Independent Study: Unit Overview/ Unit Planner (Week 4)

The unit overview provided on my Wiki is the beginning of an outline that explains the general information that will be included in the unit, and the importance of the information that I will be covering over the course of six to eight weeks. This could be presented to administration to explain the reasoning behind covering this specific content in your class time. 

Similar to the Unit Overview, the Unit Planner (Step #1) begins to specify the details of the Unit in "student" language. This is along the lines of what I would present to them in the beginning of the unit to get their attention and attract them to the material being presented in class. No matter what the subject is that I am teaching, or anyone is teaching, there will always be that one student that asks "What is the point of me learning this?" When I first began my college education course, being able to answer that question was sometimes difficult because my years in high school had just ended, and i was recently considered one of those students asking my math teacher what the point of me learning trigonometry was.  The unit overview is a resource that an educator can refer back to, or think back to when that student decides to ask what the point of learning how to introduce his or her self in the Spanish language is.

Included in the Unit Planner is the "Unit Understanding" and the "Unit Essential Question." These terms are exactly what they appear to be. The "Unit Understanding" is often worded in a broad sense. This statement shares exactly what students are going to understand once this unit is completed. The "Unit Essential Question" asks the major question of the unit. Once students have comprehended and understood the material provided to them, they would be able to exemplify their answer to this general question in some way or another. 

Once both the Unit Overview and Unit Planner are completed, it becomes easier to get in to the specific understandings and questions of each lesson plan. The explanation of this will be provided in my next post!

Explore my Wiki