will provide an opportunity to share comments with your colleagues in an online collaborative environment.
We can use this space to share our responses to the readings in Understanding by Design, to continue conversations from classes, and to share ideas with the content facilitators.
You can go to the D11 Literacy Wiki.
Reading Response: Chapter 1-5
(Thank you for your responses! Our 21st century-style online "book study" provided an opportunity to share ideas and responses to the reading that will help shape the dialogue on February 20! If you would like to read more about D11's curriculum alignment, see For more information about the aligned curriculum work, see these documents: D11 Curriculum Alignment Guides and Pacing Guides and Correlates of Effective Schools: The First and Second Generation.)
Module 2: Curriculum Management Status
Click on the links below to post your response to the curriculum management questions.
Fine Arts: Curriculum Management Status
Gifted: Curriculum Management Status
Health and PE: Curriculum Management Status
Language Arts and Literacy: Curriculum Management Status
Math: Curriculum Management Status
Science: Curriculum Management Status
Social Studies: Curriculum Management Status
Module 3: Thinking like an Assessor
Click on the links below to post your response to Chapter 7: "Thinking like an Assessor."
Fine Arts: Fine Arts: Thinking Like an Assessor
Gifted: Gifted: Thinking Like an Assessor
Health and PE: Health and PE: Thinking Like an Assessor
Language Arts and Literacy: Literacy and Language Arts: Thinking Like an Assessor
Math: Math: Thinking like an Assessor
Science: Science: Thinking like an Assessor
Social Studies: Thinking like an Assessor
Comments (5)
Robin Knoepke said
at 11:22 am on Jan 26, 2008
Answers to five questions:
1. The Fact that I'm not sure who is in charge of gaps in our curriculum here speaks to the urgent need for alignment. Paul Heesacker, our assistant principal in charge of English, oversees our pacing guide development and quarterly assessment data. It's been clear that we need further alignment at our site and with our feeder schools when we discovered that the ninth graders who we were teaching paragraph structure to had already been writing the multi-paragraph essay!
Robin Knoepke said
at 11:24 am on Jan 26, 2008
Question 2--
The benefits to students and staff would be enormous. First, for students, the difficulty of transferring from one D11 school to another would be minimized. If assessment data was shared, kids could compare their progress to students in other schools using the same measures. Teachers could begin across building team for units and skills. Everybody benefits when teachers put their heads together.
Robin Knoepke said
at 11:26 am on Jan 26, 2008
Question 3--The most difficult barrier to this has existed forever. An administrator once told me that teachers see themselves as "independent contractors." We each think that we know the curriculum best and that our pet units and pet projects are the best. If we had effective alignment that teachers could "get behind," it would direct energies toward collaboration and cooperation and away from competition.
Robin Knoepke said
at 11:29 am on Jan 26, 2008
Question four-Post of sample units on the Internet would serve students well. Since they are so Internet savvy, they would have a clear picture of the process of what they were studying and its importance. Teachers could use exemplary units as models and other teachers as resources and parents could see the skills embedded in each unit and help monitor skill instruction and study at home.
Robin Knoepke said
at 11:31 am on Jan 26, 2008
Question 5--The question shows clearly what the opportunities could be. Inter-building teaming, collaboration and direct accountability are the clear benefits. I guess that this process might threaten insecure teachers who are wedded to "the way I've always done it," but I think experienced ones would welcome another set of eyes. New teachers could see how units could be designed uniformly and could avoid years of trial and error
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