It’s August and soon it will be time to say farewell to summer. August also means it’s time to start thinking about how this school year will go and what could be improved from last year. Energized from a summer of relaxation and rejuvenation, I am ready to tackle the year and make this year the best one yet! Glancing over the unit plans from last semester, I fight the urge to scrape everything and start from scratch. Completely unrealistic, I settle for a more reasonable goal: changing maybe one or two units, tweaking two, and leaving two as are. Even still, where to begin? I have found a system that works for me to help me meet my goals without taking weeks to accomplish. Here are my ten steps to rewriting your units before the semester begins.
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Create a calendar of the semester
As a visual learner, I need to see the whole picture first and gain a better understanding of what my semester will entail. Every teacher knows that a semester is not truly 90 days because of the early dismissals, two hour delays, class meetings, assemblies, and other special events. By taking your school calendar and your knowledge of events that will occur such as the homecoming football game (we all know there is going to be no work completed before the pep rally), standardized testing days, Thanksgiving Break and Christmas Break, etc., you can gain a realistic idea of the true number of days that you have with which to work.
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Create a list of current units
The best place to start is what you already have planned and how long it takes for each unit. Create a list with each unit and the numbers of days it takes to complete the unit. Total up those days and then compare to your calendar to establish how many days you may need to cut or extra days that you will need to fill.
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Evaluate your units
Ignore the perfectionist in you and decide that you truly cannot change every unit in your semester. I am confident that a lot of what you do in your classroom is great. Examine your best two or three units and leave them as is which means not changing a thing (at least not this semester). These units are the ones that still inspire you to teach, that allow the students to demonstrate authentic learning, and that produce results that match your learning objectives and goals.
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Select your unit(s) for the rewrite Trim and tweak any units that do not need much work
Examine the units that you have left and leave only two at most that you are going to overhaul; the rest fit into the tweak category. Do not move onto these units yet; you want to make small changes to a few other units first and then you can focus your attention on the rewrite.
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Select the amount of days that you can spend on this unit(s)
If you are rewriting more than one unit, decide how much you want to spend on each one. Even if you are only changing or creating one unit, decide if the amount of days that you have left in the semester (based on the number from step two) is enough or do you need to to cut away days from other units to make this unit work. Remember you do not have the time to change everything so do not cut days if it means changing every unit in your curriculum.
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Trim and tweak any units that do not need much work
These units are where you can trim or add days to match your semester day number from step two. You can change the order of the days, change an activity or two, remove any extra/unnecessary activities, or update the resources. These unit changes should not take more than a day or two so set a strict timeline for yourself so that you do not get sucked into scraping two much because you want everything to be perfect.
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Research
Take your unit concept and start researching ideas that you could use. Start with Google trying as many word combinations as possible and allow yourself to travel down the rabbit hole of research. Just make sure to open a new tab each time your find an idea and to have your charger plugged in so you don’t lose all those websites by a battery drain. Pinterest always has great ideas with links to teacher resources, websites, and PDFs that you can use in your classroom. Create a list of projects, activities, and resources that you want to use in the unit.
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Utilize backward designing to create your day by day plan
Now that you have the amount of days for your unit, write and number each day out whether on paper or on a Word document and leave sufficient space under each day. If you are unfamiliar with backward design, the idea is to start with what you want your students to accomplish to demonstrate they understand the concepts that are the focus of your unit. Select a final assessment that will demonstrate authentic learning and decide how many days your students will need to complete this assessment. Next create the formal and informal formative assessment that you want along the way in your unit. Once you have those assessments, decide how much time you need to teach the skills necessary to complete each one. After all of those decisions, fill in your days with a detailed plan of the skills, steps, resources, handouts, etc. that you will need.
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Create your resources
The unit plan is ready to go and now it’s all in the details. Review your day-by-day schedule and create all the handouts, find all the resources, design all the presentations, and write out the project descriptions and rubrics that you need.
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Post digitally
In this digital native world that we teach in, it’s important to work on creating a digital classroom that can help teach students on the devices that they will use every day of their life and career. If you are already digital, fantastic! If not, Strive towards taking the next step to becoming a more digital teacher.
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