Backward design in one pass: assessment, evidence, then the days
Lesson 5 of 6 · Planning
1 · Learn the move · Recipe pattern
Backward design is a recipe with three steps in a fixed order, and the model will skip to step three if you let it, because step three is where the activities are. Pin the order. Step one: the end assessment, written out in full, from the standard. Step two: the evidence, which means the three or four things you would need to see a student do before the assessment to believe they are ready. Step three: the days, each one producing one of the evidence items. Ask for the output in that order with the headings fixed, and ask the model to refuse to write a day that does not point at an evidence item. The thing you check is step two, because it is where a unit quietly becomes a sequence of nice activities. Whether the assessment is the right one for your students is a decision about them, and it stays yours.
Backward-design a two-week unit from this standard: [paste]. Fixed order, fixed headings: 1. END ASSESSMENT, written out in full as students would receive it; 2. EVIDENCE, the three or four things I would need to see students do before the assessment to believe they are ready, each one checkable; 3. THE DAYS, each pointing at exactly one evidence item by number. Refuse to write a day that points at none. Do not write step three before step two is complete, and do not tell me the unit is aligned; show the pointers and I will judge.
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
A fourth-grade teacher at Larkspur Elementary wants a unit on informational writing. Her first ask produces ten days of activities and an assessment at the end that none of them quite prepared. The recipe version produces the assessment first (a two-paragraph informational piece with a heading, a topic sentence and two facts from a provided source), then four evidence items, then ten days each stamped with an evidence number. Day six pointed at nothing; the model said so and left it blank. She filled it with a conference day.
Write the prompt for this scenario as given, or swap in a real one from your own work. The score works the same either way.
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