Unit Planning
InTASC Standard 7: The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context.
Introduction
Unit planning involves connecting each objective to master the standards and creating rigorous assessments. When I unit plan in the beginning of the year, I do not incorporate other curriculum because I am still getting to know my students. After unit one, I use a cross-curricular approach to intertwine lessons with student's interest and reading levels. Moreover, I want my unit plan to have thoughtful plans that challenge my scholars to master the standards.
When unit planning I always want to find out the standards that are being covered during the unit and any additions I can make towards the curriculum to make learning more engaging and rigorous. In addition, I use cross-curricular techniques to implement social studies in the unit plan. This techniques, helps students with mastering language arts standards and acquire knowledge within the social studies curriculum. To bring all of these techniques together, I collaborate with my school's education associate to thoughtfully organize this unit plan.
An essential part of planning is unpacking the standards so that all of my students can master them. For instance, a standard requires that students determine the theme or lesson of a story and use details. Some students struggle with mastering this skill because everyone's view of a moral is different. Some may believe that a story may have many lessons and some may believe it only has one. After unpacking this skill and group discussion, students realized that there are many aspects of one's view on a moral. I taught my scholars that the only way to prove one's view is to state facts and detail regardless of that view.
I challenge myself to create rigorous, yet engaging lessons for my students. Language arts is a vital part in ones education because it can teach oneself to always support one's view or opinion with facts which is essential in any career.
Unit Plan- American Revolution and the New World.
To long range plan, I use standards, the curriculum, objectives and essential questions. However, when I unit plan I use these same aspects to backwards plan in order to create an assessment. This unit focuses heavy on using details from the text to answer questions, determine the main idea and to determine the theme of a story. These methods are essential to being successful on the PARCC assessment. In addition, the unit exposes the students to American History via the common core standards.
Next, I create the summative assessment. The summative assessment aligns with the standards featured in the unit. The assessment looks and is worded exactly as the PARCC assessment. I create the unit test that way because it prepares my scholars to be successful on the state test. The test is in multiple choice form and each section is organized by the standard being assessed. For more information, click on the Assessment tab above.
Next, I consider how I will keep my students engaged during the unit. Although we are talking about the American Revolution, I try to relate each skill to their lives and interest. For instance, students are to determine the main idea of Sophie's War Chapter 2. In that chapter, Sophie is struggling to find her brother who was lost in the American Revolution. Since I teach in Baltimore, I taught a lesson on how the city rebuilt after the Freddie Gray riots. The two stories are similar because it talks about a city in recovery and students can relate because the riots were recent history. In addition, to help with comprehension I require my students to copy notes regarding the chapter of the book.
Long Term Plan Calendar
Above is my long range plan. I have at least three to four standards I cover in each unit. In addition, I have objectives that align to each of those standards for each unit.
Above is my long term plan calendar. The dates are color coded to represent each unit and days where lessons will not be implemented. This organization helps me stay on path to guiding my scholars to mastery