Model Unit Plan

The first unit plan. I imagine 30 years from now, I may think back and try to remember what the first unit plan I wrote was and how it turned out. I am hoping at the age of 52 I would have mastered the art of writing unit plans. So for my 52 year old self I am going to document the before, after, and future of my first unit plan.

Basic Information:
Unit: Welding Orientation and Safety
Class Sessions: 15
Length of Sessions: 80 minutes

My thought bubbles before:
- Formatting. I wanted it to possess an easy to read yet creative flare! Who's template can I steal?
- What section do I actually begin with?
- Standards are daunting and will take forever to find! Ugh
- Am I really in charge of deciding the order in which this class is taught? Who said I was ready for this?
- I have to know what materials to put down without writing a lesson plan? Weird.

These were my thoughts and questions before I started to tackle my first unit plan. After completing my unit plan I figured a few things out...

- Formatting. I wanted it to possess an easy to read yet creative flare! Who's template can I steal?
Combine a variety of different people's templates to make my own hybrid unit plan template. There is no "right" template. 
- What section do I actually begin with?
Start with the end in mind...assessments
- Standards are daunting and will take forever to find! Ugh
Wrong, "Control F" is your best friend
- Am I really in charge of deciding the order in which this class is taught? Who said I was ready for this?
You do not learn until you do, so dive on in!
- I have to know what materials to put down without writing a lesson plan? Weird.
Not weird, normal. PLAN PLAN PLAN! Being prepared for every detail is normal and necessary for success. 

All of my initial concerns and thoughts were addressed through simply completing my unit plan. The unknown became known and the " I do not know why I need to include this?" made sense after simply trying. Let me assure you I am no where near a master unit plan writer but my first go around was not a complete flop.

I was fortunate enough to have two peers review and critique my unit plan and they both did such a great job! They shared with me to review the rubric for minor details, such as using APA for my citations as well as be mindful of the number of references or objectives I need to include for each lesson. The major critique
was on my objectives. Remembering to include all 3 components of an objective, condition, criteria, and behavior is where I fell short. My objective criteria especially need to be checked to ensure what I was asking students to do was reasonably measurable and/or attainable. The positive feedback I received was that my unit plan format was easy to read and view and my materials list was detailed and complete.

So why blog about this?
This is the first foundational block and learning experience in my unit planning journey. To be able to reread this blog post after completing my first student teaching experience will be insightful because at that point I will have laid many more blocks of my foundation. Also, I would have had to use this unit plan and I will see just how successful it was.

I am 22 {Reading Reflection}

Be loud and proud is a common and familiar saying to many, but often undermined in the power and cry for change behind it. The TEDx Talks "I am 17" surfaced many valid points about the collaboration needed between adults and teenagers because teenagers have good ideas. A lot of this is due to their unpaved minds, but they have the capacity for change and ideas that even the most educated adults cannot dream up.

I am 22 and am considered an educated adult at this point, but I still have a horizontal license. I say this because I believe I have been structured to think certain ways and demand validity behind what I hear and read, but I still have some unpaved pathways in my brain that reap creativity and innovation. Our cohort is going to tap into these unpaved pathways by conducting Genius Hour. Before reading what Genius Hour was I thought this was some way to be creative in presenting material through technology. O how I was wrong. Genius Hour empowers me to LEARN WHAT I WANT and present what I learn ANYWAY I WANT. One more time... I CAN LEARN ANYTHING I WANT TO!


                    

Well my next thought was obvious, "What do I really want to know about?" Being a pre-service teacher my thoughts immediately went towards subject areas I find interesting but do not have experience in such as flower design and livestock judging. In reading examples of Genius Hour topics from 6th graders, I was blown away by their curiosities and diversity in topics. I noticed my 22 year old mind was resorting to my paved pathways already so I decided to step outside my agricultural and athletic worlds and consider the following 3 topics:

1. Create my own website
2. Starting up your own business
3. The art of acting

As if picking a topic will not be difficult enough, I will need to decide how to present what I learn. I know I want it be a accessible resource for everyone and flare passion as well as informative content. So this is where I ask the audience, which topic would you want to learn about and how would you want it to be presented? 

Stay tuned for the outcome!


Did you know....
     Google allows their employees 20% of "Genius Hour" time to learn about what they want to. The result of this time is many of Google successes including our "can't live without" Gmail.

Playing with Fire and Ice {Interest Approach Lab}

To plan for this lab I decided to use a lesson from my first unit plan I developed and also make it my first informational lesson plan to hand in on Friday. My unit is Introduction to Welding and the lesson title is, "What is Arc Welding?" To prepare for the lesson I practiced the interest approach several times and was successful. In class though, my activity was not successful for my students and it is still weighing on me because it was my fault as the instructor.

My intention for the lesson:

• Students guess what will happen and how it will happen
• Students try to weld ice with a candle
• Students write down their observations and conclusions 
• Teacher states the objectives
• Discuss what student's hypothesis, observations, & conclusions were
• Explain what a weld is
• Have students try again

 What actually happened in lab:

• Students guess what will happen and how it will happen
• Students try to weld ice with a candle
• Students write down their observations and conclusions 
• Teacher states the objectives

Not having the last two parts made my interest approach lack context and content. In saying that, I needed to be prepared with questions and statements to provoke creative thinking on how to weld the ice cubs together while my students worked. 

