I like that one of the main goals of Understanding by Design is its emphasis on transferable skills--if a skill can be transferred to another arena, learning has truly occurred. By keeping the end product in mind, all activities, lessons, and assessments are geared to generate the most thorough possible means of student-understanding. Instead of using one final assessment that goes against the grain of a unit's essential questions, such as an exam that does not reflect the entire scope of understanding, but rather assess "understanding [as] revealed in performance. Understanding is revealed as transferability of core ideas, knowledge, and skill, on challenging tasks in a variety of contexts" and, hence, require a multifaceted approach toward finding "evidence" of learning. Exams, papers, self-reflection, "GRASPS" reflect a "repertoire of knowledge to negotiate a multistage task." I particularly liked the suggestion of self-assessment: the first and last written assignments of a unit ask the same question and therefore display the growth of the student as the term comes to a close. This is helpful for the teacher, serving an assessment for his or her success in teaching the material, and provides tangible "proof" to the student that he or she has, in fact, learned a considerable amount.