As far as the actual exercise is concerned, it's all well and good to go through it, but how do we actually know if it worked or if we did it "right"?
I still question whether backward desigin isn't something we naturally do as literature people. If we think about it on a microcosmic level (and I think we said this was OK to do)--say the level of a text--then don't we already backward design it? I mean, when we go out to "teach" a text, don't we already have a reading of it in mind. I guess what I mean is, if I were a Frost scholar or whatever and was going to teach the "Road Not Taken" I probably go into it already knowing that the whole point is irony. So implicitly knowing that, I go into the classroom with the decision to teach these kids about irony in the poem. Right? Am I missing something?
Would forward design for teaching a text be like going in and starting at the front of the book and re-enacting it, plot-summary style? By having a reading of the book in our minds, isn't that the unsaid end-goal--to get these kids to understand that reading of the book?
But maybe the point is that we should be "teaching" more than that. But that idea really comes down to our goals as teachers of literature, and not what methods we're using.
I'm not sure about any of this, really. Backward Design did more to make me think about what I want to accomplish as a teacher than give me a new way to actually accomplish it. But maybe that's the whole point is to prompt discussion and thought rather than to give a prescription for success. I can be OK with that, and, like I said, I did find something of value in attempting it.
But if that's the case, then why does the "McWiggins" text give such a detailed prescription of how-to-backward-design?
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