Unit+of+Study

=Tell me about a Unit of Study?=

We will not be exploring unit design in this course, but here are the foundational questions to ask yourself REGARDLESS of the design principals:

1. What do I want the students to learn or be able to do? (standards) 2. How will I know they have learned it (assessment) 3. What activities will lead them to this understanding (lesson plans) 4. What will I do if they have not gained the understanding (remediation)

From now until the day you retire from teaching or from business, these four questions need to drive EVERY TEACHING decision you make! If you learn NOTHING else from me, please commit these foundational questions to your soul.

To implement curriculum, teachers and professional developers give instruction in thematic segments call units. Consider a book in which you have chapters with subheadings and information, activities, in a logical sequence of information.

Now, let's see some examples!

Take a look at some appropriate grade level on-line units (not particularly written in a UBD framework) and ask yourself: Is this “good” curriculum? How do you know? Is it clear how to implement the curriculum?

What is the importance of considering other disciplines in your teaching? Is there an authentic (real world) element?

Would you teach this unit? If not, what would you change in order to adopt it?

As you peruse these, pay PARTICULAR note to the activities (or lessons)!

Elementary: [] (4th grade Rain Forest) [] (1st grade Spiders) [] (fabulous lessons (k-3)

Excellent Middle School Units: []

High School: [] (high school units designed by teams of teachers)

Let's look at a typical semester of 9th grade Civics (this is a semester-long course).

So, what concepts, knowledge and skills would be taught? How would we organize that information in a logical manner? What teaching strategies would we use to get students to understand and be able to use the concepts, knowledge and skills? Is there an inclusion of other disciplines? How would we know if the students have mastered understanding?

The first thing to do is to consider the time you have to teach the subject. Unfortunately, time is a task master. For secondary schools, a course is taught in 18 weeks. For elementary, it is 36 weeks (the entire year). Of course, many of these days are lost to other activities (field trips, assemblies, no contact days, fire alarms, etc.).

The next thing is to consider the units that will be taught and the length of time you will devote to each unit.

Next, each unit must be fleshed out: key concepts to cover, knowledge to gain, skills to master.

With that understanding, the teacher now looks at the teaching strategies and organization for implementing the unit.

Let's take a look at the topics that will need to be covered (and uncovered):



Now, let's take a look at how a teacher writes ONE unit of instruction. Read this carefully--this is what you will be doing in this course!



When I sit down to write a unit, this is the exact process I go through. TRY IT!

I've written hundreds of units (some good, some great, some awful), but I've written many. And, as a result of working on many of these collabertively, this is a process that is sound and will work. Obviously, as you get more experienced, you will adapt it to your personal style or maybe design your OWN process, but PLEASE READ THIS and try it. For this assignment, you are focusing on three things:


 * 1) The focus (topic) of the unit
 * 2) The lessons (subtopics) you will need to teach for the learner to master the unit
 * 3) The tools (in this case, the use of the cell phone) you can use when you teach each of these lessons.

I APPRECIATE that you would NEVER use the cell phone (or any other technology) exclusively in one unit, but this is a place for you to brainstorm as many ideas as you can!