Chapter 1 Part 1: Planning for Thinking

I chose to center my unit plan around late 19th century and early 20th century history. The theme of this unit is meant to be nationalism and imperialism is meant to be a significant subtheme (I don't think you can have one without the other in most cases). Since the theme is nationalism, one of my main goals with this unit is to teach about the concept of nationalism and how it has affected world history. I decided to go with the "dream unit" option for this assignment, but if I were to hypothetically teach this class to my focus class (more details in the context for learning document), then I would emphasize vocabulary and concepts over much of the history. At 6th grade, I think it would be too much to ask kids to memorize and understand many of the topics presented in this unit and I believe that teaching about subjects like genocide before high school is immoral and ineffective since most kids are not intellectually equipped to deal with concepts of genocide and ethnic cleansing at middle school ages. That being said, if I were teaching this to my class or perhaps to my classes from last semester, I would still assess students largely based off of their understanding of various forms of imperialism and nationalism in the 19th century. The most important thing I need to consider when unit planning is how to effectively differentiate and scaffold for students. This is difficult to do in a single unit in history since most of what history teachers teach builds directly off of prior lessons. In other words, if you have poor scaffolding at the beginning, it could be very difficult to rebuild effective scaffolds in the future. Therefore, something I want to be constantly cognizant of is making sure that I am always providing as much as possible in my lessons as far as both content and scaffolds go. This is why I am not focusing on a single region or country. If students can get a foothold on how at least one country or region does things, it can be used as a proxy to explain other historical events and concepts later in the class if need be. This unit plan has connected to my lesson planning through making me think more about how to effectively assess student progress and needs.