  

The activity needed more clarification and direction to ensure students were learning and not just doing. This could have been solved by developing questions and statements to ask during their welding time such as, "If the wax is not working, how else can we weld the ice cubes together? Think about ice in a water bottle." This would have been beneficial to insert before the students tried a second time.

On a less critical note, this activity I will utilize in a lesson plan and I learned a lot from practicing this interest approach once with students. I was happy with how the "entering the shop" exercise worked and incorporating the scientific method into the interest approach. Including the scientific approach allowed me time to hand out materials which was a planned moved. After watching the video I thought I accomplished control and filtered enthusiasm today, but still engaged my students.

One of Lancelot's primary principle's of interest states, "Interest increases with the acquisition of any given ability or skill". The students wanted to try a second time to figure it out, but would they have been interested enough in a third? I want my students to be successful in this activity so they keep in interest in wanting to weld metal later on in the class.

Takes aways:

• Provide the direction and guidance towards success and learning
• Effective questioning - preparation ahead of time! 
• With an activity involving hot wax and flames it is important to always be looking around and on the move
• Sell the tickets - this is a Teach Like a Pirate concept that I need to remember with every interest approach I implement 

Learning With Purpose and People

Learning with a Purpose

Objectives have been apart of my academic journey since first grade. I remember teachers always pointing to them, stating them, or having them written somewhere in the classroom. Never understanding why objectives were so important and why a teacher took the time everyday to state them, if they did, but in my journey from moving from the student to the teacher I now find and understanding the meaning and purpose in writing objectives. In recognizing my lack of understanding of the importance of objectives as a student I want to incorporate the meaning behind objectives into my first day of school. 

Through my experience, objectives can be briefed through, unacknowledged, or non-existent, but through my college career I have learned that objectives are planned purposefully for each day. Their importance and function has been highlighted through my college career AEE classes, recently in unit and lesson planning, and researched based articles. In remembering properly written objectives have three parts:

                                           

                                         Behavior 

                                         Conditions

                                         Criteria 

... int he process of formulating daily objectives Bloom's Taxonomy challenges teachers to push students to higher levels of thinking. In reminiscing over this, I want to incorporate different orders of thinking for each of the daily objectives I write. To the left is a chart of Bloom's Taxonomy of verbs I found that I utilized in writing my first unit plan this past week and after this week's reading I understand the relationship between Bloom's, objectives, and verb usage.

I then went onto Pinterest to find different ways that teachers post their objectives and I found one I want to replicate. To the right is a picture of frame paper where the teacher writes the objective on the frame each day. I chose this because I can align the color and design of paper with each class and/or each unit. I also want to assign a student each week to write the objectives for that class on the frame and then introduce them to the class. 

The idea of purposefully planning for each day is a reoccurring theme for many topics we have discussed in our student teacher journey so far. Objectives is one example of this in addition to intention planning of instructions which was discussed in the book, "Methods of Teaching Agriculture". Talking and discussion comes natural for many people, but who would have thought teachers sit down and take the time to plan an entire discussion? I address this topic because I came across the graphic below of meaningful questions to ask as a teacher as well as students can ask each other during group work. I want to make this into a poster to have in my classroom. 

The First Day of School {Lab}

"What's the soundtrack of your life?"

After our first lab I set four goals for myself to focus on improving for the First Day of School lab. To improve my teaching ability, I revisited and evaluated my goals below.

My goals for this lab were:
1. Filter and control my energy throughout the lesson
2. Conduct a practice run prior to teaching
3. Before deciding on a teaching method for the lesson, look up examples on external websites
4. Slow my pace of speech down

Goal #1:
This goal was where I really focused on improving for this lab. For the first day of school I wanted to have a balance of seriousness while introducing my expectations, procedures, and consequences in addition to cultivating an upbeat, comfort, and fun atmosphere for my students. I deem this goal accomplished for the day, but one that I cannot forget because of my personality. [Also, one minor detail that I noticed was my caffeine intake. Last time I started my day with coffee, and I am not an everyday coffee drinker, and making one small decision like that made me jittery and amped up. So for this lab I had no coffee and it helped a lot.]

Goal #2:
If I am being honest with myself, I did not stand up, time myself, and deliver my lesson plan like I would present it in a class. This lack of preparation was noticeable when I could not formulate the right questions or transition smoothly. I did read through my lesson out loud which was a step more then last time, but I want to be prepared because I expect my students to be and I do not want them to lose out on opportunities to learn.

Goal #3:
This was fun to do and extremely beneficial. I did not get my lesson idea from doing this, but it help kickstart my creative juices. Watching a First Day of Class video from a past student was helpful because I was able to read the comments and watch a teacher perform verses reading words on a document. This goal was met.

Goal #4:
This goal was unmet. This was one area where I only slightly improved from week one but have a lot of room for improvement.

