UbD Lesson in school

I am currently in the middle of this unit described. The only part that I changed with my students was that I wrote the questions on the board before they came in. When they sat down (all 4 of them) I read the "students will know, understand etc and the questions. The essential question is brought up at the beginning of the unit and referred to many times. It started the students in conversation immediately. We are at the point where we are researching the kings and queens and the students started to discuss their findings. So I actually had to stop them and go back to the lesson where they would give their mini lesson educating us on the people. At the end of their mini lessons we discussed the questions on the board and how my plan for them that day was laid out for them to see. They liked the idea of the questions and students will be able to...because they knew what the hour was going to be about. I feel they also knew what to look for in the lesson that day. Gifted kids tend to not like the unknown as much as we think!

It didn't take long to create this lesson in this format. My gifted team uses this idea when we design our units. Since we meet at the end of the units with our 6 schools we start with the essential questions and then the variety of products. We leave the lesson up to the individual teacher and even the product/assessment is usually student decided. I didn't use a template and would love to find it and use it. My computer is not working well and I cant open many windows at the same time or the whole thing freezes so I used the video and print out as my guide (hope it is right). The only difficulty would be that I would have to buy a binder to put my lesson plans in or that I would need to figure out a layout that would make it easy for me to glance over my plans for the day or week. Management of paper would be the only downfall.