I read with interest Prof. Sample’s blogs and the Wiggins/McTighe chapters. In my time as a marketing communications specialist, I became acquainted with the notion of backward design. Rather than writing to learn or as a means of discovery or creative development, or even just to impart facts (as with news, academic, fiction or non-fiction pieces), marketing communications pieces start with the customer in mind. Therefore, we communications types at IBM’s networking division asked our marketing folks: Who is the piece for? What kind of knowledge or lasting impression do we want the reader of the brochure, flier, article, etc. to come away with? What information or ideas are most important?  Armed with the answers to those questions, we would construct a piece combining text, diagrams (these were the early days of wide-area computer networking) and photos to impart the information in a very precise way.

The notion of backward design greatly facilitates the effort to maintain perspective and stay on track over the course of a semester. There is an old saying: “When you are up to your ass in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your main objective was to drain the swamp.” To translate to an English classroom, often the teacher and students, as Prof. Sample notes, plow through the assigned reading list and serve the breadth, rather than uncovering meaningful aspects of what the reading can help them understand (the depth). Now, if the stated objective of the class is to get through the list and read as many stories as possible, this may be OK. But if the objective involves deeper considerations (as Prof Sample says, “revealing assumptions, facts, principles and experiences”), then we’ve got some swamp draining to do.

At the same time, I’ll note that the concentric circles (though technically not concentric; they’re really more like a set with subsets) represent an interesting and valuable concept as teachers seek to identify the best student learning results. I would hope (but am not sure) how much latitude or variance there would be among the enduring lessons or knowledge that each student might come away with.  How might a student’s background knowledge, culture or temperament affect the take-away?