CORTNIE BELSER'S MSED PORTFOLIO
Unit Planning
To effectively plan for instruction, the unit plan brings depth to the breath of the planning process through highlighting the guiding essential questions and tasks necessary for students to meet rigorous learning goals throughout the unit.
Introduction
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At the unit planning stage, teachers develop a better understanding of the content knowledge and skills that student will deepen by the end of the course. In order to increase academic rigor, teachers must be able to understand what students come into the classroom with and what the intended outcomes are for students to leave the classroom. Through unit planning, teachers design a roadmap on how standards, essential questions, and assessments will be reinforced through daily lesson objectives and tasks. Since ELA standards support literacy and skills mastery across content areas, it is essential to utilize the unit plan to identify opportunities for cross-disciplinary skill building to occur. In my district, ELA teachers are given a curriculum that aligns the Common Core standards through the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) module model. The LDC modules are separated into four units spanning the four quarters of the year. Each LDC module focuses on addressing ELA standards through formative and summative writing assessments. Therefore, unit planning is not only essential to address how reading comprehension will be measure but also how to effectively plan supplemental project-based performance assessments to deepen learning and engagaement.
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During the long-term planning stage, I synthesize all four LDC modules to gain a bird's eye view of scope and sequence of the entire school year. From there, I unit plan through a backwards planning process to identify how what content knowledge and skills need to be introduced or retaught before the LDC summative assessment. Since each unit's summative assessment is created for me, I must analyze which content knowledge, skills, and activities are essential to prepare students for culminating assessment. Likewise, as I unit plan alongside the long-term plan and long-term plan calendar, I must evaluate standards, supplemental texts, and instructional activities that are not relevant or can be reinforced in another unit throughout the year. Additionally, there are instances when I must plan for instruction that eliminates instructional activities for students, if it is highlighted in the LDC module but I do not have the text-based or technology resources to facilitate those learning opportunities.
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When I unit plan, I ensure my planning process considers what content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy will be needed to push academic rigor and critical engagement. First, I use the ELA standards addressed in the curriculum and long-term plan that will only be taught and practiced in this particular unit. In particular, I consider how a similar standard or content knowledge will be addressed differently in another discipline. In the planning process, this allows me to plan ahead potential opportunities for collaboration with colleagues and departments. For example, this year, I am collaborating with the eighth-grade social studies teacher during Unit 4's reading of John Steinbeck's Of Mice & Men, where students will complete a mini-project on The Great Depression in their class and reference it as evidence in their summative LDC assessment essay in my class. Since the LDC module curriculum does not acknowledge how to scaffold content knowledge and skills for learners that are not reading and writing on grade-level, I integrate cross-disciplinary and content area skills during the unit planning phase. Thus, planning for instruction, at this stage, is integral to identifying and effectively planning for differentiated instruction and adjust accommodations needed to support all learners. By the end of my unit planning, I have identified key standards of the unit, constructed daily unit objectives, and determined the relevant formative and summative assessment goals to move forward in effectively planning for instruction.
Grade 8 Unit Plan Overview ​
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Alongside the long-term plan, my unit planning does not require significant organization or timing to construct as the LDC modules provide an extensive curriculum that includes daily standards, lesson objectives, gradual release, and formative assessments for each course. Therefore, to develop a unit plan I focus on identifying the relevant core texts, academic and content vocabulary, essential formative writing assessments, and instructional activities that reinforce the unit's essential questions.
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First, my unit planning involves distinguishing what Maryland Common Core standards are essential to introduce or reteach so that students can perform at mastery by the summative assessment. During this stage, I revisit the long-term plan's extensive overview of which standards align to content knowledge and skills of the unit, but may function in a standalone activity or only relevant for a supplemental text analysis. At this point, I begin to highlight standards that will be heavily practiced throughout the unit that students have not yet mastered. As I analyze the relevant standards of the unit, I am breaking down how to reteach and strengthen these skills, starting with the end point of mastery in mind.
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Secondly, after thinking through the standards, I break down the unit's LDC summative writing task and rubrics. Since each LDC module is heavily focused on writing assessments, its alignment to other district assessments, such as i-Ready or PARCC, is not easily transparent. Therefore, my unit planning considers which 5-6 formative assessments in the LDC module are most pertinent to prepare students for the LDC summative writing task. In addition, during this stage of unit planning, I identify how to present the summative assessment to my students, taking into account needs of learners and the community context.
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Lastly, my unit planning will organize the timing and sequence of the unit through writing out each day's lesson objective. While some lesson objectives are taken directly from the LDC module, the teacher-created learning outcomes address how I plan to scaffold, spiral, and differentiate within a unit. As the daily learning plan is developed, the final stage of unit planning before lesson planning demonstrates how standards manifest through daily skills and student actions. To strengthen how I plan for instruction, the unit planning process addresses gaps in the long-term plan by anticipating and integrating differentiated instruction strategies and assessments so that there is a comprehensive plan to meet the learning goals of all students, regardless of the current reading and writing grade-level they enter the unit at.
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This unit plan represents a sample of the 8th grade LDC module curriculum that sequences alongside each quarter. In this unit plan, students are introduced to reading informational texts and argumentative writing. This unit plan is most relevant for eighth grade students because it is their first time building standard skills in reading informational texts and writing argumentative essays during the year. In Stage 1, the red box highlights the state standards that will only be addressed during this unit. To prioritize these standards, I assess which standards will be addressed within each daily learning outcome. As Unit 2's core text is an informational book, Chew on This by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson, this is my sole opportunity to prepare and assess student learning and mastery of these CCSS skills. Thus, the standard skills are at the center of designing learning experiences throughout the unit to ensure that I an plan instruction that meets rigorous learning goals by strengthening the cross-disciplinary skills relevant in informational text standards and reinforces in content areas such as Social Studies and Science.
