Unit Plan

Working with my teaching partner and faculty mentor, our team created a dynamic, culturally relevant unit plan using backward planning. The focus of our 4-week course was analyzing the novel Pet by Akwaeke Emezi and using it as a vehicle to unpack different forms of justice. Using the technique of backward planning ensured that every day’s lesson built up to the objectives of our course: a summative assessment that included a personal narrative and a student-led discussion on the novel.

We began by formulating our essential question: what is justice, and who decides? We aimed to use this open-ended question as a way to bring in students’ funds of knowledge as well as to push them to interact with complex themes and topics. We then thought of the objectives we wanted students to accomplish. This allowed us to create an outline of our summative assessment rubric and other performance tasks. We prioritized skills like collaboration/communication, critical thinking, interpretation, and analysis because we believed those were necessary tools for navigating life, not simply confined within the classroom.

In constructing this outline, we had a clear idea of what knowledge, skills, and understandings we wanted our students to take away from the course. This allowed us to identify what individual lessons we would have to teach throughout the summer to reach our goals and set clear objectives.I have decided to include this unit plan as an artifact for this domain because it showcases the level of detail and organization I put into planning and preparation and demonstrates my ability to use the backward planning method.