Administrivia
– Calendar: There’s been a change to the schedule. As such, here’s what the next two Wednesdays will look like:
- Wednesday, 24 November – 10:00 to 12:00 = Sims Article Discussion & More UBD Unit Planning
- Wednesday, 1 December – 10:00 to 11:00 = Pre-Prac Preparation
– Reading: Please read the Sims article, “How my question keeps evolving” and develop an entrance slip for it. As a part of your entrance slip, please jot down a few teaching and learning-related questions that you might be interested in exploring in more detail.
– EDUC 315 Paperwork: There is one formal paperwork requirement as a part of the Tuesdays practicum. The forms are below. You and your SA will each complete the appropriate form and email them both to me. Before you send them off, however, I suggest that you both discuss your completed forms next Tuesday – 23 November, the last school visit of EDUC 315. This conversation can serve to wrap up this prac experience and look ahead to your two weeks in January.
– Microteaching: I handed back the rubrics completed by the peer assessors and a feedback sandwich that summarized my thoughts on your presentation. After you’ve completed your reflection – the post-microteaching task due on Monday, 22 November for those that presented on Monday – take a look at the feedback and see how it jives with your thoughts on your performance.
UBD Unit Planning – Stage 1: Desired Results
Now that you have a good idea of the subject, topic, and PLO(s) that you’ll be working with during your 2-week practicum, we started to look at how to design a unit that will develop student understanding on the topic.
To that end, I presented a PPT slideshow that highlighted how to unpack PLOs to uncover the:
- Big Ideas
- Understandings
- Essential Questions
- Skills
- Knowledge
that, when played with in class, will lead to student understanding of the topic under study. Here’s my slideshow:
Here’s a copy of the chart for the HCE 8 Substance Use PLO we unpacked in the guided practice part of the lesson:
… and here’s a blank template you can use to unpack one or more PLOs that you will work with during your January prac:
The unpacking process can be a bit tricky for new and experienced teachers alike. Seeing as the process starts with identifiying the Big Ideas – the concepts, themes, issues, debates, problems, challenges, processes, theoriex, paradoxes, assumptions, and perspectives – that lie at the heart of the topic, here’s a short blurb on how to identify the Big Ideas more easily. This excerpt comes from Tomlinson and McTighe’s book, Integrating Differentiated Instruction + Understanding by Design:
Here’s the complete UBD unit planning template:
We’ll be working with the other sections of it in future classes, namely on Wednesday, 24 November.
The rough draft of your 2-week prac unit is due to your SA and FA on Monday, 6 December 2010. What we expect you to submit at that point is:
- a completed unit plan template
- full lesson plans for the first two lessons of the unit
Bob and I will be meeting with the TCs we supervise to discuss your unit planning ideas on Monday, 29 November. You will have a chance to set up a meeting time with Bob or in class on Monday, 22 November. For this meeting, you should have a firm idea of Stage 1 – Desired Results and have considered the sort of assessment you’d like to use to determine if the students understand what you’ve been teaching.