ToczekUnitPlanGenreStudy

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David Toczek Teaching Communication Studies Michael Sherry 6 September 2011 Unit Plan Genre Study I chose the three following lesson plans to analyze: 1) “__War: What is it good for?”__ By Brant Chesser, 2) “__The American Dream:__ __Fact or Fiction?”__ By Jennifer A. Howell, and 3) “__Contemporary African American Literature”__ by Kristal Stripling. I chose these three unit plans, though different in some aspects, because I feel like they stress the importance of detail, organization, and content that is vital to the successful development of a unit plan. I also chose these three because they were examples within my desired grade level of eleventh grade and raised themes I feel are important in teaching English Language Arts.

First off, some characteristics that all three unit plans have in common are: 1.) A detailed rationale which explains why the unit is pertinent to students as well as what the teacher hopes students will come away with. The rationale typically included an outline of each work that is within the unit and how it pertains to the overall theme of the unit itself. 2.) A list of materials/texts within the unit 3.) Detailed goals and rubrics for assignments and overall unit 4.) Some sort of introductory activity or activities 5.) Detailed day-to-day lesson plans outlining each individual lesson and activities including times, within the lesson 6.) Supplemental materials like worksheets or assignment sheets 7.) List of references 8.) Some form of assessment

Of the three unit plans I chose, the one I liked the best was “__The American Dream: Fact or Fiction?”__ By Jennifer A. Howell due to not only its easy readability and functional organization, but also the great detail that was included with the rationale, each lesson plan, and the instructions on assignments and projects. Besides the aforementioned aspects that are commonalities among these three unit plans, Howell’s also includes a table of contents and a description of her student population, identifying them mostly as belonging to conservative-middle-class families. She also mentions the ratio of males to females. I think understanding the students you are trying to teach is an extremely important factor to consider when designing instruction so it is good to recognize all these factors. Besides these additions, the overall quality, detail, and organization within the lesson plans and overall unit plan were incredible and her activities were inventive and relatable to the real world. I especially liked her use of the board game Monopoly to communicate the economic concerns of America since the game was created during the Depression.

One unit plan I would change would be Brant Chesser’s “__War: What is it good for?”__ unit. Although the content and ideas in Chesser’s unit plan, it lacked an organizational quality which made Howell’s unit stand out from the rest. Whereas Howell included grade percentages of the assignments and block rubrics showing what is needed to earn the maximum to minimum amount of points. Howell’s organization made her unit plan a much quicker, easier, and efficient read. Chesser used the format of listing the criteria a student would meet in order to obtain each given grade such as, “A student receiving a B will….” I did not think this format was very effective at easily communicating what is expected of student work. Not only does Howell’s format made the assignment easier to understand for the student, but it also provides the teacher a template so that is easier to grade student work.

Unit plans, as the title of this project suggests, are a genre of teaching tools, which means there is no exact right and wrong way to create them, but I do believe some structural aspects must be in place for any unit plan to work, mainly the aforementioned ones shared among the three listed. I believe the rationale is vital to any good unit plan, since an important element of teaching is making the material applicable to the real world. If a teacher doesn’t understand what they’re teaching and why it is important than how could a student ever find that meaning? Most of these rationales I saw in these unit plans were extremely well-written and incredibly enlightening to me as a prospective teacher. Reading the rationales alone started to conjure all sorts of ideas about lessons and activities I could use in my own classroom. Besides a strong rationale, some other structural aspects I would desire to see in any unit plan would be logical organization, logical meaning that it is easy to read and efficient in its wording. Another aspect would be the detail among the lesson plans for any given day. As a rule, I believe any lesson plan should be detailed enough for a substitute teacher to follow it effectively, even if it is not their content area of expertise. Also, an effective assessment should be included for lesson plans. This assessment should be formative, in that it is assessment taking place during teaching, so that instruction can be manipulated in order to make teaching more effective. Besides these aspects, goals and rubrics are also vital to let students know exactly what is expected of them on any given assignment. Nothing should be a surprise to students in the classroom.

English Language Arts is a much different subject to teach in regards to finite subjects like math and science, where there is one correct answer for a given scenario. ELA allows students to think outside the box, analyze situations, and develop their own ideas and opinions about important themes and aspects that permeate culture. All of these unit plans suggest this idea in that many of the projects, assignments, and activities allow students to be creative, analytical thinkers. Student work must be logical, but there is no right or wrong answer, as long as students can explain and justify their thoughts. These forms of thinking go beyond just knowledge and comprehension skills. These units engage and synthesize student learning like many other subjects cannot accomplish. In this sense, I think sticking to a rigid format of writing unit plans is much tougher to do for ELA teachers since there is so much ambiguity and nearly endless options for creating teachable moments. I really liked the thought-provoking material in each one of these unit plan. I think that the rationales were sound in their reasoning and that the materials were all pertinent to the grade-level and theme. I think the works selected pose interesting topics of conversation to the students as well and have the potential to make students think in ways they may have never considered before, another powerful aspect of teaching ELA. I think these unit plans imply that creating effective and engaging unit plans for ELA students is a challenging, but rewarding experience if you can incorporate a lot of creativity, content, ingenuity, and real world experience.