Stage 4 Backward Mapping

When you have identified your Culminating Task/Performance and have thought about how you plan to assess it, you will begin to work backwards to determine what you need to teach so that your students can actually accomplish the culminating task. This is referred to as Backward Mapping. Determine what foundational knowledge, deeper understandings, and performance skills your students will actually need to be able to complete the culminating task.

Starting with your performance task or culminating activity, ask yourself, what do your students need to know in order to do the culminating activity. For example, if I wanted my students to do a culminating activity that was a HyperStudio multimedia presentation comparing and contrasting the works of two different authors, my students would need to know many things -how to use HyperStudio, what is multimedia, how to work with multimedia, research skills, reading skills/strategies, writing skills/strategies. Looking at the list below, you'll notice that to do this performance task, the students will be working at all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than at just the recall or understanding level, where they often work.

The backward mapping you'll be doing consists of the following steps:

• Review the culminating task to identify prerequisite knowledge and skills
• Develop driving questions (to organize the unit) revisit your essential questions and break these down
• Outline major teaching points under each question
• Identify tentative formative assessments

Activity #8-Try this now: Choose one of the culminating tasks from your brainstorm list. Working backward, generate a list of what your students would need to know in order to complete the performance task (demonstrate mastery of the standards).

When you have this list compiled, move on to the next page.