Unit Planning Tips

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Unit Plan Decisions

Decisions! Decisions! Decisions! Unit and curriculum planning requires lots of decisions. When you feel overwhelmed by the decisions, remember that making decisions makes life less complicated. Perhaps it will help if you break the necessary decisions down into several categories, though they are always interrelated and developed in a dialectical fashion.

 
1. Prepare a Unit Plan with three columns labeled as shown.

   Unit Objectives	Learning Activities	Assessments
   1. First unit objective.	1. Learning activities corresponding to first unit objective.	1. Means of formative and summative assessments for the first unit objective.

   1. Unit Objectives
      • Determine instructional objectives for student performance.
      • Ensure that learning activities and assessments match the unit objectives. Number them correspondingly.
      • Select content related to objectives.
        Clear away unjustified facts like a fog that obscures the view.
        Eschew encyclopedic busywork! Plan what you teach! Teach facts as they are related to concepts, and concepts as they are related to the objectives.
      • Unit objectives are more general than lesson objectives. Label objectives as cognitive, psychomotor, or affective.
      • The unit objectives should inform every decision made in curriculum planning, from start to finish!
   2. Learning Activities
      • Identify appropriate instructional procedures.
        Design your lessons with anticipatory set, development, and closure. How will you employ a variety of instructional methods to develop the lesson?
      • Remember to teach for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.
      • Select promising student activities as the means of instruction.
        Examples: Labs, fieldwork, learning-transfer assignments, problems to solve, etc.
      • Choose teaching materials, aids, and instructional resources.
      • Diminish seatwork: generate active learning situations!
   3. Assessments
      • Label each assessment as formative or summative.
      • Formative assessment:
        • Provides feedback to students for their own self-assessment. Helps them to form an idea of their progress in the unit.
        • Formative assessment is a necessary, not optional, part of course design, but sadly is often neglected.
      • Summative assessment:
        • Provides the basis of course grades.
        • Begin writing test questions to match objectives before each lesson is taught, to ensure that learning matches the objectives.

    

Unit Calendar sequencing

1. Sequencing a unit is guided by many of the same principles as sequencing a lesson. Consider the following suggestions:
   • Proceed from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the known-known to the known-unknown. Lay a familiar frame of reference before introducing foreign concepts.
   • Proceed from the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the universal. Stock the students' minds with concrete examples (e.g., living things) before emphasizing general abstractions (e.g., "life").
   • Proceed according to a simulated historical episode in which the problem was engaged and resolved with permanent and paradigmatic significance.
   • Begin with unusual, unexpected, surprising, novel, or complex situations. Then work backward to create an understanding of the concepts required to explain the situation.
   • Use labs and demonstrations at the beginning of a unit for teaching the concepts, not merely reserving them for use at the end. Use labs at the end of a unit for concept application and transfer.
   • Proceed according to a logical or conceptual outline, from the simple to the complex. This is the most common approach and seems very natural to an educated teacher who already understands the material. However, beware! Remember that what seems "simple" to one initiated in the field may seem "unfamiliar" or "abstract" to a novice.

    

2. Prepare a Unit Calendar on the basis of the Unit Plan completed above.
   • Use a blank calendar page and write lesson objectives in the squares for each date.
   • Lesson objectives in the unit calendar will be more specific than the unit objectives in the unit plan.
   • Unit objectives may require more or less than one day's lesson in the unit calendar plan. For example, a photosynthesis unit objective might require a week to carry out the related learning activities. And the Unit Calendar will also include designated summative assessment activities, such as quizzes and tests.

    

3. Allocate time wisely.
   • There is not enough time to recreate modern knowledge by the Socratic method.
   • Teach well, even if it means being more selective.
   • There are no perfect Unit Calendars. A plan is a plan, not the last word. Modify them as needed on the basis of monitoring.
   • Emphasize what students are learning, rather than what you have "covered." It's your responsibility to sacrifice the unattainable ideal of "comprehensive coverage" whenever little student learning is occurring! Never fear to "depart from the text"!

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