The capstone project of your work in HST 400 will involve developing a unit of instruction on your textbook chapter. The final product will emerge as a synthesis of all your earlier work in the course, including the use of your definition of history; the criteria for evaluating lessons; subject matter such as minorities, women, local history, and current history; and instructional strategies that solve learning problems and promote the most learning for your students. Each unit must be inclusive, incorporating as an integral part of the unit the study of women and/or people of color. Speaking practically, this means that at a minimum, one quarter of your unit time should incorporate substantive treatment of inclusive themes (some will incorporate far more). Thoughtfully combining all these elements into unit and lessons plans will enrich textbook chapters that often are the only curriculum guides and materials available in schools.
Other reasons for emphasizing unit planning rather than daily, ad hoc lessons include your need to study and collect materials in advance, have equipment and software available when needed, and have lessons carefully prepared for a substitute in case of absence. You will also need a life apart from school or you will become a drudge. A satisfying work and home life becomes nearly impossible if you must go home every evening and spend three to four hours planning, studying, and marking papers for the next day. By the time you have taken your notes for the next day's lessons, you will have too little mental energy left to prepare interesting instruction, and you will end up reading your notes to students.
Carry out the following steps which you should use as a check list to produce the best history lesson and unit plans. Cross off the items as you finish them.
| Your unit topic will be shaped by your chapter, but you should be selective in your approach to the material. First and foremost, keep in mind Wiggins and McTighe's principle of emphasizing uncoverage, since the coverage approach typically ends up obscuring more than it reveals. It is unlikely that you will have time to treat every detail of your chapter, so you will need a set of principles for selecting what is most important and including that. So, before you begin, ask yourself the following questions: |
- What must my students know and be able to do by the end of this unit of instruction? The answer to this is dictated by several factors, including 1) the larger goals of the course--i.e. what students must know and be able to do by the end of the semester; 2) the place of the course in the district curriculum--i.e. what competencies students are expected to bring from this course into the next course they take; 3) the place of the course in helping each student in the district meet state and national standards in history and social studies instruction, as measured by state or national assessments; 4) the purposes of teaching and learning history--what history provides that no other discipline can.
- How will I know that they know and are able to do the things I have specified in a) above? How will they demonstrate that knowledge? There are a variety of options here--formal testing, unit projects, dramatizations, written reports, museum exhibits, simulations, presentations are only a few of many possibilities.
- What new declarative knowledge will they need to achieve the goals of the unit, and how will I provide it? Here you will need to assess what knowledge they are bringing with them and how you can build upon it.
- What procedural knowledge will they need to achieve the goals of the unit, and how will I equip them? Here, as above, you will need to assess what skills they possess and how you can develop and add to them.
- What refining and extension of knowledge will help them achieve the goals of this unit? Here you need to assess what dimension 3 activities are most appropriate to the material, what they are bringing in with them, and where they need development.
- What activities can I include in this unit to make the new knowledge meaningful? Would an investigation be appropriate? A simulation with a decision making activity? A problem-based project? Here check for alignment with the Michigan Framework Strands 5 and 6.
- How can I implement the concept of the spiral curriculum in this unit, working from the lower order to higher order skills and from simpler activities at the beginning of the unit to more complex at the end? And where does this fit in my larger spiraling of the year's history curriculum (see a. above).
| Once you have considered the questions above, decide on one overall question that can provide an interesting focus for the entire unit of study; one that expresses your identification of what students must know and be able to do by the end of the unit. Write that question at the top of your unit plan. |
| Break down that larger question into component questions that can be used as a focus for each a lesson plan in your unit, and think about the questions in 1 above at the lesson level as you begin to organize each lesson. |
| Check for alignment with the Michigan Framework history standards and the Michigan History Themes (http://www.michiganepic.org/historythemes). Key both unit objectives and lesson objectives to the history standards and benchmarks. |
| Check across the non-history strands of the Framework (geography, civics, economics) for opportunities to meet some of those benchmarks in your lesson. Your unit should incorporate benchmarks from at least 2 non-history strands, and they should be reflected substantially in at least 2 of your unit lessons. |
| Plan on a 50-50 balance between what the teacher does in terms of Dimension 2 learning and what the students do in Dimensions 3 and 4. |
| The following criteria will be used to evaluate your final assignment:
a. The content must be reliable and important history. b. The instruction should be varied and imaginative. c. The multiple intelligences and the spiral curriculum will be applied. |
e. Your students should be actively working with primary sources in a substantive, meaningful way more than once during the course of the unit.
| The following is a checklist of possible instructional strategies. You should use as many of them as seems appropriate for your unit, though of course no single unit would include all. I do expect to find cross-disciplinary elements (such as economic history or historical geography) in every unit, as well as use of primary sources, historical analysis and synthesis, cause and effect, interpretation, an opening statement for the unit and an opening interest hook for each day's instruction, a conclusion or closure for each day's lesson. If you have questions about any of these, please do not hesitate to ask. |
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___ An opening statement making clear why the topic is important for your students. ___ Concluding rather than simply stopping ___ Historical and economic geography ___ Primary sources ___ Historical analysis ___ Historical synthesis ___ Cause and effect ___ Historical interpretation ___ Minorities and women ___ Biography or autobiography ___ Connection to current history ___ Connections to Michigan ___ Discussions ___ Cooperative learning and peer tutoring ___ Socratic questioning |
___ Simulations ___ Dramatizations ___ Photo or picture analysis ___ Bulletin boards ___ Dioramas ___ Models ___ Artifacts ___ Music ___ Writing assignments ___ Chalkboards ___ Transparencies ___ Slides ___ Debates ___ Library research ___ Oral reports ___ Videos or camcorders |
| Use the Unit Plan grid to map out the unit of instruction. You do not need a new lesson for every single day; some may run 2-3 days. You may plan an appropriate number of days for library work, projects, and assessment, so long as you keep in mind the balance between what teachers do and what students do. |
| Prepare a complete plan for each lesson you will include, including a list of materials and at least one copy of each handout you will plan on using. Provide instructions for any dimension 4 activities with sufficient detail so that another teacher would be able to understand and implement the assignment. |
| The unit plan will be drafted in stages: |
Due 3/21 Initial draft of unit and lesson plans--complete 15-day grid and a brief outline of each day's lesson that includes:
| Focus question; |
| Objectives |
| Brief list of Dimension 2 activities--not a full outline or notes |
| List any Dimension 3 or 4 activities (most lessons should have at least a brief Dimension 3 activity; only one or two--the lessons used to set up and perform an investigation, decision making simulation, or problem-based activity--will be Dimension 4. |
| Closure idea |
| Include a unit cover sheet that lists the unit focus question, unit objectives, and unit assessment. |
Due 4/18 middle draft unit plan should, in addition to elements above, include
| Outline with graphic organizer of Dimension 2 activities |
| Materials, including primary sources and visuals, for Dimension 3 and 4 activities; |
| Plan for Dimension 4 activities |
| Writing prompts |
| Assessment |
Due 4/25 Penultimate draft of unit plan--should include all instructional materials for peer review and correction as needed
Due 5/2 Final Draft of unit plan--22 copies for exchange