This book explores ways to design courses and units to emphasize understanding and uncoverage rather than coverage, offering practical solutions for teacher-designers. It focuses on a different use for performance assessment, concluding that performance is the key to assessing understanding. The book analyzes the logic of backward design as an alternative to coverage and activity-oriented plans. Designing for understanding begins with what teachers want students to be able to do and proceeds to the evidence they will accept to prove that students have learned it. Only then does it turn to how students will learn it. Along the way, teachers must be clear about how they want students to understand and what they mean by understanding. The book proposes a multifaceted approach, with the six facets of understanding (explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge). The facets combine with backward design to provide a practical framework for designing curriculum, assessment, and instruction. After an introduction, there are 11 chapters: (1) "What Is Backward Design?" (2) "What Is a Matter of Understanding?" (3) "Understanding Understanding," (4) "The Six Facets of Understanding," (5) "Thinking Like an Assessor," (6) "How Is Understanding Assessed in Light of the Six Facets?" (7) "What Is Uncoverage?" (8) "What the Facets Imply for Unit Design," (9) "Implications for Organizing Curriculum," (10) "Implications for Teaching," and (11) "Putting it All Together: A Design Template." (Contains 194 references.) (SM)