The Basics of Backward Design

i'm not confident that any of my students learned anything of lasting value from at least half the lessons i taught. This is a hard pill to swallow, because i wasn't half bad as a teacher. Things would have been so different if i'd known about backward design. We tend to talk abut our teaching plans in terms of the broad topics we cover. Instead of starting with a topic, we would do better if we start with an end goal. That's where backward design comes in.