Well-Structured Units and Lessons

Proficiency Indicator (from DESE): 

"Adapts as needed and implements standards-based units comprised of well-structured lessons with challenging tasks and measurable outcomes; appropriate student engagement strategies, pacing, sequence, , resources, and grouping; purposeful questioning; and strategic use of technology and digital media; such that students are able to learn the knowledge and skills defined in state standards/local curricula."

From my time student teaching, I have learned that Well-Structured Units and Lessons is one of the most important CAP elements. Students can easily pick up on when a teacher is unprepared to teach and they use that to get out of doing work. Additionally, when students are well engaged by a lesson, they are less interruptive to others and learn more as a result. 

At the beginning of my practicum, I did not have much experience with lesson planning. It often felt like my lessons were missing something or there were gaps in learning. Throughout this time, I learned to fill in these gaps so students could stay centered and focused without getting stuck on material that I missed out on teaching initially. I began to implement principles like universal for design for learners (UDL) and understanding by design (UBD) into my plans and using more culturally responsive teaching (CRT) components. 

One key change I made to my lesson plans was giving students more choice in their learning. When I had multiple worksheets I would let students choose which ones they wanted to do and whenever I felt like an assignment was too long for a particular class, I would allow the students to choose which problems they wanted to do (e.g. students could pick any 8 out of 12 questions). 

I also gave students opportunities to share about themselves through assignments. In one lesson on parallel and perpendicular lines, students were to find a place that is important to them and paste pictures of perpendicular and parallel streets from this location, then explain why the place is important to them. This allowed both me and the other students to learn about each other. 

The artifact that I have chosen to demonstrate my proficiency in Well-Structured Units and Lessons is my lesson plan for a lesson on Polynomial Operations. This lesson demonstrate UDL principles by offering students a variety of different ways for them to demonstrate their learning. It was also made using UBD principles by starting my planning at the end point and working my way backwards thinking about what prerequisite knowledge students need to learn before they are able to complete the next part of the lesson.