Facets

The six facets are as follows:

• Facet 1 -- Explanation: sophisticated and apt explanations and theories, which provide knowledgeable and justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas.
  
  
• Facet 2 -- Interpretation: interpretations, narratives, and translations that provide meaning.
  
  
• Facet 3 -- Application: ability to use knowledge effectively in new situations and diverse contexts.
  
  
• Facet 4 -- Perspective: critical and insightful points of view.
  
  
• Facet 5 -- Empathy: the ability to get inside another person’s feelings and worldview.
  
  
• Facet 6 -- Self-Knowledge: the wisdom to know one’s ignorance and how one’s patterns of thought and action inform as well as prejudice understanding. (pp. 44-58)

The UBD approach to designing and mapping curriculum features is now quite extensive. Any web-based search with the descriptors “UBD+curriculum” will yield numerous sites for you to review. Many are sites of school districts where you can see what your colleagues are doing. Likewise, states are now representing standards in a way that is accessible to both professionals and the general public. Understanding by Design (UBD) is a critical support to differentiated instruction because it assists teachers in understanding how to design learning opportunities, especially in the area of curriculum, in ways that best allow students to access the learning environment aimed toward attainment of the standards.