Unit Planning
Introduction
Achievement First provides unit plans which include key components of the lesson such as duration, standard alignment, and desired results, a unit narrative, key vocabulary, and a learning plan. I use this unit plan as a model for my own unit plan. While reading through the unit plan, I am able to see how the standards come to life and compare these lesson plans to assessment. When there is a disconnect I modify my approach as appropriate.
Achievement First 5th Grade Unit 10 Plan
The unit plans provided at Achievement First allow teachers to great a big picture for the unit while acting as a resource throughout the unit. For my own professional development, as well as to respond to my students, I thoroughly read this document to gain a deeper understanding of the unit, lesson plans, and assessment. While reading, I am consistently referring back to the key standards to assess alignment.
While reading this unit plan, it became apparent students lacked an appropriate chance to practice 5.G.B.4 Classify two-dimensional figures in a hierarchy based on properties. The unit focused on identifying different properties but lack the tasks and problem-solving problems that would facilitate this type of learning. For this reason, modifications to this unit plan were made in the creation of my own Unit 10 plan.
My Own Unit 10 Plan
As stated above, I created a unit plan to address the needs of my students appropriately. After looking at the standards 5.G.B.3 and 5.G.B.4 alongside assessment pieces, I was able to see a gap. Out of 9 lessons, students were only being allowed to practice 5.G.B.4 in lesson 6 while lesson 7-9 devoted time to working with triangles and angles. Given that lesson 7 was a review lesson on how to measure angles, I decided to cut this lesson to make time for another day of practice with 5.G.B.4. Similarly, I combined lesson 8 and nine which separated triangle classification based on angle and side length to incorporate more useful tasks that required students to think critically and persist. Further modifications can be seen in my unit plan below.
Unit 10 Concept Map
After creating and internalizing a unit plan, I create a concept map to put on the front of the student's printed packet. This is a strategy I have adopted from Brain Target Teaching to understand the strengths and needs of individual learners and plan instruction that is responsive to these. In fifth grade, students have not yet developed their brains to make connections independently. For this reason, it is critical that I provide them a roadmap of the unit so they are able to understand the organization of the curriculum.
The images to the left are two examples of student completed concept maps. At the top of the concept map are the standards so students are able to reference the big idea of the unit. The hierarchy is developed from these standards and branches off to various vocabulary words throughout the unit. By creating a visual to capture their developing understanding from each lesson, I am able to develop an appropriate sequencing of learning experiences that allow them to demonstrate their learning authentically. As seen in the first image, one student has chosen to demonstrate their understanding by writing defining attribute while the second image demonstrates the studetn choice of visual representations.
Conclusion
The unit plans at Achievement First provide a great depth of insight into intended student learning. However, without teacher discretion, these lessons become ineffective. It is critical that I do this to understand content and content standards and how they are organized in the curriculum. Particularly for me, this is an important process to make adjustments and revisions based on learner needs and changing circumstances.