Unit Planning with a Purpose

The biggest takeaway from building this unit is that everything needs to have a purpose related to the big idea. As teachers, we want to fit so much into the year that we have with our students, but there is not enough time to teach everything we want to. Because this is the case, it is important to make sure every piece of instruction is purposeful. As I was building my unit, there were so many activities and tasks that I could have included. I had to narrow down the lessons and activities included in my unit. To do this, I would ask myself “does this task fit the big idea of my unit?” If not, I tried to modify the task or change it to something that relates better. I wanted every piece of this unit to have a related purpose.

A connection that I made across two or more of the areas in the unit was students using a different character’s point of view. In this unit, students are creating a fairy tale from a different character’s perspective. They have many activities that will connect across the unit. They will most likely keep the same point of view across various lessons and work in different domains, they will speak, jot notes in graphic organizers, and eventually write their character’s testimony. Although these activities differ, they will have the connection of the same character’s point of view.

Next time I build a unit, I want to think about how different lessons and activities will use different cognitive processes. While creating my unit, I had lessons and activities in mind that I wanted to do. However, once I started the Unit Learning Goals section, I realized that they did not differ much in the cognitive processes being used. I realized that my students would not be using diverse ways of thinking, and I had to adjust my plan to include more cognitive processes. I have planned using cognitive processes only for individual lessons, so I will think more about this as it relates to planning entire units.

For people working on this project next semester, I would tell them to think about it as the big picture. Because we have done so many lesson plans throughout CU Denver, I was nervous to create a whole unit and did not know where to start. When I talked to my CT about how they unit plan, she said they start with a big-picture plan. This involves sorting out what the end goal is and when it is expected to be completed. I decided to big-picture plan after I had already started unit planning. For future students, I would recommend having a really solid plan about what the final goals are for students and how you plan to assess them. After you have that, the rest of the unit is easier to plan because you know what you want the purpose of each task to be.

Becca Mazur