.moorssalc ruoy ni ekam reve lliw uoy noisiced tseb eht si gninnalp sdrawkcaB

Uh, sorry. We got confused about what kind of backwards we're talking here. Although, if you try talking like that for a day, you're bound to get your students intrigued.

Here's how it works.

• What do you want your students to know or be able to do by the end of the year (or semester, or unit, or other natural end point)?
• What projects or assignments might best assess that growth over the year?
• What skills or information will they need before they can undertake that kind of assignment, and what lessons must you give for them to gain all that?
• How can you best sequence and group the lessons in keeping with your end-of-year (or whatever) learning goals?

Now think about it going forwards. Does it still make sense?

If so, you just did some successful backwards planning.

Backwards planning is a great way to make sure that your learning objectives stay front-and-center from day one until the final bell. After all, if you start with a lesson on addition, get through a million problems between September and June, and then realize you never made it to multiplication tables, your students will be stuck adding 5+5+5+5+5. Makes life a lot more complicated.

The principle of backward planning, or "Backward Design," can be summed up like this: "You can't start planning how you're going to teach until you know exactly what you want your students to learn" (source).

Nice little sound bite, eh?

So when you're planning out desired results, have a sense of what information your students should get to know, what skills they should practice and gain mastery in, and what abilities they should retain—whether that's so that they'll be able to use them in the next grade, apply them to another set of problems, or be able to pop back to that fascinating info many a year down the line.

Delineating between those three levels of knowledge (familiarity, ability, enduring understanding), as Wiggins and McTighe define them, will be key as you set your final goals.

Now that you know the gist, a few more tips to help you hammer out just how to make it happen.

• Use diagnostic assessments to get a sense of how much time you may need to allot to each unit. According to the backwards planning page from Teaching As Leadership, diagnostic data can help inform your plans and help you prepare for possible adjustments. We at Shmoop have loads of diagnostic assessments in our Test Prep and Online Courses. On that note…

• Be ready to adjust. The last thing you want is to go too far ahead and then have to redo it all when the inevitable Shmoop hits the fan. Whether it's a holiday you didn't account for, or one element along the path that ends up a bit trickier than you'd anticipated, have some room to be flexible. Don't rush on to the next thing just to stick to your calendar: figure out how to boost your students' understanding and abilities, and then shift as needed.

How to figure that out? Like this:

• Formulate your formative-assessment strategies. These are whatever lessons, puzzles, quizzes, or other projects you'll employ along the way toward that big final assessment. Their job is to show you what information your students are retaining and what may need review. Which means that throwing in a few of these along the way will help you make sure they're on track for the final goals at the end of the unit. Oh! Which ties right back into the adjustment thing. How convenient.

More on those strategies in this post on backward design (#5), and even more about formative assessments in this article all about 'em.

• Continually return to your goals, and make sure you're on track. That means reviewing your own objectives for what your students should gain, and also the standards you're supposed to help your students reach (info on how to incorporate those standards into backwards planning here). Whatever the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, checking in regularly—with yourself and your students—will ensure that you get there by the end, leprechaun and all.

In general, a balance of flexibility and preparedness will take you a long way forward. And that's what going backward is all about.

.emosewa eb ot gniog er'uoY .won ti teg uoy kniht eW