Keeping Unit Plans engaging and organized!

Unit Planning!

When preparing a unit plan, you have to remember many steps to make sure it is accurate and organized. Unit plans generally consist of multiple lessons. The first lesson being taught should be a Direct Instruction lesson which introduces the topic being taught to the students. The following lessons should be more inquiry based. In this case, give the students problems to solve so they can test their knowledge on the topic. Finally, the last lesson should be a cooperative lesson. This type of lesson should be fun for students. Students can break up into groups and take what they learned turning it into engaging games. These games can also keep the students learning!

While completing a Unit plan make sure to include a rationale or overview of what you are teaching. Include an audience as in who you will be teaching the lesson to. Then, include a development section breaking down how you will teach the lesson. This part should include various different ways of how you will teach the lesson such as giving a powerpoint, guided practice, engaging game, etc. Then, include a post test part to check to see if the students understood. Always test the students knowledge. While forming a unit plan, be sure to follow the state standards given as it will help you with planning a lesson. Unit planning is a lot of work but also very fun when you are organized about it! 

Finals, Finals, and more finals! Why Stress?

It is that time of the year again when everyone is ready to break down and sleep for days! Finals time! I want to provide some advice and small things I have learned this semester that helped me. One of the main things I have learned throughout my Science Methods course was to not stress and pace out your work! Much of our work was scattered out but all due at the end of the semester. In a case like this, why wait till last minute to complete? I tried my best to keep up with the work pace and get all of my work done when it was given. This had helped me a lot due to the fact that I did not have much to worry about during the end of my semester which is now. I completed most of my live binders portfolio a few weeks back and now I have time to sit down and fix it up to make it the best I possibly can! I have time to study for other classes as well because most of my work is complete. During my time in the Science Methods course, I learned to stay organized and get things done. The professor has showed my colleagues and myself different tools to stay organized. Some tools included the live binders portfolio which had included all of our work throughout the course with descriptions on how we completed it. Also, we used google docs to save much of our files in a folder made for just this course. This course helped me get prepared and organized and definitely left me less stressed out this time of year!