How the Understanding by Design framework can hep us set more achievable goals for 2025

New Year’s resolutions. An annual practice used to reevaluate our lifestyles, commitments, and values. A time to check in with ourselves – emotionally, physically, professionally – and assess where we can improve, adjust, revamp. Resolutions also provide a perfect model to bring reflection of the self and community into the classroom through the backwards-planning framework of Understanding by Design (UbD).

In this article, I will discuss how to frame New Year’s resolutions within the UbD framework, specifically when reflecting on classroom agreements. We will investigate the natural accountability achieved when educators prioritize student clarity of what success looks like (as well as its significance) and align success with achievable actions. This model promotes a deeper commitment to best practices within the classroom by utilizing essential questions and enduring understandings. The UbD model strives to bring “real world” experiences into the classroom – and introducing and then practicing resolutions does just that. 

Why Simply Naming Resolutions Doesn’t Work

When I think of New Year’s resolutions, my mind immediately leaps to dental hygiene. As a child, this was a constant refrain in my household. New year, new me – time to break out the minty-fresh flossers and get to work. But without understanding why I should floss or how it impacted my health, this commitment generally lasted a matter of weeks before the floss was back in the drawer, forgotten until the following year. 

This simplified example reflects many resolutions and their brevity. In classrooms, we often ask students to fill out worksheets with commitments for their educational growth in the new year. This frequently leads to students writing down what they think their teachers and family members want them to work on. Improve spelling or handwriting, write longer stories or commit to memorizing multiplication facts, be a kinder friend or more helpful peer.

While these goals are admirable, and I always welcome the time for student reflection, simply having students name goals without the “backward design” of how to complete them is largely futile. A student determined to improve their handwriting will most likely commit to carefully forming letters as long as I commit to flossing. Then they will be quickly back to scrawling across the page.

Applying Backwards-Planning to Resolutions

So how do we better reflect upon and commit to long term goals? Through Understanding by Design! As always, this framework of backward design comes first as educator planning, but can then be replicated by students themselves. Let’s dive into the details of how to make this happen through the example of expanding upon and re-committing to classroom agreements.

In the new year, it is important to revisit the larger classroom agreements you had created together at the beginning of the school year. These agreements, when following the UbD model, stem from essential questions. “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” are generally the two foundational questions I recommend to build off of. To learn more about utilizing essential questions to inform classroom agreements, you can refer to a detailed explanation in my post Essential Questions: Essential from Day One. 

Of course, we are constantly introducing new essential questions and enduring understandings across subjects. But classroom agreements are frequently neglected after the first month of the school year. The new year is a necessary time to not only recommit to our agreements, but to analyze whether the commitments need to be adjusted in any way. As UbD is built upon continuous learning and depth of knowledge, this use of reflection for improvement aligns with the framework!

By beginning at the end, we help students gain clarity on values as commitments that require continual work and may change with time. This means setting students up to not only see what a successful outcome looks like, but also why it is important. While the two initial questions of “who am I?” and “who are we?” serve well to encourage self and community reflection, including an additional question based on value-based change, growth, and development furthers the conversation. A few examples of Essential Questions could include:

• What’s my next step?
• What do I value? How do I prioritize the things I value?
• What sparks change?
• How do values change (and/or remain constant) over time?
• Me or we? How do personal and community values shape one another?

Whether you use one of these Essential Questions or craft one of your own, revisiting classroom agreements with students is incredibly valuable. Classic classroom agreements can include allowing all voices to be heard, treating each other with respect, being brave and putting in effort. While it might feel simple to say “yes, we are doing this” or “no, we need to work on that”, deepening the conversation with the how, why, and, what enforces the significance of the values themselves and increases student buy-in. 

Whether the assessments of understanding include group discussions, written reflection, acted out skits, or artwork, we want our students to see that resolutions are continual work. This means that our resolutions are not simply conceptual, but are concrete values achieved through actions that directly align with desired outcomes.

Putting Backwards-Planning Into Student Hands

As I mentioned earlier, modeling backward design for students allows them to replicate the method themselves. When asking students to create their own resolutions, we want them to start with the goal and work backwards towards achievement. This also means encouraging students to broaden their resolutions to larger understandings versus specific skills. 

In the example of classroom agreements, if we ask students to introduce new resolutions or reaffirm original ones, we begin broad and work smaller. If the class decides that under an agreement of communal respect, they would like to add the resolution to be active listeners, first discuss how these relate. Why is it important to actively listen? How does listening reflect respect? How do values and actions align? We can then move into the more detailed examples of how to demonstrate active listening.

When students gain clarity on successful outcomes and the actions required to achieve them, they will naturally build accountability to put their actions into practice. 

Getting Subject Specific

It is important to note that implementing the UbD framework for resolutions can work as broadly or specifically as you would like. While I highly recommend using it to reevaluate classroom agreements, it can also be applied to those more specific areas within subjects, as long as students are scaffolded to integrate the UbD framework themselves in their goal setting. 

For example, a student whose goal is to memorize multiplication facts must be encouraged to think of nailing rote memorization as a skill and not an essential understanding. Their goal should be a larger, continual process reflecting their values as a mathematician. This could mean having an enduring understanding of acting as a more flexible mathematician. They could then list their desire to cement their rote facts as a tool for thinking more creatively within mathematical problems. 

New Year, New Us

Utilizing the UbD framework to assess, formulate, and commit to resolutions is a worthwhile endeavor. While it may feel time-consuming, I encourage educators to think of the new year as a return to the beginning of the school year. Understanding the significance of resolutions prompts longevity in accomplishing them. And building the foundation blocks together increases student buy in. 

As I enter the new year recommitting to my spool of floss, I pause to check in with my intentions. I clarify my desire for healthy gums throughout my life and assess the tools and practices required to get there. By drawing the connection between my value of health and commitment to flossing, I create accountability for myself. And I assure you I will be flossing all year long. Let’s make 2025 the year our resolutions make their way well past February, and into habits of practice.