BDU

Okay BD.

First things first. It's hard. 

Here's why... I'm a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl.     

To my AR self having a script of what daily lessons will be seems boring. 

So stage three... The day to day plan is difficult to say the least. 

The thing that I do really like is writing the enduring understandings, stage one. Doing this really brings the content to life. It sets my intention.  I just need to be sure that they are aligned pretty well  to the standards but written in my "Zhukov style." In fact after our assigned BD unit I liked stage one so much that I wrote enduring understandings for all of my units!! Something that I thought would be simple took a long time. what do I want them to learn? Good question for reflection. 

I have also seen a huge improvement in my use of essential questions stemming from my enduring understandings in stage one. My students are responding really well to the idea of "more complex" thinking style, critical thinking questions and I have BD to thank for that. 

Although I will never be a person who does away with the "traditional test"... stage two of BD, thinking about designing the tests in advance to teaching the unit, has help me identify more opportunities for linked in collaborative group activities. 

So... I feel passionate about stage one and two... But I'm not so sure about stage three. I can see that every single day of by BD unit has been different from my original write up. But the process as a whole is worth the effort.