Use unit planning to weave key concepts and learning goals together over time and between or among disciplines. Consider overlapping lessons with fellow instructors to provide longer spans of time for study and practice.
For example, if you’re planning a history unit on the Great Depression, you may want students to understand 1) the root causes of the Great Depression; 2) the efforts taken by Herbert Hoover to address the Depression; 3) the accomplishments of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; 4) challenges to the emerging New Deal order; and 5) the influence of World War II in ending the Depression. Use these five goals to plan lessons and activities that will meet these goals.
The templates provided at the end of this article may be useful for course planning.
If your school doesn’t teach based on state-adopted materials, work with the department chair or administrators in your building to plan out a successful unit. [8] X Expert Source César de León, M. Ed. Educational Leadership Consultant Expert Interview. 11 November 2020.
If, for example, you have four weeks to address the five Great Depression unit goals outlined above, you may opt to begin with three lessons on the Depression’s root causes and end with two focused upon the influence of World War II in ending the Depression. In between, you might allocate roughly a week to each of the other three goals, but leave a “float” day or two built into the schedule. Plan supplemental assignments for “float” days that, while enriching, are not required material for meeting state standards. You’ll be well-prepared if you do need the lessons, but you’ll retain the capacity to sacrifice this material in favor of spending an extra day on a key learning goal.
Formative assessments monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback. These tools help you understand how well students are grasping course material so you can make adjustments as you go. Formative assessments typically have little or no point value – they are meant as a check for the instructor and not as an assessment of student performance. [10] X Research source A formative assessment tool for our Great Depression example might be a request that students submit two key points gleaned from a lecture on the First Hundred Days of the New Deal. Summative assessments evaluate student learning and are typically given at the end of an instructional unit. These tools typically have high point value as they do gauge student performance. [11] X Research source A summative assessment tool for our Great Depression example might be a research paper on a topic of the student’s choosing.
Our unit on the Great Depression, for example, might mix periodic lectures with examination of primary source documents, conversations about images of the Dust Bowl, audio recordings of some of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats,” and viewing of the film The Grapes of Wrath.
Formative assessments can provide useful benchmarks. Plan points at which you will commit to move onto new material even if student understanding remains incomplete. Spending too much time on one segment of your unit sacrifices the others.
What state standards are you required to fulfill in this course? What are your district’s course curriculum requirements? What are your students’ specific needs and learning styles? Consider broad factors such as demographics and past assessment data, but also trust your instincts as you consider the dynamics of your student population. A broad “road map” allows you to circumvent common pitfalls such as running short on instructional time. When planning a post-Civil War U. S. history course, for example, if you begin with the understanding that you’ll end the course in 2001 you can plot out a series of units that will enable you to reach that goal.
Identify key content, skills, and vocabulary. What will your students need to know when they exit your course? Develop ways of assessing your students to determine whether they are learning this information. Remember to diversify your assessment tools; some students will respond better to certain forms of assessment than others. Design a structure that will place these essential questions in a proper learning sequence. Now you have your units, and can focus upon specific lesson plans. Determine what materials you’ll need to properly teach these concepts and skills.
A history teacher undertaking a unit on the Great Depression, for example, may opt to combine forces with an instructor in a related field such as economics or political science. He or she could also travel further afield and coordinate lessons with a science instructor. The history of the Dust Bowl will gain new life from the scientific insight a biology or earth sciences instructor brings, while the science teacher’s students will better understand soil science, erosion, and air currents due to the context provided by their study of Dust Bowl history.
Following our Dust Bowl example, a science instructor’s lesson on meteorology and air currents could lead to a predictive study of where students expect dust might have blown during the 1930s. The students might then share this information with their history teacher and determine the accuracy of their predictions. When embarking upon an interdisciplinary unit, ensure you coordinate assessment tools as well as lesson plans. Our imaginary science teacher and history instructor would need to be in communication with each other to determine how well their instruction was translating into important learning outcomes.
Approaching the same subject from different angles helps students view concepts in a broader context. Instead of seeing that invertebrate report in isolation, they will understand it as a way to put broader research and writing skills into practice. Students who feel more confident in one subject than another gain the advantage of recognizing the links between their area of confidence and the skills they’ve previously found challenging. [14] X Trustworthy Source Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Nonprofit organization providing innovative, effective educational resources for educators designed to support student achievement Go to source
