Teachers develop curricula in order to target specific goals. An ideal curriculum’s priorities center on the big ideas and important performance tasks of the chosen topic. According to the authors of Understanding by Design lessons are typically more purposeful and connected when informed by larger unit and course designs. Lessons units and courses are logically inferred from the results sought in a class and not to be derived from the methods books and activities with which teachers are most comfortable.
On pg. 14 the authors compare a course curriculum to a travel itinerary stating "[Similar to how travel] itineraries deliberately designed to meet cultural goals [teachers] can best decide as guides what "sites" to have our student "tourists" visit and what specific "culture" they should experience in their brief time there only if we are clear about the particular understandings about the culture we want them to take home."
In planning a course outline teachers ought to first consider what the learner will need in order to accomplish the learning goals of the course instead of thinking first about what they will do what materials they will use and what they will ask students to do. Teachers are designers. An essential act of the profession is the crafting of curriculum and learning experiences to meet specified purposes. Teachers are also designers of assessments to diagnose student needs to guide our teaching and to enable us our students and others (parents and administrators) to determine whether we have achieved our goals. In light of these facts teachers are guided by national state district or institutional standards that specify what students should know and be able to do.
What is difficult for many teachers to see (but easier for students to feel!) is that without such explicit and transparent priorities many students find day-to-day work confusing and frustrating. Without a guiding intellectual purpose or clear priorities to frame a learning experience students won’t see and answer such questions as: What’s the point? What’s the big idea here? What does this help us understand or be able to do? To what does this relate? Why should we learn this? **How will this experience enable me as a learner to meet my obligations? **Even if students try to engage and follow as best they can they can at best hope that meaning will emerge.