This assignment, planning a fifteen-day unit (minimum), is designed to give you the following:

1. The confidence that comes from entering student teaching with three weeks of teaching carefully planned in advance.

2. A chance to use much of what you have learned this semester--from your school observations, your four-day unit, your two microteachings, your teaching projects, the guest speakers, etc.

3. Practice in tailoring instruction to the needs and abilities of specific classes and the variety of students within them, and planning a safe and democratic environment.

4. Practice in designing a large unit that is objective-driven, informed by the NYS  Learning Standards, creative, diverse, and stamped throughout by your own teaching personality and style.

This project will give you experience in curriculum development and instructional planning.  You will be creating a unit plan that takes advantage of reading/writing connections and supports students’ lifelong development in the English language arts.  You are encouraged to use professional resources (e.g., Smagorinsky’s Teaching English Through Principled Practice, Burke’s The English Teacher’s Companion and quality internet sites  (e.g., NCTE, IRA, ReadWriteThink) for inspiration and ideas.  Consider writing about this unit and contributing to professional journals or websites once you have the chance to try it out with students and examine the nature and quality of their work and learning.

Your unit may be organized in a variety of ways.  Most often, students chose to plan a unit around a central work of literature. However, you may choose to plan a thematic unit  (e.g., “coping with loss” or “social responsibility”); a genre unit (e.g., “westerns”  or “detective fiction”), a particular literary period or an author.   

To help you decide what type of unit to plan, you need to consult with your cooperating teacher soon about matters like these: 

·         The topic, dates, and classes for your unit

·         Anything he/she definitely wants you to address

·         The amount and kinds of homework you should give

·         Work that must be done in class

·         Instructional strategies and activities you should or should not try (be sure to use a variety of instructional activities that are either cross-content or non-content specific such as KWL charts, debates, ticket in/out the door, graphic organizers, think-pair-share, talk show, web quest, jigsaws, etc.).

·         Ways the unit should be adapted to different sections, and to individual students with particular learning styles, special needs, etc.

Requirements

Part I  

1. A title for your unit

2. Your school, cooperating teacher, and the classes to which you will teach the unit (e.g., English 11, periods 5, 7, and 8)

3. Your unit goals (four to six goals)

4. Central text (s): (use MLA or APA format):  Indicate the unit’s central text(s) (print or nonprint).

5. Supplemental texts: Indicate music, films, cartoons, essays, poetry, websites, speeches, auto/biographies, dramas, etc. that add to and enrich the reading of the central text(s) and essential questions.  These texts will expand the cultural gender, genre appeal of your unit.   

6. Final Assessment: How will you determine how well you students met your unit goals (please consider alternatives to the traditional unit test)

7. Unit Rationale: Indicate why this unit’s texts and activities are valuable and appropriate for secondary students to study by discussing adolescent development and relevant social, cultural, or educational issues. 

8. Cautions:  Indicate any concerns this unit might raise and discuss how you plan to address these issues. For example, how might you deal with profane or racist language in texts, violence, sex, suicide, etc.?

9. Use of Nonprint Media/Media Literacy (1 paragraph):  Indicate how students (and/or teacher) will/could use nonprint media to develop media literacy in this unit.  Indicate how students will critically think about the impact of a media format (music, images, photo, film, television, etc.) on understanding.

10. Use of instructional strategies (1-3 paragraphs):   Explain the use of strategies and activities you planned that are either cross content or non-content specific such as KWL charts, debates, ticket in/out the door, graphic organizers, think-pair-share, talk show, web quest, jigsaws, etc.).

11. Heterogeneity & Diversity (1 paragraph):  Indicate how the content and activities of this unit allow for a differentiated curriculum and address students’ diverse needs and skill levels.  For example, does the unit provide students with choice? Provide multiple opportunities for students to show what they know and how they have learned? Allow for varied learning styles and intelligences?

Part II

Lesson Plans: 

At least 15 daily lesson plans (ideally, you will complete the entire unit in 15 days) that include these items:

1) Grade level the lesson is planned for

2) Objectives (no more than three)

3) NYS ELA Standards addressed

4) Materials (a list of what you and your students need)

5) *Procedures (including closure)

6) Assessment (how will you determine to what extent each student met your objective(s)?

*You need to describe the activities you plan for the students in the procedures section. If you have a block schedule, you will need several activities in each lesson. Please consider and incorporate the following ideas in your activities:

• Some of your activities need to engage students in making meaning of texts through personal response

• Activities generally should engage students in higher-order (critical) thinking

• At least some activities need to integrate aspects of the arts and humanities (see Part I, #10)

• Some of your activities (or discussion of activities after they are completed) need to help students understand that all dimensions (e.g. reading, writing, listening, speaking) of ELA are related (refer to NYS Standards for additional details)

• Some of your activities need to allow students to demonstrate their skills in writing, speaking, and creating visual images (this may help you with lesson assessment as well)

• Activities should incorporate multiple intelligences. By the end of the unit, all multiple intelligences should be covered.

• Your activities need to reflect a variety of instructional techniques: individual, small-group-whole-class.

This unit will be assessed in terms of this rubric.