To the left, the red box highlights how I draw upon community context as I plan for instruction. In order to deepen students' understanding in a meaningful way, it is important to offer learners opportunities to express prior knowledge relevant to the content and connect content to their lived experiences. Since I know many of my students also live near the school, which is in the middle of a food desert, I integrate local context knowledge as potential learning opportunities into the unit plan. Thus, by the unit planning stage, I begin to plan for instruction that acknowledges, builds upon and deepens understandings of community and content. An intended outcome of planning for community context within a structured unit is to allow students to think critically about how content is relevant for potential college, career, and life experiences as well.
Sample Unit: Grade 8 LDC Unit Assessment and Accommodations
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As mentioned, the LDC modules provide a summative writing assessment that students are building comprehension, evidence, and analysis towards from the beginning of the unit. Through a backwards planning process, I consider which standards, content knowledge, and formative writing tasks are most essential for students to feel equipped with engaging independently in the summative writing process. However, understanding how LDC modules are presented as district curricula is integral to the unit planning process. Since the curriculum does not utilize culturally responsive teaching to guide instruction, the unit plan assists me in thinking through how I will adapt the summative writing assessment to engage students. While all students do not need the summative writing task supplemented, many students benefit from my unit planning of the culminating writing task. To engage learners, I adjust how content language is presented so that students comprehend the summative assessment task.
To the right, the red box highlights how I adapt the LDC summative assessment to present content in a more engaging manner for students. While there are same standards and content expectations, I adapt the writing assessment so that student better understand the assessment's relevance and builds upon the local context research and knowledge that was previously added to the unit plan. Since the LDC 's argumentative writing rubric focuses not on the specific product but rather students' demonstration of ELA standards and skills, I utilize the unit planning to address needed accommodations to the summative assessment.
Even though the LDC module aligns instruction and assessments to grade-level standards, many of my students who identify as ESOL or students with disabilities cannot accomplish the grade-level standard of reading comprehension or writing. Therefore, I utilize the unit planning process to identify a differentiated grade-level appropriate writing assessment that will both engage this student population while also assessing them based on the LDC rubric. As highlighted in the red box above, the differentiated writing task for this unit,plans to allow targeted students the opportunity to express content and standard mastery through the form of a booklet.
This student handout represents a sample how I introduce the summative writing assessments to students. After student reflect on the unit's Essential Question, I present three options: the LDC essay, the essay adaption into a persuasive letter to Baltimore's Health Commissioner, and a food nutrition booklet. By incorporating differentiated summative assessment tasks, that all address the same content standards through a variety mediums, I demonstrate how to effectively address gaps in the LDC assessments to meet the learning goals of my students. Since no one student is identical, my unit planning serves to communicate my understanding that students require instructional planning that acknowledges the strengths of these differences rather than furthering gaps in content knowledge and standards. In addition to presenting differentiated tasks for student choice of a summative assessment, pages 3-9 are the writing outlines I construct during unit planning. It is most beneficial to construct summative writing outlines during the unit planning phase as a component of the backwards plan to determine how to present the LDC's summative assessment content as well as the differentiated tasks. If I cannot effectively adapt the summative assessment during the unit planning phase, I must evaluate if the differentiated tasks and assessments are aligned to rigorous learning and standard outcomes.
Student Work: Grade 8 LDC Assessments and Accommodations​
To utilize unit assessments as a measure of my effective planning for instruction, every student's work product is integral to understand how I am meeting the needs of every student. In addition, the LDC summative writing assessment offers a clear and cohesive evaluation of which standards the student has mastered and those that require reteaching and spiraling in later units. Moreover, since the LDC module does not present content in clear accessible language to all students, a part of my unit planning centers on adapting the formal LDC writing task to be engaging writing relevant to my students background and community context. Additionally, I unit plan a differentiated writing task for students with disabilities, ESOL students, or students with i-Ready scores 2 or more grade-levels behind. Through language framing and differentiation, the student work demonstrates how I utilize unit planning to address accommodations to meet the rigorous learning goals of all students.
The document to the right represents a student sample of the differentiated LDC unit summative writing assessment outline. This is a sample from an ESOL student whose i-Ready scores were the highest in the reading informational text (i.e. Chew on This) but still assessed at a fourth grade level. On page 2, the red box highlights how the student was pushed to demonstrate standards mastery of R.I.8.9 (Analyze multiple texts) by citing comparative evidence from the core text and a supplemental NewsEla article. Here, even though I provided a scaffolded outline for the ESOL student to understand the essay organization and academic language for the summative writing task, they were still heavily required to demonstrate comprehension of writing task and analytical skills. As a layer of my unit planning, adapting the summative writing task into a more engaging writing prompt and outline allows me to plan how I will meet gaps in content knowledge and skills for students that require accommodations and modifications not indicated in the LDC module.
The image above demonstrates four student samples of the LDC unit summative writing task in the differentiated layout of an informational booklet. Each of the students utilized the booklet outline that I constructed during my unit planning to ensure the differentiated task remained consistent with the LDC writing task and rubric. For my students with disabilities, many of their IEP learning goals are assessed through alternative writing prompts and performance-based evaluations. Therefore, to truly meet the needs of all of my students, I used time during my unit planning to adapt the unit's assessment to be accessible yet rigorous for all students. While the LDC modules provide standards-aligned curriculum, it does not address how to effectively monitor student growth and academic goals for students who need instructional supports.