One of my unit goals is "Students will be able to persuade in writing." This involves writing an appropriate persuasive essay on a topic of choice and using many examples of evidence and details to explain their reasoning. This connects to my student's learning because they can tap into their background knowledge when choosing a persuasive topic and engage with an idea of interest. It also allows students to write in English or Spanish, which is essential as I have a large population of emerging bilingual learners in my classroom. This would be assessed through a clearly defined rubric, which will be provided to students beforehand, outlining how many pieces of evidence, details, and paragraphs they must include. Also, how is their opinion stated in the writing? It connects to language demands because students will be shown examples of how to state their opinions but have the option to do so in Spanish or English. It meets a literacy standard for 5th grade, and the cognitive demand varies based on the topic the student chooses to write about. One important thing to consider about unit planning is planning with backward design and thinking about how to connect to our students. It connects to lesson planning because the lessons are individual components of unit plans. For example, my overall unit will be about persuasive writing, but the individual lessons will touch on different techniques for persuasion and assignments to practice.