Teachers+Note


 * =__Teachers Note__=

 In all of my course work, graduate and undergraduate included, I have always found developing lesson and unit plans to be one of the most effective methods of learning and applying my education. Units/lesson plans allow for the integration and synthesis of new and prior knowledge gained and bringing it all together in an applicable form that is able to be filed away until student teaching and, hopefully, 'real' teaching days.

That being said, developing a unit in this fashion as ALWAYS left me drained and exhausted after, but feeling very accomplished. While I really appreciate the academic and real-life benefits of developing units, teaching my own class this semester (for the first time), I've come to realize that either to my inexperience or some other unknown factor, that planning instruction over that long of a period a teacher needs to be very flexible and open to alterations, deletions, additions and more in the schedule. This flexibility is key when trying to accommodate for the needs of the students and taking advantage of 'teachable' moments that may present themselves along the course of instruction. This flexibility may account for the difference between a 'good' teacher and a 'bad' teacher.

That being 'typed,' I do enjoy creating units. I like being forced to spend a good chunk of time thinking and anaylizing about not only //what // I want my students to learn but, more importantly, //how // I want them to learn. I think that perhaps teachers sometimes fail to really think about teaching in the manner. Instead, teachers are so overburdened and consumed with teaching to meet standards which correlate to standardized testing and then are concerned with the performance of their students. Administrators, parents and others stress good student performance to avoid being a SINI (school in need of improvment) and possibly losing federal funding. It's easy to see how teachers can focus on this aspect of teaching, instead of taking the extra time that is demanded when planning in this detail.

After teachers have been in the field for a while, I believe (at least in my experience) that teachers fail to think about key questions and objectives of their lessons. We all, as teachers, have been exposed to HOTS (higher order thinking skills) but they also require HOTS for the teachers as well as the students.

Besides being incredibly time intensive, developing this unit plan and incorporating my new knowledge in Web 2.0 tools, it was so easy for me to get sucked into the development of this unit. As such, I'm pretty sure that I planned way too many activities for this length of time. What I would like to learn more about, I believe, is only gained through experience--how to time, space and pace activities. I don't know if this can be 'learned' in a classroom setting or through journal and research readings. My student teaching experiences (as I have to complete two) will aid me, but this will be a trial and error period which I will succeed, probably as often as I fail. This will lead to my continuing education and development.

With each lesson and unit plan I develop throughout my academic career, I do get much more comfortable and fluid in my thought process and long-term (and short-term) planning; which is a very amiable and useful goal. This unit plan, along with all other unit plans ever created, should be seen as a 'living document.' Especially with a unit plan like this that is so heavily based in technology. Times change, students change, technology changes and pedagogy changes. With each of these changes, teachers need to reassess their lesson/unit plans accordingly. A lesson/unit plan isn't and never should be a static document that sits in a folder in a desk or on a computer to be used as it was originally developed year after year after year. That is what I would would readers of this unit plan to take away. I could spend the next two weeks, review, editing, changing and fine tuning this document, but until I have an actual class that I can teach this to, my time and effort in developing it further would be counter-productive. I need to //know // my students to adapt the unit plan accordingly.