Unit Plan & Summative Assessment

Utilizing Backwards Design My unit plan came to fruition through Backwards Design. I began by looking over the end-of-unit StudySync exam, which stems from the curriculum assigned by the school district. Through this method, I identified the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to address during my unit to prepare students for the assessment. The Providence Public School District also provided a long list of CCSS that they wanted teachers to cover, which you can see on the first page of my unit plan document. I organized the standards according to the frequency in which they appear in the exam and color-coded them according to which domains they address. The main text we explored during our unit was Antigone by Sophocles, and the essential question students considered was, “Who should a person be loyal to?” Throughout the unit, they strengthened their reading, writing, and analysis skills. 

Summative Assessment Aside from the end-of-unit exam, students completed a summative assessment in which they wrote an original narrative. Students were required to introduce a conflict related to loyalty and to deliver a meaningful, universal message (theme) about loyalty. Students practiced creating stories by studying plot structure and reading narrative models and, resultantly, gained creative writing skills in narrative structure, sensory details, and characterization.