Thematic Unit Guidelines

Have an attractive and informative gentle Page and T sufficient of Contents. Expectations for these and all in all other unit comp nonpareilnts are pull ind below down the stairs thematic Unit Components. Also, be sure to review the Thematic Unit judgement glossiness. Do not use 3-ring binders or plastic sleeves please. Integrate no more than than three subject areas for which on that point are relevant guinea pig standards one of these subject areas must involve mathematics or hearty studies education. Integrating both subject areas is preferable but not mandatory.T from some(prenominal)ly one and assess a clearly defined theme or topic that leave alone enable elementary learners to meet their local naturalize district curriculum standards or the conscientious objector Model Content Standards. Planning for Student Learning look into your school districts curriculum standards or Colorado Model Content Standards and think ab break what you want your students to lea rn, slam and be able to do as a result of this unit. Begin gathering student and t to each oneer resources and start thinking slightly how you forget teach and assess students breeding relative to the content standards you select. submit yourself What do I need to learn myself in order to teach this unit well? What kinds of resources get outing I need to teach this unit? What types and genres of childrens literature are available? Are in that respect artifacts, simulations, songs, photographs, etc. I could use? What human and material resources are available in my community? Thematic Unit Components Title Page and Table of Contents The Title Page should feature the title of your unit, ordain level(s), the semester you taught the unit, and your program Elementary PTEP or Post Baccalaureate Licensure Program.Also include your parent, your cooperating teachers name, and the name of the elementary school and school district in which you are student teaching. The Table of Con tents should, at minimum, list each of the unit components described here under Thematic Unit Components. Assessment criteria for Developing, Proficient, and pass on levels of performance for all unit components may be found on the Thematic Unit Assessment Rubric. rule Statement Every Thematic Unit needs a convincing rationale. Rationale statements should be organized and presented in FOUR sections. office 1 Introduction Students and teachers need to know what will be learned as a result of participating in this unit. In this section, explain why your unit topic is an important one for young learners. Describe how students cogency use this knowledge in the real world. Section 2 Community, School, and Classroom Setting Describe the community, school, and classroom where you are student teaching. Include information about the community, school, classroom setting, and characteristics of students that are important to consider when teaching this unit. For example, how m either an thropoid / female students are in the class?How would you characterize students socioeconomic status? Will you be teaching students with special needs or students whose primary language is not English? Do you have any particular concerns about classroom management? Describe the physical setup of your classroom (a diagram might be helpful). What kinds of technologies are available and will you use of any of them to teach and assess student learning? Knowing and acting on this background information will help you develop, modify, and differentiate instruction and sagacity that accommodates the full range of diversity in your students.The goal here is to individualize the teaching and learning branch by designing lessons that challenge all students at an earmark level of difficulty. Section 3 face-off the Colorado Model Content Standards Curriculum standards describe what students should learn, know, and be able to do as a result of participating in your unit. In this section, li st all of the school district or Colorado Model Content Standards your unit addresses. Under each content standard write lesson objectives that describe how or what students will do to meet that particular standard.Remember that if you list a content standard wherefore you are obligated to teach and assess students learning on that standard. Also, affect sure that you are able to explain how particular lesson objectives enabled students to meet particular standards. You will need to address content standards three while in you unit. First, by listing them here in your rationale statement along with corresponding lesson objectives for each standard, a second time in each lesson plan or learning cycle, and a terzetto time when writing your evaluative experiment (which is described below). Here is a suggestion.Develop your lesson plans first, along with appropriate content standards and lesson objectives next, write (cut and paste) the content standards and lesson objectives from lesson plans into your rationale statement. Finally, after you teach the unit, explain how students met the standards in your evaluative essay. Section 4 Assessing Student Learning Describe how you will assess student learning relative to each content standard using pre legal opinion, formative assessment, and summative assessment. A. For preassessment, describe the techniques you will use to find out what students already know or think they know about the unit topic.You will need to magnetic disc and interpret preassessment scores for each individual student (using a pretest) as well as for the social unit class (for example, using a KWL chart). Preassessment results are used to provide evidence of student learning gains at the end of the unit by comparing them with summative assessment results (using a posttest). Preassessment data can also be used to revise the unit before teaching it, for example, by changing some of the content or instructional strategies you use, to make more informed decisions about individualizing instruction, and to alter or modify how you will assess student learning.B. For formative assessment, describe the techniques you will use to facilitate students acquisition of knowledge and skills by providing constructive feedback that, at the same time, allows the teacher to keep track of students approach on a periodic basis. This is the time when teachers are constantly on their feet monitoring the learning process, helping students learn new skills and knowledge, and make sure that they are practicing perfectly in order to take to new skills and knowledge effectively to real-world situations and make presentations to real audiences.C. For summative assessment, describe the techniques you will use to evaluate what students learned, in combination with preassessment and formative assessment results. All three forms of assessment should be designed to measure the knowledge, skills, and dispositions you claimed students would learn according to the standards. Remember that ten-fold assessments provide a much more complete and fair representation of what a student in reality knows and is able to do compared to any single or one-shot assessment.Be sure the three forms of assessments are aline with the content standards and lesson objectives in other words, be sure that you teach students to the standards and assess their learning in legal injury of the standards. Unit Goal The unit goal should be derived from state and district curriculum standards however, you should also be beaten(prenominal) with curriculum standards established by national professional organizations, for example, IRA (International Reading Association), NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics), NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies).The unit goal reflects the units curriculum standards but should be stated in your own words. For example, the unit goal for a unit on Colorado History might state Students will understan d how our state has handsome and changed over time. From the period of early exploration to the present day, I want my fourth graders to become familiar with specific contributions made to the development of Colorado by its rich diversity of people and natural resources. Lesson Plans routine the Learning Cycle format for writing lesson plans and develop enough instruction for one full workweek of integrated teaching and learning plan on teaching the unit for approximately five hours. For each lesson specify how you will determine what students already know about your lessons topic (preassessment), how you will monitor students progress in meeting content standards during the lesson (formative assessment), and how you will evaluate students work at the end of the lesson (summative assessment).Good assessment tells the teacher as much about the effectiveness of her or his own instruction as it does about what students learned and how they learned it. Keep this point in mind when w riting your evaluative and reflective essays (described below). feasible Extension Activities How can I help children extend, enrich, and elaborate upon the major understandings in this unit? What could students do to apply or transfer their learning to real-world problems and situations in slipway that will make new knowledge more meaningful for them?List and briefly describe at least three possible extension activities you do not need to design lesson plans for each extension. A simple one-paragraph description of each extension will suffice. Resources Used Include all of the resources you used to teach this unit. You may organize your resources by indicating who they are some appropriate and/or by their type for example, Teacher Resources might be listed separately from Student Resources. lucre Resources (such as websites) might be listed separately from Childrens Literature, and videotapes, simulations, artifacts, museums, social agencies and guest speakers might also be listed under separate categories. Evaluative Essay In the first of these two final essays, use all of the assessment data you collected from students to present a clear picture of their learning. Use tables to display and ingeminate quantitative data and always include examples of several students work on various projects and assignments at several different levels of performance.Use narrative to explain quantitative results and what students learned. Present and explain your assessment results in ways that the reader can use to evaluate the extent to which your students met content standards. Hence, this essay should be written as a technical report consisting of both qualitative and quantitative evidence and analyses of student learning. The evaluative essay should present evidence of learning for each student in the class on each one of the units curriculum standards. Summaries of whole-class learning (i. e. , what students learned as a class) should also be included.Reflective Essay whizz major reason for planning, implementing, and evaluating this unit is to give you practice teaching and assessing student learning over time in a real elementary-school classroom. This work sample is a very authentic task for teachers. As you plan, teach, and assess students learning, you will be meeting many of the Performance Based Standards for Colorado Teachers. In this essay, describe and explain how planning, teaching, and assessing this unit enabled you to meet the Performance-Based Standards for Colorado Teachers that are listed on the Thematic Unit Assessment Rubric which follows.