Social Studies 9 - Unit 2 Ethnocentrism in America

What follows is an explanation of how I have met the outcomes in creating this unit plan.

1. I plan lessons and assessment based on provincial curriculum;

• 1. My plans for instruction and assessment are designed to respond to my formative assessment of students. - 5/5
  • The unit, its lessons, and the final project all revolve around journaling exercises that seek to build literacy skills in low-stakes performance tasks which can be formatively and summatively assessed.
  • Using a workshop model with journaling and conferring gives students daily practice at applying new skills, and simultaneously helps the teacher pre&formatively assess students for needs, performance, interest, and cultural considerations and sensitivities.
  • In order to ensure the journaling is successful and not overdone, or too open and daunting, the teacher must provide prompts in journal entries relative to the unit (it seems redundant to note, but this is absolutely key; you cannot just tell the students to write anything, you need to be thematic) which can be seen throughout the questioning in the lesson plans and the respective journal entry questions and prompts for those days.
  • If not journaling, I will strive to use some other method of having a culture of comfortable open-door two-way communication with students so that true inquiry and curiosity can be indulged.

2. I make student learning goals for each lesson/task;

• 2. My goal is clear and effective and my planned instruction and activities are likely to achieve it. 5/5
  • The students have a clear task: research and tell the story of a historical instance of ethnocentrism, then create another, alternative "ideal" version of the event based on their understanding of ethnocentrism.
  • Students are asked to journal in a structured way based on lessons that scaffold and model the practical skills and some antecedents and examples, while in the process of creating their own imaginative piece based on the theme discussed.

3. I know which instructional strategies to pick at given times;

• 3. I choose instructional and learning strategies that are best related to both outcomes and indicators and my students. 5/5
  • While all lessons and assessments are based directly on achieving curricular outcomes and indicators, it is demonstrated in my planning how well I have chosen instructional and learning strategies relative to the outcomes and indicators.
    • For introducing content and concepts, PowerPoints with multimedia lessons that feature different forms of stimulating audio and visual instruction are used.
      • These lessons will include break out sections where students will partner with groups to work with peers, and then return to sharing as a class.
    • For practical skills application and deep, critical, and inquiry learning, students will do research and lab work to create their independent works while the teacher circulates conferring with students on their progress and concerns about what they are working on at the moment.

4. My lessons are ready to be used;

• 4. In addition to the lesson, the materials (assessments, handouts etc.) are ready to be used. 4/5
  • This unit is not complete. It would need: speaking notes, handouts would need to be obtained/created/modified, PowerPoints made.

5. I create formative assessments;

• 5. My formative assessments tell me how to change the plan as I go. 5/5
  • I am very high on journaling and conferring as super effective ways to formatively assess. This allows the teacher to be better able to bring each student to the learning.
    • The only thing I think to beware of is overuse, or abuse of writing exercises like journaling. Journaling should be meaningful and natural practice, not arbitrary and forced.

6. I create summative assessment;

• 6. My students help shape the assessment and will understand the assessment easily. 5/5
  • The assessment is all about the students. In their work through class discussion and ensuing journals and conferencing, students and the teacher will negotiate the reality of their expressions of knowledge and build understanding together.
    • Students' representations of the past will be their thoughts, reflective of their truth, through their expressions relative to the statements they will make and record throughout the unit. (Note: This does not mean there are no wrong answers. Social studies education and curriculum in Canada and Saskatchewan is value based and respects the rule of law.)