So this week...

I went into this week's lab with a mindset of trying to incorporate all of the ideas, strategies, and modalities we have learned in AEE 412 into the lesson. It was difficult to incorporate everything into the 15 minute class I taught so I am very excited to implement this lesson into my Leadership unit. Speaking of which, I developed my first full lesson plan which took a lot longer then I thought, but understand the importance of detail and completion of the entire lesson plan. In preparation for the lab, the detail of my lesson plan was beneficial, but as soon as I started to teach I got lost in it and went from memory. For next week I need to adjust my layout so that I can locate what I need in my lesson plan when I teach from it.

After watching my video and reading some of the written feedback I was impressed with the accuracy of my peer and teacher evaluations. My reaction after lab was that I feel uncomfortable in a classroom setting with students staring at me. When I looked at the students while talking a stumbled on my words and questions. An observation I made from watching my video was that my clarity in directions was weak. For Activity 2, my explanation was all over the place and high school students would have stared at me blankly.

Some other external feedback that was given was to:

- State my objectives

- Use signal words to direct students to an action

- Slow my pace of speech down

I knew half way through my lesson that I forgot to state my objectives and I made the decision to not knowledge them and believe that hanging them on the wall would be good enough at that point. I am not sure I made the right decision though? Also, using signal words is not a concept that I ever considered before, but after watching a fellow classmate utilize that tactic in her lesson and execute it successfully, I saw the power behind it.

If I could re-teach this class I would focus on my public speaking 101. The pace of my speech and my hand gestures need to be slowed down and controlled. I think with slowing my pace of speech down I would take the time to be more clear in giving directions, it would eliminate some of the filler words, and improve the fluidity of my transitions. Something I picked up from watching the video that I did not realize I did was that I say my students names when addressing them or calling on them to answer. I found this to be very positive for the atmosphere I was trying to cultivate.

Next week is the interest approach lab. If you are reading this blog and have any great ideas that have worked for you, I would enjoy hearing them! For the Interest approach lab my goals are:

1. Slow my pace of speech down
2. Utilize my hand and body gestures effectively and at appropriate times
3. Practice my lesson one time before I present it
4. Think about and incorporate the minor details that make a lesson function smoothly (Ex. action words, e-moments)

Preventing the Head Nod {Student Engagement}

Past:

The most engaging classes I ever sat through were in fifth grade during our unit on the Wagon Train. For the duration of the unit we sat in pods as a "Wagon" and each day we encountered different obstacles we needed to conquer. The room was decorated with mountainous scenery and there was an actual covered wagon in the classroom. Each day the teacher would read us the scenario and then we would be given certain supplies to solve the problem with. We had to keep journals of our travel, bargin with the other wagons for food and supplies, and on the last day we had a celebration for making the trip. The Wagon Train unit theme was utilized throughout all our other subjects as well. 

Why am I talking about my fifth grade Wagon Train experience? Because it was the one unit I learned more about my fifth grade year then any other. I could probably repeat the experience in a classroom today! I did not like school because I academically struggled, but I loved everyday of the Wagon Train unit. I reflect on this experience, especially after our weekly readings because it was my turning point of my desire to learn. Learning can be enjoyable, and who's job is it to create that enjoyment? 

Present:
Starting the transition from student to teacher, I reflect back on the positive and negative experiences I had with being engaged as a student. I know I learned and retained the most when I was engaged by how the teacher taught more so then what was being taught. Engagement is a choice I make as an educator everyday. 

The book Teach Like a Pirate (TLAP), written by Dave Burgess says, "It does not matter how much material you teach, it matters how much is received". How am I going to teach in a way that is engaging to my students? Here are a few starting pieces that are needed everyday in class to be an engaging educator:

1. Fluidity in transitions

2. Hooks/Interest approaches

3. Being prepared

Expanding on that question, "How am I going to teach in a way that is engaging to my ALL my students?. We started unpacking the answer to this question in our AEE 412 class by identifying and discussing multiple intelligences and the 3 domains to learning. By incorporating a few of the several multiple intelligences into my lessons and consistently applying different domains of learnings, my students will hopefully be dialed in because they are learning in a way that fits their learning style and interests. 

Future:
To prevent the head nod and glazed over eyes, I want to challenge myself to remember what being in the shoes of the student is like and to make the choice to develop and deliver an engaging lesson everyday. I am going to be the one to make class enjoyable and engage each student. My Wagon Train experience included components such as setting-up the environment, instruction, enthusiasm, consistency, and hands-on application all planned purposefully. 

The article 5 Ways to Engage Students presents what seem to be simple but powerful ways to keep students engaged on a day to day basis. These techniques can be applied to any subject or lesson being taught. The first way is to use a 1:1 device. I know during student teaching I am going into a 1:1 program where students each have their own computers. Simply having the student take out their computers, log into twitter, and tweet one thought or reaction they had to the lesson could be a check-in point as well as an engagement technique. Another technique that is brought up in TLAP as well as on this website is to keep content relevant. Know what is going on in the world, what is trendy with your students and make the connections.