Unit Plan for GEOL 401
Description of Unit Plan Assignment
Purpose: There is an old
saying that goes "those who fail to plan, plan to fail." Like many old
sayings, there is a fair amount of truth in the statement. Spontaneity
is valuable in teaching but as the exception not as the rule. Without
planning, education is less effective. It would depend completely on
serendipitous events. Planning creates structure and helps provide that
each new piece of knowledge will fit into the framework of existing
knowledge. Therefore, it is critical that all teachers know how to
effectively design, develop and deliver lesson plans. The exercise will
allow you to practice those skills and provide evidence that you have
met professional teaching standards.
An instructional unit is essentially a complete, coherent sequence of
lessons designed to cover a single topic or theme. A well-designed unit
includes:
- A set of learning goals or objectives,
- A cohesive plan for day-by-day instruction,
- An introduction and conclusion for the unit as a whole,
- And appropriate assessment methods for both analyzing student
performance and teacher effectiveness.
The unit should incorporate a variety of learning activities, emphasize
students' active participation, develop students' literacy, use
appropriate materials and technology, and integrate several aspects of
the content (i.e. communication and mathematical skills, problem
solving and connections to real-world applications). And if that
is not enough, the unit should include a detailed description on how to
do all of these things in a safe and stimulating environment.
Unit Plan Format: Your written
plan for instruction must include the following sections.
- Descriptive Title.
- Learning Objectives for
the unit couched in behavioral terms (i.e. use verbs to describe what
the student will be able to do).
- Contain a unit introduction and
conclusion.
- Contain contextual information
such as scope and sequence, requisite math skills used in the unit and
whether any of them need to be explicitly taught, age or level, length
of class period and textbook if there is one.
- Ten days worth of lesson plans.
(This is an artificial constraint for the purposes of this training
exercise. True unit plans are written to be appropriate to the age and
level of the student and to the concepts and skills to be taught. They
could be as short as three to four days or as long as six weeks.) See
below for details on lesson plan requirements.
- At least one of the lesson plans must incorporate technology and one must use the Inquiry method.
- One lesson plan must include a field
trip that may be real or virtual but must include all the
preparation information such as permission slip, bus request and other
logistics instructions (i.e. students must pack a lunch, should wear
covered shoes, bring sun screen and/or bug spray etc.).
- The lessons in the unit must demonstrate consideration of special needs students and
differentiated instruction as necessary. For example, does it
include a field trip to collect specimens that would require special
arrangements for wheel chair bound students?
- A calendar of events for
the unit that should also include enough flexibility to allow for
re-teaching or other common schedule busters.
- Description of how the unit will contribute to developing
students' reading and literacy skills
by developing a literacy plan and including all required materials and
assessments.
- An action research component.
This could take the form of a pre- and post- test or another assessment
tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the unit on student learning.
- A unit assessment of student performance that must include one paper and pencil test, one alternative assessment and all
keys and rubrics.
- A signed Unit Evaluation Form.
(This is the same rubric that will be used by your professor to
evaluate your unit for inclusion in your portfolio.)
Outline for a Typical Lesson Plan
(Exception: One lesson plan
must be inquiry. Please use the Inquiry Lesson Development Worksheet
for that lesson.)
Title and Context: (level, age,
prerequisites etc.)
Statement of Purpose or Guiding Scientific Question: What is
the general topic or theme being addressed?
Alignment: The content,
objectives, and goals of this lesson must align with Illinois Learning
Standards, including "Applications of Learning." In a concise
statement, explain how the lesson complies with the ILS directives.
Statement of Objectives: What
are the students expected to know and be able to do at the end of the
lesson? Include content knowledge, intellectual skills, and
dispositions as appropriate. Your objectives should have readily
observable behaviors or performance tasks. Students must be made aware
of day-to-day objectives.
Materials: What materials will
you need to teach your lesson? Because science teaching can be so
materials intense, it's a good idea to make a list of everything that
you'll need so that nothing is forgotten and prepared sufficiently in
advance. Include all safety and technology issues here.
Content and Skills: The
hierarchy of knowledge (science concepts) and skills (abilities
necessary to do science) should be provided here in a concise fashion
(i.e. bulleted or numbered) and should correspond to the statement of
objectives.
Anticipatory Set: You will want
to link the current lesson with any previous lesson that is somehow
related. This step is included to ensure that the students are ready
for this lesson as well as the next lesson in a series of lessons.
These introductory activities focus student attention, provide for very
brief practice on previous objectives, and develop readiness for the
current lesson.
Instructional Methodologies and
Corresponding Activities: Instructional activities are planned
such that they help students to accomplish the stated objectives. Once
you know what the students need to do, the follow up question is what
is the best method to help that students achieve those objectives?
