I have been blessed with three things:

A great family, A very strong sense of smell, which often is not a good thing, and an excellent memory. My sons' first soccer match, against their father, my daughter's first drawing... on the kitchen wall, and my wonderful experiences at uni as an undergraduate student. 

Life was great. My friends and I had a newfound independence and the world was our oyster, until we started Biochemistry, and protein synthesis. 

Every lecture mirrored the next: sugar molecules being drawn on the board with arrows pointing down, and enzyme names on the side... mRNA, tRNA and other polymerase structures took up pages and pages of our books, and we didn't dare look at each other in class in case we left out an Oxygen atom somewhere. We struggled to finish the drawing before he rubbed the board. (I still struggle with whiteboard erasers.) The ironic thing is, even though we all had textbooks, our lecturer had not given us any structure that I personally wasn't sure of where to go to look things up.

Then , for some reason, in student vacation, it made sense. We would look over our notes and it all made sense. We finally understood.

I didn't know why this was the case until Thursday night this week. 

It's because our lecturer didn't have a UbD concept. 

He explained transcription, then moved to translation and covered each with so much detail that we struggled to see any big picture, or even know there was a big picture. I remember one day seeing tears streaming down from a friend's face as she couldn't keep up with the double bonds. All I could do then was pass her a tissue. 

So why did it make sense in StuVac?

The reason it made sense then and he probably heard the 'Ohhhhhh, I get it!!' from his house, is because we were able to put all the material together and realise that all these endless steps were in fact leading to one thing, synthesising proteins. 

When much detail needs to be covered, and the teacher is very comfortable with the material, it is easy to move along and explain concepts many times over to nodding students who can't see the big picture. It doesn't mean they understand.

8.4 Life on Earth

UbD  can start  with an open question, e.g. 'How did life on earth start?' The Scope and sequence is drawn then the assessments are designed that are suitable not only to grade students, but also enrich the learning process, (like Slowmation), and then a program is written and subsequently lesson plans follow. 

If the lecturer had first asked about our bodies, and enzymes, e.g. 'How does an ulcer heal itself ?', then give an overview of protein synthesis with headings of each step, it would have been a much more enriching experience. And I would have remembered a bit more material as any 'Think Pair Share ' I did with Joanne could have been directed at the content instead of what to have for lunch. 

So in summary, analysing and assessing UbD has been very positive. I like the idea, and if done well, it would bring more positive results. For some students, it may not make a big difference, but overall I think it does. Teachers run the risk of becoming a little myopic in their teaching and need to ensure that they continue to build on the syllabus by including extra material and experiences for the students to get  more out of biology.