Unit Requirement and Planning Guide:

Think of this assignment as a gift to your profession.  Its audience will be teachers who wish to have their students study what your unit is teaching.  The purpose for you in creating this unit is to prepare you to develop your teaching ideas, to prepare you to do long range planning for your own future students. This unit will require you to bring theory and practice together. You will be most motivated if you are planning this unit because you know that you want to teach it in the future and/or that you know if will be useful in your student teaching. Most important is to pick a content area in which you have deep interest. This unit will take intense work; it will go well if it is both meaningful to you and useful to others. The format for the teaching unit, which will change yearly depending on what the State of Minnesota demands in the way of assessment. Right now it is as follows:

Prefatory Statement- This section should include a lengthy description of the unit, as well as the rationale for the unit. Why will this unit benefit students in their life? How will it benefit the world in the long run? It may seem lofty, but you should have good reasons for going to the work of creating a unit, and although your own interests are important to follow, it is also important that the unit will be meaningful and useful to your students. Discuss this as well as issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and social justice as they relate to your unit.

Class Specification- What kind of student is this unit appropriate for? Age/grade? Does it have any features that would make it inappropriate for certain groups? Is it more appropriate for some socio-economic groups than others? If there are ways that a teacher might vary it for different groups of students, you can include that information in the sub-sections of the unit, but note in this section general information and where in the unit those variations will be found.

Significant Assumptions- Think through what beliefs you have about teaching and learning. How do they factor into the development of this unit. How do you think students learn? What are your assumptions both surrounding the concepts of the unit and how students will best acquire its concepts? What do you assume that students already know in order to complete the unit and standard successfully?  This section needn't be long, but it needs to be well considered.

Desired Outcomes/Standards/ Objectives to be Met- What do you want the students to have learned by the end of the unit? What content, skills, concepts should they have developed/learned? Make these both specific and general? Assessment procedures should be able to work from these outcomes, so be careful in their construction. Figure out which Minnesota standards can be connected to or central in the unit. Be careful not to use methods as your objectives? This is about what you want the students to have learned by the end of the unit, not about how they well learn it?

Possible Whole-Class Activities: see Gere "Social Construct" on ereserve for examples

Possible Small-Group Activities: see Gere for examples (Are there outcomes and assessment for these activities that will make students/groups accountable?)

Possible Individual Activities: see Gere for examples

Ongoing Activities: Include a description of activities that will occur throughout the unit. This may include descriptions of journal work (learning logs, response journals, lit logs, etc.), reading projects, group projects, writing workshops, community work, etc.  These activities should be carefully described.  Handouts for students describing the activities should be attached so that the parameters are clear to teachers.

(see handouts below)

Student Resources: Include a list of physical materials needed by the class during the unit. When considering the literature itself, try to work for a balance of male/female, western/non-western authors when appropriate. What else will students need to have during their class periods or at home during this unit of study?

Unit Launch/Anticipatory set/ Set Induction: Describe how you will initially motivate your students to engage in this unit. What connections can you help the students make between their world and the world that surrounds them? What materials you might use with students in this lesson. You may chose to make this one of your detailed plans for one of the three days.

Organization of the Unit: a week by week run down of what will happen -see Gere for examples

Detailed Plans for Two Days of the Unit- use departmental model, include time that each activity in the methods section will take, include homework for each day. Make sure that each day has objectives that match up with the unit's standards/ outcomes/ objectives and make sure that each day has assessment, ways that you will know that students have met the outcomes you designate. Include the plans in their appropriate places within the weekly descriptions. Include daily plans that will help teachers to teach the unit.  For instance,  it may be good to include the plan for the set induction as one of your daily plans, or a day when you introduce an on-going project or web quest.

Supporting Materials for Teachers Who Teach the Unit:
Include resources that you have found on the web or in articles/books. This is part of the gift you will give to busy colleagues in the field.

Handouts:

Include handouts that present significant projects or on-going activities to students.

Discussion Questions:

Whenever you mention discussion in your weekly and daily plans, make sure that you have questions (the dense and shaded variety) for the teacher. It is part of the gift that you give with the unit. Place these questions in the context of the weekly or daily plans.

Assessment Task: Develop a web quest or other activity that can act as culminating assessment of the objectives or standards that you have selected. What might a real product be? What other kind of authentic assessment will tell you if your students have met the intended outcomes?  Also:  include some sort of test that will actually allow the students to stretch their minds beyond recall.  How can you test them so not only will you know what they have learned but so their time in taking the test will not be wasted.

Grades: How will you translate that information to students/ parents? In most districts, most teachers still give grades. How will you give fair grades? How will students be able to use the grades to mark their progress? How will students be able to see on which "desired outcomes" they still need work? What rubrics or outcomes will back up the grades that you give. Include whatever you would give to the students to have them understand whether they have met the objectives of the unit.

Planning Guide for an Activity-Based Unit

1. Organizing concept for the unit or theme:

2. Title for the Unit (to capture students' interest):

3. Ways to involve students in planning and taking ownership in the unit:
What might the student want to learn or experience in the relationship to this theme?  Will the organizing concept relate to their life today?  Can they be involved in planning aspects of the unit?

4. Interdisciplinary connections (ideas for ways to connect this theme with other curricular areas, especially other arts and humanities, taking into consideration the teachers who might be working together with the group of students):

5. Minnesota State Standard: What information about the standard is there in the Minnesota State documents (see link on the 5922 page)?

6. How will you select and use texts and materials recognizing and accepting a broad range of common and diverse perspectives? How will you connect the content and objectives to the student's world and the world that surrounds the student? How will you make it relevant and help students to see the relevance. How can the students take part in making these connections?

7. Desired Outcomes (What specific skills, knowledge, information will students have learned by the time that they complete this unit? These outcomes might be directly related to state or local curriculum mandates. Consider the following possibilities:

Types of Learning Goals, Learner Results, Outcomes, Unit Results; Knowledge:

8. Ideas for a theme launch activity. This should be a motivational activity, should require no specialized knowledge, and should tap students' prior knowledge about the theme. How will you establish:

desire for feelings of competence,

desire for feelings of self-determination,

inclination towards imitation,

natural curiosity,

responsiveness to feedback.

9. Big Questions (to establish relevance to the students' world): What four or five questions might come from students or might students be sitting on that will be answered through this unit?

10. Activities to Help Students Meet Desire Outcomes:

Activities to access and share prior knowledge about the organizing concept/theme or four questions:

Whole group activities:

Small group Activities:

Individual Activities:

Technological Activities:

11. Culminating Experiences (Ideas for three possible projects which have real purpose [a real product?] and which might influence a real audience:

Cooperative Learning Project (with real audience and result?):

Community Involvement Project (with real audience and result?):

Writing Project (with real audience and purpose?):

A Combination?:

12. Reading related to the organizing concept (fiction, poetry, non-fiction?- - try to get some reading from each genre):

13. Media/Technological Resources Needed:

14. Community Resources (places, people, artifacts):

15. Thematic Environment (ideas for creating a thematic environment in the classroom including bulletin boards, etc):

16. Assessment:

Self-Evaluation: How can the student reflect on and evaluate the progress they have made toward the learning goals/desired outcomes?

How might the unit be assessed using a web quest?

By what processes will the teacher assess the students' progress towards the learning goals/desired outcomes (rubrics, student contracts, authentic assessment, grades, etc)? Consider each objective and how you will know whether the student has met it.

17. How will reading, writing, speaking, and listening, viewing , and thinking come together for this unit? Fill out the attached chart.

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