Final Assignment

As I type this, I am heading over to Moodle to put my Final Unit Reflection into the Drop Box!

This has been a crazy semester! However, I feel like I can now sing "I Will Survive" or "I'm a Survivor"!! I made it!

Wrap-Up

I guess this semester is over. On my personal blog today, I posted that I feel like I'm rounding third and about to slide into home. Of course, I really feel like I'm rounding third and going to collapse ON home! :)

This has been a very interesting semester. However, I think I have officially survived. Well, it's only official after I turn in my Unit Reflection, fax over my Experience hours, and write-up a Reflection for the English Journal articles we are to read this week. Once those three things are complete (by tomorrow), I will be able to say that I officially survived.

As much as I would love to share my Clinical Experiences Reflection with all of you. However because of the fact that I just *love* to write so I only wrote EIGHT PAGES! I hope the rest of you wrote shorter reflections than that. IF you didn't, Dr. Coffey is going to be reading for months! lol

I'm getting anxious about where I'm going to be Spring 2010. Hope you all have great Student Teaching experiences next semester! Maybe, just maybe, some of us will keep our blogs and keep posting about ideas and things that are happening in English! We can use them to help each other!


Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Pleasant Teaching! :)

Unit Planning

I hope that one day (SOON) I will get to teach the unit I just finished planning. Although I could not find all the works of art and literature and music that I wanted, I think I did well on the unit. I hope so anyways.

All I have to finish up now is typing up my Case Study. I finally have the paperwork for it and have it almost written up. I can't believe how long it has taken me. Then I have the Clinical Action Research Project (CARP) that I have to finish writing up. Most of it is written, I just have to type it up. Some of it (like my notes and stuff from class) I am going to have to copy and send to her. So, I might end up mailing a copy as well as e-mailing it.

This has been a crazy semester for me. I can only hope that Spring 2010 is 100% better.

Lesson Plans

I have been looking at my ideas for lessons for a week now. Simply, I can not write a lesson plan. Maybe I really do work better under pressure. Maybe around noon tomorrow, I will start spewing out lesson plans! However, right now, I'm having issues pulling them out!

Another issue I am having is putting my ideas into the UNCC Lesson Plan Format. (I'm really glad we only have to do one that way.) Of course, after I do ONE, I will probably realize that it's easy and do most (or all) of them in that format.

It's either going to be a really long night or a very stressful day trying to get only 5 lesson plans finished for tomorrow. I don't know HOW I'm going to finish the whole unit. :)

It will come to me. I was just hoping I wouldn't have "planner's block" right now! lol

Conceptual Unit Planning

The three units that I chose to use for this week’s discussion are (all are 11th grade):

“Bridging the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Movement” (Kasha Whorton and Kristy Mulkey)

“The American Dream—Fact or Fiction?” (Jennifer Howell)

“A Sense of Self” (Jennifer Feldman, Melissa Lynn, and Amy Winter)


What concepts appeal to you most?

Of all the units I looked through, and honestly it was mostly 11th grade, I really liked the concepts of discovering oneself, finding the American Dream, and living the American Dream. Knowing the American Dream and living it are definitely two different things. I liked these concepts because they dealt with what is perceived and what is reality.


How do you see a concept differing from a theme in these units?

In these units, the students will get to explore more of what they know and think. They will get to see things in a different light than what they are used to. For example, in “A Sense of Self”, students will get to read many multicultural texts. This will help the students to see themselves (or their own cultures) as others see them. If this were a thematic unit, the teacher could use one—possibly two—texts and say “Ok, so now you see how these cultures are different.” That could be the end of the unit. However, with the units being conceptual, the students will go deeper inside themselves to pull from knowledge they already have and new knowledge they are accessing.


What purpose does the rationale serve in these units?

For me, the rationales in these units tell me (a teacher looking for ideas) exactly why they plan to do the lessons and use the materials that are included in the unit. It tells me why they have chosen certain things they are planning to use as resources/materials in the unit. The rationales also gave me an idea of what they planned for the students to have learned/mastered/attained for the duration of the unit. For example in Jennifer Howell’s “The American Dream—Fact or Fiction?”, she starts at the beginning. In her rationale, she explains that the colonists had open access to the American Dream. She explains how we know this, and then she tells why it is important. Then, she brings the unit to today by showing what she is planning for the students to know, do, and learn during the unit. Howell explains why she has chosen each of the texts that she plans to use.

I think that without the rationales, the units I looked through would be hard to follow. Some of them, of course, it would be possible. However, others would be almost impossible to even follow if they did not have the rationales with them.


What resources do these teachers use that you might not have considered? That you already use?

Honestly, I have never planned a unit. I have never planned for more than two consecutive days. So, I have never thought about the resources (other than novels and the primary reading materials) that I would need.



How is the planning in these units similar to or different from you own?

I can only hope that when I begin to put my Conceptual Unit on paper that I am as clear as many of the ones I viewed. Right now, I do not know how these units are similar or different to my own planning. This goes back to the fact that I have never planned for more than two consecutive days, so I do not know what my unit planning will actually be like.

After reading several units, I hope that my Rationale is as in-depth as most of them. I hope that when I begin to put my unit to paper that my assessments and rubrics will be as useful as the ones I found in these units. I hope that if, in the future, I am helping a student to learn to develop a unit of his/her own, I can show him/her my unit and it will help him/her to see what can (and possibly should) be included. (I know that sounds a little selfish…doesn’t it!?)