How do you know when students understand something? How can you design learning experiences that make it much more likely that students understand content and apply it in meaningful ways?

Since 1998, thousands of educators have used Understanding by Design^® (UbD™) framework to answer these questions and create more rigorous and engaging curricula. Now, this expanded second edition gives you even more tools and strategies for results-oriented teaching:

• An improved template for creating curriculum units based on the breakthrough "backward design" method.
• More specific guidelines on how to frame the "big ideas" you want students to understand.
• Better ways to develop the "essential questions" that form the foundation of high-quality curriculum and assessment.
• An expanded toolbox of instructional approaches for obtaining the desired results of a lesson.
• More examples, across all grade levels and subjects, of how schools and districts have used the UbD framework to maximize student understanding.

Educators from kindergarten through college can get everything they need—guidelines, stages, templates, and tips—to start designing lessons, units, and courses that lead to improved student performance.

(ASCD book, 2005) 8 1/2" x 11", 370 pages. Also available as an e-book!

Related Resources

• Sample Chapters
• Jay McTighe Bio & Video: Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Ed.

What People Are Saying About Understanding by Design

”Understanding by Design is an incredibly influential book. Its premise is that you have to start curriculum design with an end in mind. You figure out what your goal is first and plan backwards from there, building your curriculum around what you want to achieve. It sounds very simple but for a long time people weren’t doing that. They were covering units or textbooks without clear priorities or purposes in mind. Backwards design helps teachers to focus on the endgame and hold themselves to account for meeting their goals.” --Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor, Washington, DC, Public Schools, as interviewed in The Browser