Year Long Unit Plan Ideas

     Here is the rough outline of my year long unit plan, as it stands now. I would love to hear what people think. The biggest question facing my year long unit right now, in my opinion, is the actual order and flow of the smaller units. Does anyone have any recommendations regarding the order of the units? I totally reject the idea of "teaching to the test"–obviously–but do you think the units are scaffolded towards the STAAR appropriately, in a manner that supports authentic learning along with testing access?

     Also, instead of using a "Conceptual Unit" theme like identity... or something like that, I decided to extend the idea of literacy improvement and lifelong literacy development throughout the entire year. I think this is a way to keep everyone (students, teacher) focused on the true purpose of English (Literacy) class, and to build a meta-cognitive awareness of their learning experience. My hope is that if I can get 8th grade students meta-cognitively understanding the purpose of literacy development and learning, then they can then carry this purpose into their high school years and beyond.

                                        Year Long Unit Timeline (8th Grade)

Conceptual Question that will extend throughout the year:

                        How can we grow our literacy skills to impact the rest of our lives?

9 Smaller Units:

1.     Examining our Literate Lives (And setting goals for our literacy development)

2.     Working with our Writer’s Notebook (As a lifelong literacy tool)

3.     Memoir Unit (non-fiction)

4.     Poetry Unit

            [Winter Break]

5.     Non-fiction and Persuasive writing Unit (through Speeches and Social Issues)

6.     Grammar Unit (2 weeks, very short unit, non-traditional, and meant to be fun/empowering: meant to challenge the conventional ideas of grammar. What is "Proper?" What are the roots of English grammar? How does grammar affect out world? Politically? Socially? How can we use grammar to help our communicative abilities?) 

7.     Testing Boot Camp (Leading up to STAAR)

8.     Short Fiction Unit (starting immediately after STAAR)

9.     Reflecting on our Literate Lives. How have we grown? Have we reached our goals? What are our goals for the summer? For next year?

Note: Independent Reading and Writing will be present throughout all units.

Testing...Testing...Testing!

 

                                                            Testing Boot camp

             As teachers in Texas, regardless of our personal beliefs about testing or our determination to focus on authentic literacy development within our classrooms, the STAAR test is something we must approach each year head-on. Over the past few weeks, I was able to take part in the “Testing Boot camp” unit at Ojeda Middle School, and I appreciated my time immensely. The unit itself focused most specifically on testing strategies, and really sought to build students testing confidence in the few weeks leading up to the STAAR. This allows the class to develop their testing strategies more explicitly for a few weeks, but does not high-jack the entire year’s curriculum by any means and the true focus of the year long unit remains focused on the authentic literacy development for all students through the work shop setting. I think I will incorporate a lot of these ideas in my own classroom, as I think it is unfair for teachers to direct the entire year towards the test, but I also think it is unfair to avoid talking about testing all together (as testing is, unfortunately, a key avenue for school and social access).

            I will say, as you will see in my video today, I find “testing” conferences to be much more difficult than “writing” or “reading” conferences. The main difference, I believe, is that in a testing conference there is a much higher value placed on the final answer. That, I suppose, is the nature of the beast that is testing. There is a premium set on finding the “correct” answer, as the answer will ultimately be the sole judge of success on the official test, so during a conference it is a much more delicate process trying to help a student without giving them the answer (because you cant give them the answer on the test!).  I think this dynamic makes the research stage much more important in a testing conference, as it is critical to understand the root of the problem the student is facing, not just the problem itself. Why is a student asking for help on this portion of the test? Is reading comprehension the problem? Does the student understand the question? Is the solution as simple as using a testing strategy more effectively? Or is this a deeper-rooted issue? I think all of these questions are extremely important to face at the beginning of the conference, so that both the teacher and the student are on the same page. Again, I find the research phase of these conferences to be more difficult (or nuanced, at least) than in a writing conference, so I look forward to developing my ability to recognize testing issues and address them more directly in one on one (or group) conferences.

            With that in mind, I am very interested to hear what people think of my testing conference from my lesson video today, as it was one of the more difficult conferences I have experienced and there is certainly tons of room for growth. What does everyone else think about testing conferences and testing “prep” in general?

Writing for Change!

          For my third and final unit plan this semester (critical inquiry), I focused my students attention on using their literacy power to promote social change within the larger community. I look forward to explaining my unit in more detail today in class, and I can not wait to hear what everyone else has come up with. I feel that the idea of critical inquiry should really be the basis for our teaching, as it asks students to use their literate lives and literacy powers for real and productive reasons. At the end of the day, if we have our students thinking, speaking, and writing about important issues that matter to them and to the world outside of the classroom, then we are doing our jobs.

            My rationale for the unit (entitled “Writing for Change”) is pretty simple–I wanted to get my students writing about meaningful topics that impact their lives and the lives of the larger community outside of the classroom. By having students focus on specific social issues (similarly to my non-fiction unit), I hope to draw their thoughts beyond the classroom environment and empower their voice to reach a larger audience. The timing of this unit, in my opinion, is perfect. I set the unit to begin right after the STAAR test and I think focusing on powerful writing for social change would be a wonderful shift from the mechanical regurgitation of the STAAR test and would help refocus their minds on authentic writing.

            The assignment itself is pretty simple–students are asked to pick a social issue and to write a 1-2 page persuasive article about that issue for publication in a class wide journal. It is also important to note that this will not be the main “persuasive writing” unit, so the students will already have a base of knowledge built around persuasive writing that I can tap into. I think this is a way, however, to reclaim out voice as powerful and persuasive writers in order to use our “writing for change.” The compilation of the individual articles within a communal journal is an effort to unite our voices and use our literacy powers to truly inject our voices into the community. Students will engage in the act of pre-writing, a focus of my entire yearlong unit that I think is critically important for growing writers. They will journal about their topic and will share their journal entries with partners. They will also engage in active peer review, an experience I hope will grow our writing community and allow us to help each other become better writers.

            Finally, the publication day will be a true celebration, as I want students to have pride in their work and to recognize that their writing is valid, powerful, and important. I think this is especially important as a way to re-ignite their writing powers after the STAAR test and before the end of the year.