7. I set and use goals for enhancing my professional development;

• 7. I have evidence that I have made significant progress towards the teaching goals I set (4/5) - I have a variety of sources of evidence (self, peer, instructor) that I am making significant progress towards a variety of teaching goals (5/5).
  • When you compare this work to my first assessment piece, it is clear that I have come a long way. As was evident in my assessment, I did not know how to communicate with students or plan for differentiation.
    • I have struggled to find out just where my skills are at and how to do the work of planning. Beyond simply learning how to plan good units and lessons, I have not been able to think about identifying my areas for improvement in my teaching, let alone how to implement those into my planning. I have been working just to identify the places I struggle.
      • At the end of my first year, I recognize that the most significant TECC compentencies for me to concentrate on are: 2.2 proficiency in the Language of Instruction, & 2.4 ability to use technologies readily, strategically and appropriately. This is because I need to be clear, concise, and appropriate in the language I am using, and I need to model the use of technology use and journaling (such as in my blog, which I have not been as consistent with as might have been hoped).

10. I can incorporate technology in my planning;

• 10. I plan to teach my students to create, communicate and curate as an essential part of their learning. 5/5
  • Students create content in their journals from their thoughts which drives their research, feeding back into their journals, from which they structure and develop their works through; narrative, script, screenplay, storyboard into a presentation, which they share with peers, and potentially the public.

11. I can demonstrate a culturally responsive instructional stance;

• 11. My planning is designed to allow me to learn from, and respond to, my students’ culture. 5/5
  • Journalling and conferring as discussed above.

12. I can use all four types of questions;

• 12. I have a good variety of questions and they are phrased well. My essential question is well worded. 4/5
  • If you look at my lessons there are a good variety of well phrased questions for sure, but this unit plan is not that complete that questions of the four types are intentionally structured towards essential questions/understandings. I believe the questions here are very good; there needs to be more intentional thought on the precision of questioning.

14. I understand how to plan for differentiation and adaptation;

• 14. My plans make it likely that students with different needs would experience success. 5/5
  • I think they will. At least from the research I've done, and the little bit of experience I have with it, the group work, questioning, journaling, and conferring seems to be a good blend of instructional and learning strategies.

15. I create engaging learning activities and tasks;

• 15. My entire unit is composed to increase connection between students and student ownership of learning. 5/5
  • Again with the redundnacies, but I think the group work, questioning, journaling, and conferring will do the trick - if I pull it all off. It sounds like a lot of work. At any rate, the amount of responsibility to peers in group work and performance, and self, as regards the inquiry, students should own their learning.

16. My planned activities would improve the discipline specific literacy skills of my students;

• 16. My students will have the opportunity to self-assess and improve literacy strategies. 5/5
  • Journals, conferring, and group work.
    • Again, I've experienced this work well in university; if the presentation is engaging and interesting, the group will engage with one another and buy in to the content and work, the rest is classroom management.

17. I can create a unit that would achieve the outcomes and the indicators;

• 17. Many elements, like assessment or differentiation etc. are woven together to make it more likely students could demonstrate the outcome(s). 5/5
  • Here again is the aim of the journals, conferring, and group work.

18. The final task in my unit elicits evidence of application in a new situation;

• 18. My final assessment will make the application of student learning relevant and useful. 5/5
  • The final assessment is perfect for new application: the student tells the history, then is asked to essentially write a historical fiction of what could have happened if things had turned out better (or worse, depending on where their story starts).

19. I can create a unit that would assess the outcomes and indicators;

• 19. My unit assesses outcomes, and has effective pre, formative, and summative assessments. 5/5
  • One final time, in my work the journalling, conferring, and group work all provide opportunities for all of the above, and are effectively woven together in the unit.

20. Improvements in my unit plan show my increased understanding.

• 20. My unit plan had a number of additions designed to refine the tasks, goals, or assessments. 4/5
  • My unit plan has had some significant revisions. I added culturally responsive teaching (CRT) strategies to lessons like modelling in the first lesson to demonstrate recognizing positionality.
  • The unit plan had quite a bit of CRT to begin with, so the revision once the class took the lesson was mostly recognizing, expanding, and explaining the use of different CRT strategies. Namely, the journaling, student centred learning (conferring), and inquiry learning.
  • The technological revisions need to be further fleshed out. I intend to plan using some online journaling, and saving everyone's work on Drive or something like that. I need to develop further creativity and innovative use of technologies.