TM-Unit

Let's look at a typical semester of 9th grade Civics (this is a semester-long course).
So, what concepts, knowledge and skills would be taught? How would we organize that information in a logical manner? What teaching strategies would we use to get students to understand and be able to use the concepts, knowledge and skills? Is there an inclusion of other disciplines? How would we know if the students have mastered understanding?

The first thing to do is to consider the time you have to teach the subject. Unfortunately, time is a task master. For secondary schools, a course is taught in 18 weeks. For elementary, it is 36 weeks (the entire year). Of course, many of these days are lost to other activities (field trips, assemblies, no contact days, fire alarms, etc.).

The next thing is to consider the units that will be taught and the length of time you will devote to each unit.

Next, each unit must be fleshed out: key concepts to cover, knowledge to gain, skills to master.

With that understanding, the teacher now looks at the teaching strategies and organization for implementing the unit.

Let's take a look at the topics that will need to be covered (and uncovered):

Now, let's take a look at how a teacher writes ONE unit of instruction. Read this carefully--this is what you will be doing in this course!



When I sit down to write a unit, this is the exact process I go through. TRY IT!

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I've written hundreds of units (some good, some great, some awful), but I've written many. And, as a result of working on many of these collabertively, this is a process that is sound and will work. Obviously, as you get more experienced, you will adapt it to your personal style or maybe design your OWN process, but **PLEASE READ THIS** and try it.=====