On Unit Design and Course Themes

After another meeting to determine the course architecture and content gathering strategies we discussed the need for a more formal template for units (not sure yet if that will also be required for individual lessons). The group decided to incorporate some of the Backwards Design principles into the unit Plan. Each unit now has a page with the same questions that will guide it.

Step One: What are the desired learning results of this unit? (benchmarks that address content)

Step Two: What essential question(s) will anchor students to learning? (one or more that summarize benchmark)
Step Three: What skills are needed to achieve desired results (nuts and bolts teaching)? (civic skills: evaluate arguments, etc. evident in the benchmarks)
Step Four: What is acceptable evidence to show desired results?
Step Five: What is the sequence of activities, learning experiences, etc. that will lead to desired results (the plan)?

The document with more specifics can be found here.

Teachers will meet next week to finalize these unit plans and begin writing the lessons and assessments after that. Ideally, we will have a series of lessons with formative assessments built in that will largely be auto-graded by Moodle or will include Lesson Modules which will direct students through the information and then have one or two larger assessments at the end where the student will produce something to demonstrate that the benchmarks have been left.

In terms of gathering/sharing materials we are using Dropbox for stuff and a Google Spreadsheet for links. Each unit has its own sheet with columns for a title and description as well as other notes.

There was also discussion about including a course theme or some guiding principles that might help for overall consistency throughout as different people will be writing different sections.

There should be more updates now as the writing starts in June.