I like this idea very much. In my classroom, I use a lot of authentic materials, both visual and auditory. However, balancing the difficulty level with the use of authentic materials is a significant challenge in my teaching.

Thinking about essential questions has always been my weakness. I was wondering if any of you have thought processes or strategies that could help a novice teacher identify essential questions for a course. How do you create a link between unit key questions and individual lesson essential questions?

I hadn't pictorially felt this before. But I've noticed both before and after learning about reverse design that it's easy for me to get so limited by what I set out to do in the beginning that I forget the reason and purpose for goal setting.