Project-Based Learning (PBL) Unit Plan
This is my project-based learning (PBL) unit plan that a classmate and I wrote for my Elementary English Language Arts Methods class (English288). The purpose of our unit plan was to have 4th grade students learn about why it is important not to litter, and then compose a piece of writing to show why people should recycle. Our unit plan contains all 5 stages of PBL (project launch, reading and research, writing and research, revision and editing, and presentation), and begins with an SEL lesson on responsibility, which is included along with a lesson outline of one of the reading and research sessions.
IPTS Standard #3 states that "The competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance data, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement". My Project-Based Learning (PBL) Unit Plan meets Performance Indicator 3I, which is "the competent teacher creates short-term and long-term plans to achieve the expectations for student learning". For this assignment, my partner and I thought carefully about the main objective we wanted our students to achieve at the end of the unit, and from there, we planned out how we could help them succeed in this through PBL. Students would have to know how to write a strong persuasive essay in order to convince their town's mayor to promote recycling in their neighborhood, which is why my partner and I made sure to address the stages of both the reading process and the writing process in our unit plan.
Creating a PBL unit plan allowed me to think creatively and logically about what students would need to do to in order to meet an overarching goal, as well as how they could practice and apply what they are learning to edge them closer to the main goal. There are so many amazing resources to consult and utilize that can help teachers differentiate instruction in their classrooms, and creating more unit plans in the future will provide me with several opportunities to learn even more about differentiating instruction. Every student learns differently, and the more teachers keep this in mind as they plan lessons and structure their classrooms, the better.
Making Inferences 1 Lesson Plan
This is the first of a series of lesson plans I wrote to teach my former 5th grade students at Navajo Heights Elementary School about theme. Early on in this placement, I talked with their teachers about what they had been struggling with in the poetry unit they were working on, and they said that they were having difficulty identifying the theme(s) of poems. In order to identify the theme(s), one has to know how to make an inference, which is why I taught that concept before theme. First, I had my students predict what would happen in real-world scenarios I gave them, and then I had them practice making inferences about a poem. Afterwards, I asked them if they agreed with statements I put on the board about making inferences by giving either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
My Making Inferences 1 lesson plan meets Knowledge Indicator 3D, which is that "the competent teacher understands when and how to adjust plans based on outcome data, as well as student needs, goals, and responses". I recognized that my students needed to practice making inferences if they were going to understand how to find the theme(s) of the poems they were reading. I used this lesson as a baseline to identify my students' current understanding of how to make inferences, and from there, I began planning the next lesson about making inferences, as they still needed more practice with this concept.
As a teacher, it is important to realize that not all students learn the same way. Some may understand the topic right away, and others may need more assistance with learning the topic. Focusing on an underlying concept, such as I did in this lesson, may be the key to eventually helping students effectively understand and achieve a primary goal. Differentiating instruction by providing real-world scenarios to students allowed them to think about how they make predictions in everyday life, and that they use that same process to predict what will happen in poems and stories.