Instructional activities should be varied, appeal to all learners and
have enough built-in flexibility to be adapted to meet the needs of all
students.
Closure: There has to be a
logical means for drawing conclusions from the lesson. How will this be
done? To quote Dr. Windleborn, "What will the students say when their
mothers ask, ˜What did you do in school today?'" It had better be
something other than "Nothing."
Checking for Understanding: How
will you as teacher determine whether or not the goal and objectives
for the day's lesson has been achieved? How will you assess the
objectives in an informal yet meaningful manner? Never end a lesson
without checking whether or not your students have achieved the
objectives. List here a series of questions or test items that you
might use to check for student understanding of the content of the
lesson. In a unit, the checking for understanding exercise from one day
may become the anticipatory set for the next day. Include all rubrics
if the assessment requires one.
Hints on Unit Planning
Lesson and unit plans are the maps that keep you on track and allow for
your students to achieve the learning standards. Imagine you are
planning a vacation. Simply jumping into the car and heading in a
random direction may be fun but could also lead to an unpleasant
vacation. Most vacation plans start with the selection of an ultimate
location where the vacation will take place. Are we going to a cabin at
the lake, Europe, or Disney World? Once the ultimate goal is selected
the details can be developed. Planning for instruction is the same
process. Unlike vacations, state learning goals ensure that everyone
arrives at the same destination.
First, to begin the planning process, you need to identify the learning
goals your students are to meet. Second, you need to determine how you
are going to assess whether the students have met these goals. This
will require evaluating their performance in some targeted activity. It
is only now that you develop a list of those activities. This is called
backward planning. It assures that all student activities are targeted
and purposeful. Curricula are too full to waste time on tangents no
matter how personally interesting they might be.
Answer the following questions in the
order they are listed to help guide you to "plan backwards."
1. Is this a single course or part of a series? Must
this course satisfy all goals in this subject area or only some part?
Which part?
2. If the course is only one part of a school's
program, how do your envisioned course goals fit into the school goals?
3. How do these goals align with state standards?
4. How does this course rely on other courses from
different subject areas? (You can't teach calculus-based physics to
students that haven't taken trigonometry.)
5. What type of students will be in the course?
(Middle school, high school, special needs etc.)
6. Will there be any special time constraints? (Class
and course length) How much time is available? Are you on block
schedule?
7. What resources are available? What resources
aren't available?
8. What are your strengths and weaknesses as a
teacher? How do you avoid your own biases?
9. Once you know what you want the students to be
able to do (skill and content), how do you assess whether they can do
these things?
10. What are the best instructional activities that
allow for this assessment?
11. What skills do the students need to accomplish
these activities?
12. Do you need to prepare your students in some way
before they begin the unit? If so, how? For example, biology students
can't compare the stages of mitosis in onion root cells if they can't
focus a microscope.
Five Common Mistakes in Writing
Lesson Plans
(and how to avoid them )
by Dr. Bob Kizlik (mirrored on
multiple educational websites)
Successful teachers are invariably good planners and thinkers. They
didn't get that way overnight. The road to success requires commitment
and practice, especially of those skills involved in planning lessons,
activities, and managing classroom behavior. Planning lessons is
a fundamental skill all teachers must develop and hone, although
implementation of this skill in actual teaching can, and usually does,
take some time. So let's begin at the beginning.
In my career as a teacher and teacher educator, I have read and
evaluated thousands of lesson plans written by education students at
all levels. On a consistent basis, I see mistakes that distort or
weaken what the plans are supposed to communicate. If you are serious
about improving your skill in planning lessons, you should begin by
first thinking carefully about what the lesson is supposed to
accomplish. There is no substitute for this. In teaching students how
to develop lesson plans, the following are mistakes I have observed
that students make most often:
1. The objective of the lesson does not specify what the student will
actually do that can be observed. Remember, an objective is a
description of what a student does that forms the basis for making an
inference about learning. Poorly written objectives lead to faulty
inferences.
2. The lesson assessment is disconnected from the behavior indicated in
the objective. An assessment in a lesson plan is simply a description
of how the teacher will determine whether the objective has been
accomplished. It must be based on the same behavior that is
incorporated in the objective. Anything else is flawed.
3. The materials specified in the lesson are extraneous to the actual
described learning activities. This means keep the list of materials in
line with what you actually plan to do. Overkilling with materials is
not a virtue!
4. The instruction in which the teacher will engage is not efficient
for the level of intended student learning. Efficiency is a measure
that means getting more done with the same amount of effort, or the
same amount with less effort. With so much to be learned, it should be
obvious that instructional efficiency is paramount.
5. The student activities described in the lesson plan do not
contribute in a direct and effective way to the lesson objective. Don't
have your students engaged in activities just to keep them busy.
Whatever you have your students do should contribute in a direct way to
their accomplishing the lesson objective.