Unit Planning

Start with the key Concepts

• What key concepts are vital to understanding?

• From: state standards, district curriculum, teacher content knowledge

Order the concepts

• What order do these concepts need to be taught?

– There should be a logical flow from one concept to the next.

Decide how to move from one Concept to another

• What steps do you need to use to go from one concept to the next?

– Students learn best when you move from concrete to abstract

– Each idea needs to be constructed carefully

Decide on a learning strategy

• What learning strategies are you working on?– What strategies can students practice – What strategies do you need to teach

Building Background

• What background information needs to be built to understand the key concepts?

– Students may not have background necessary

– The understanding they have may be incorrect

– The class as a whole needs a “community background” to refer to

Vocabulary

• What vocabulary is needed?

– Content vocabulary (ex. Photosynthesis)

– Academic (ex. compare, contrast)

– Basic (spring, rubber band, straw)

Daily Objectives

• What daily objectives are needed to reach key concepts?– Decide on the daily flow of learning– Should be in kid language– Should focus the lesson– Should be concrete enough to be measured– Language objectives can come from the

activity

Activities

• What activities support and address daily objectives?– What will the students do to complete the

objectives?

• Use hands on activities as often as possible, or change activities to make them more interactive

– Radio reading instead of silent reading,– Partners work on problems or worksheets

Materials

• What materials will you use?– Reading level– Background information– Accessibility

Lesson strategies

• What strategies and scaffolding do you need to do to support activities?

• What are you going to do to introduce the activity or concept?

• How are you going to teach vocabulary?

• What kind of reading support do they need?

• What type of grouping will work best?

Assessment

• How are you going to assess learning?– Projects– Tests– Performance assessment