After graduating from college in 1990, I started working in a different profession and hadn't any updates in lesson planning since that date.  Nine years ago I started teaching and still was using planning from the 90's.  Now, college students are being taught Backward Design.  Obviously this is new to me and yet the design has some similar elements of long ago.  One of the differences starting from an essential question.  I really like this change.  I use to start with my goal and objectives.  I know can turn my goal into a question.  I have been teaching my first design unit these past two weeks.  I feel really on top of where I am going and what I want the kids to come away with.  I have been frequently asking myself the essential question to make sure I am sticking to the plan.  Having my questions planned ahead of time is making the conversation more deep and rich.  I use to wing my questioning and it was mostly fact based.  Planning ahead, thinking about enduring understanding, knowledge, and skills, along with assessment has made my travel time theme much more in depth.  In the past I knew what I was going to teach but I didn't have it thoroughly planned out.  Now, I feel much more confident and can reuse them from year to year, tweaking the plan as needed.  I want to sit down with my planning partner and write a backward design plan for all of the themes in the 2nd grade language arts curriculum.