What is Up With Unit Plans??

Today in class we discussed Unit Plans.  We also discussed developing are Unit Plans for our upcoming fieldwork sessions.  A Unit Plan is the largest segment of teaching a key idea, a skill, an attitude or a value.  May consist of 4 weeks to a semester.  Evaluation criteria for Unit Plans are: Significance, Coherence and Relevance.  Significance is content that is taught is important to the discipline and to the student's need for powerful social studies.  Coherence is the questioning and investigation nature of social studies cuts across all parts of the unit and across the curriculum. Relevance is the content, activities and the breadth of experiences in the Social Studies unit reflect the student's current life, future goals, and aspirations.

We also learned about different types of Unit Plans.  Descriptive Content-Focused Unit Plans are focused on the student's acquisition of knowledge.  Thinking Skills-Focused Unit Plans focus less on content and more about the process of developing inquiry and thinking skills.  Theme Focused Unit Plans cut across Social Studies topics and integrate other subject areas.  Problem-Solving Unit Plans are an attempt to solve an issue or a problem relevant to an individual, a group or society as a whole. Unit Plans can also be disciplined based, parallel, interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary.
 
We also discussed different methods of planning our Unit Plans.  One of the examples that was shown to us in class was a Planning Wheel.  Out of all the different methods shown to us, I like this one the best and I could myself using this in my own class.

With the Planning Wheel the teacher would start with the Social Studies topics in the outermost ring.  Then add subjects (science, ELA, math, Arts, etc.) that fit in the second, third, etc. all the way to the center of the ring which is student's achievement. 

So far, we have learned SO much on how a well organized lesson plan should be and how to make the Unit Plans engaging for students.  It is definitely a lot to take in but I feel like I am finally understanding the process better!