Thematic Unit Guidelines

Have an attractive and informative Title Page and tabulate of confine. Expectations for these and all other thoroughgoing(a) components ar described down the stairs under thematic Unit Components. Also, be sure to review the Thematic Unit Assessment Rubric. Do not employment 3-ring binders or plastic sleeves please. Integrate no more than three subject beas for which thither argon relevant field of study types one of these subject areas must accept mathematics or social studies education. Integrating both subject areas is favorite(a) but not mandatory.T apiece and assess a figure outly delineate theme or motion that entrust en able-bodied elementary scholarly persons to visit their local school district course of study standards or the atomic number 27 poser Content Standards. Planning for Student Learning Review your school districts curriculum standards or Colorado computer simulation Content Standards and think well-nigh what you wishing your learners to learn, know and be able to do as a closure of this social unit. Begin gathering educatee and enlightener resources and start thinking well-nigh how you allow for t apiece and assess students eruditeness relative to the content standards you select. lead yourself What do I indispensableness to learn myself in order to inform this unit well? What kinds of resources volition I pack to teach this unit? What types and genres of childrens literature are available? Are thither artifacts, simulations, songs, photographs, and so on I could mathematical function? 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, grade level(s), the semester you taught the unit, and your program primeval(a) PTEP or Post Baccalaureate Licensure Program.Also include your name, your cooperating teachers name, and the name of the elementary school and school district in w hich you are student belief. The Table of Contents should, at minimum, list each of the unit components described here under Thematic Unit Components. Assessment criteria for Developing, Proficient, and move levels of performance for all unit components may be found on the Thematic Unit Assessment Rubric. Rationale Statement either Thematic Unit needs a convincing rationale. Rationale statements should be organized and exhibited in FOUR sections.Section 1 Introduction Students and teachers need to know what exit be learned as a moderate of participating in this unit. In this section, exempt why your unit composition is an important one for young learners. Describe how students might use this association in the palpable world. Section 2 Community, School, and Classroom linguistic context Describe the community, school, and schoolroom where you are student teaching. Include information close the community, school, classroom setting, and characteristics of students that are important to consider when teaching this unit. For example, how many manful / female students are in the class?How would you characterize students socioeconomic office? Will you be teaching students with special needs or students whose primary language is not English? Do you have any incident 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 discipline and assessment that accommodates the full range of diversity in your students.The goal here is to individualize the teaching and learning process by designing lessons that argufy all students at an distinguish level of difficulty. Section 3 meet 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, list all of the school district or Colorado Model Content Standards your unit addresses. Under each content standard issue lesson objectives that describe how or what students will do to meet that particular standard. ring that if you list a content standard then you are induce to teach and assess students learning on that standard. Also, make 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 times 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 third time when writing your evaluative test (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 preassessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment. A. For preassessment, describe the techniques you will use to take note out what students already know or think they know about the unit topic.You will need to record and interpret preassessment scores for each individual student (using a pretest) as well as for the whole class (for example, using a KWL chart). Preassessment results are utilise to provide show of student learning gains at the end of the unit by compare them with summative assessment results (using a posttest). Preassessment data fuel also be used to revise the unit before teaching it, for example, by ever-changing some of the content or pedagogicsal strategies you use, to make more conscious 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 intimacy and skills by providing constructive feedback that, at the same time, allows the teacher to keep extend of students progress on a daily basis. This is the time when teachers are ever on their feet monitoring the learning process, helping students learn untried skills and knowledge, and devising sure that they are practicing perfectly in order to apply 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 gauge what students learned, in combination with preassessment and formative assessment results. on the whole three forms of assessment should be designed to measure the knowledge, skills, and dispositions you claimed students would learn harmonise to the standards. Remember that multiple assessments provide a much more complete and fair representation of what a student really knows and is able to do compared to any single or one-shot assessment.Be sure the three forms of assessments are aligned with the content standards and lesson objectives in other words, be sure that you teach students to the standards and assess their learning in terms of the standards. Unit Goal The unit goal should be derived from state and district curriculum standards however, you should also be familiar with curriculum standards established by national professional organizations, for example, anger (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 realize how our state has grown 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 make to the development of Colorado by its rich diversity of people and rude(a) resources. Lesson Plans Use the Learning Cycle format for writing lesson plans and develop decorous instruction for one full week 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 poi nt in mind when writing your evaluative and reflective essays (described below). Possible 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 ways that will make new knowledge more meaningful for them?List and in short describe at least three possible extension activities you do not need to design lesson plans for each extension. A simple one-paragraph rendering 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 most appropriate and/or by their type for example, Teacher Resources might be listed let only from Student Resources. Internet Resources (such as websites) might be listed separately from Childrens Literature, and videotapes, simulations, artifacts, museums, social agencies and guest speakers mi ght also be listed under separate categories. Evaluative try on 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 summarize quantitative data and eer include examples of some(prenominal) 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 One 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 base 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.