Ms. Q: How I Plan

How do you go about organizing your units?

Honestly, I have never figured out how to plan a good year. This is one of the reasons for the collaboration. This isn’t to say I don’t plan, but it usually done piecemeal and a unit at a time. However, for this year, I have already begun planning, much like you do. I have read Understanding by Design and am currently working through the Intel: Teach program, which is basically planning a unit from start to finish, where start is actually the end. So, here is my plan for planning so far:

I have begun with a list of skills/strategies my students should be able to do by the time the year is done.

For example, one is Students will be able to identify key literary elements in any work and be able to explain how/why the author choose this element.

Technically, the above statement is an objective, however in my planning, I label these statements as academic/content goals. From these goals, I look at the major works I have chosen to study this year and plug the goal into a quarter (which is how we break up the grading).

This is one area where I struggle—matching works and concepts to cover. I tend to want to cover everything and am slowly coming to the realization I must be picky and choose one or two concepts per piece and just remember to point them out in future works.

Because I teach both the history and the English, I combine essential/unit questions and my work choices fit the themes suggested by these questions. At the moment, I have one essential question, which may end up being THE essential question—because as I think about it, I can use it in each history unit I am planning on teaching. My overriding EQ then, is

How do character, choice, and change influence democracy?

This question is actually from my election project, which I will post about in a bit. From this question, students can think about the historical significance of the work and determine the character-choice-change involved in the piece and how it had an influence on democracy in the United States. This is the first time using essential questions, so the process will be bumpy as I try to work out how it will be a central part of our learning.

Next, I consider the major works and what supplements I want to use with them.

Again, this is an area where I struggle. I tend to get sucked into a trap of not having enough time to work with the major works, let alone relating anything to it. This year, though, I am making a strong effort to use supplements to broaden the content and literary horizons of my students. In fact, I want to try to relate major works to current events every time we reach a new time period.

After having the essential questions, goals, major literary works, and supplements it is time to work on planning units. My units are based on time periods and fit with the units I will be covering in the APUSH class. After the units are determined and I have a list of concepts, skills, and strategies for each unit, I know I need to pre-assess knowledge. After all, why teach something they already know, or skim something I assume they know when they don’t know it? In order to pre-assess, I need to have a list of objectives.

I have always know we should pre-assess and assess continually to gauge their learning, however, with everything else going on, this is something which usually gets pushed aside during the year. You mention being able to specifically tell from your assessments where re-teaching is necessary and this is something I strive to learn to do this year. I have too often relied on other teachers’ assessments or those which came with the text. This often does not provide clear cut clues as to which objectives are being targeted. So, I aim to create the objectives first, build my assessments around those objectives and then plan my learning activities.