My biggest takeaway from building this unit is that to plan an effective unit, one must first and foremost start out with the end results in mind. To do this requires knowledge of Backward Design, as well as alignment of goals when creating activities and instructional strategies. One must always be thinking about how the instruction works towards the learning objectives. These learning objectives must in turn align with the school standards (in my case, these are the Colorado Academic Standards. When planning, it is important to factor into consideration the fact that all aspects of the lesson must work in tandem. Students need to be able to come away from the learning with answer to the essential questions raised within the unit. These essential questions in turn are directly related to the big ideas of the unit.
Next time I build a unit, I’d like to incorporate additional allowances for my learners who are forced to miss class due to circumstances outside of their control. For example, I have quite a few athletes for different sports in my 8th hour class. I need to find ways to ensure that they don’t miss out any of the learning that their non-athlete peers are experiencing. I’m going to speak to my CT tomorrow and see what we can do for these students – at the current time, we are only able to bring them in on Wednesday mornings when we have a time set aside to assist struggling students. I don’t want the athletic students to have to wait until that one period per week to come in and get caught up, because that means we will be covering important material in class before they have a basic understanding of the concepts.
Students working on this project in the future should remember how important it is that at all times in the unit planning, we must be thinking about the learning objectives, and considering how our activities help learners successfully meet said objectives. Clarity is key, as is providing thoughtful success criteria to the students at the beginning of the lessons (via Can-Do statements). Using student-friendly language and having the students demonstrate their understanding of the learning objectives and success criteria will ensure that the students are set up for success before the learning even begins.