As Diane and I met over dinner to discuss our collaboration unit we both began to get very excited about the project. Our unit will be taught from March 23rd to April 1st. While we have built the unit around Elie Wiesel's Night, the unit will encompass more than a broad overiew of the holocaust. My responsibilities as the librarian will be to gather resources, generate assesment tools, assist in planning, facilitate discussion, and compile evaluation data. Diane will be responsible for teaching the unit, planning the unit, facilitating discussion, and evaluation.
As we were determining the responsibilities each of us would have, Diane expressed some concerns about discussion. Sometimes it is difficult to get students to share freely in the classroom. Even as the teacher, it is sometimes hard to share thoughts on a topic such as the holocaust. That is why we decided that both of us would participate in the facilitation of discussion. We are considering using a blog for students to share questions and thoughts outside of class so that we can anticipate how to drive the in class discussions.
The assessment tools I am building will include a pre-teach and post-teach checklist. This will include topics such as knowledge about the holocaust, knowledge about different forms of oppression worldwide, evaluation of information, use of technology, and creative writing skils. For evaluating specific tasks I will create rubrics that students will use as a guide throughout the unit activities.
The unit activities are varied. In order to engage students in this historical topic, we have decided to group students together and give them images of oppression worldwide. This will be part of our pre-teach lesson. The students will generate questions about the images given and will share them with their classmates. Then we will introduce them to the book. Most classroom time will be used to read and discuss Night. The main homework assignment will be for the students to create a short story based on research of the images given on the first day.
One of the main challenges we will face as we pursue this unit is establishing the classroom as a safe place to discuss issues of race and oppression. The school we are teaching at has a student demographic that is 49% African American and 49% Caucasian with a 2% minority. One way to create a safe environment is to determine ground rules as a class before we begin the unit. We are also hoping that the structure of our unit will open our students' eyes beyond their immediate environment to the issue of oppression throughout the world.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Early Planning
Diane and I are working together on a unit that explores Elie Wiesel's book Night. The target audience is ninth grade English.
For our planning, we will attempt to create an inquiry based unit plan. Our main planning categories are Final Product, Learning Objectives, Content Standards, Resources, and Process. We will begin by identifying what we want our final product to be. From there we want to determine what the students should learn along the way and coordinate that learning to the content standards that are addressed. After that we will both gather resources and organize a time line for accomplishing each task.
This is the broad scope of our planning process intended to explore the new things I am learning about collaborative planning as a school library media specialist (SLMS). The reason we are trying to create an inquiry based plan is because this method has been identified as the most beneficial approach to teaching that enables students to have the most meaningful learning experience. The initial categories we have selected are very basic when in comes to inquiry planning. The reason is to give us room as collaborators to discover for ourselves what needs to be more specific as we explore the planning process. It gives us room to ask the questions how and why as we proceed.
My hope is that we will have a variety of ways to assess student learning during this unit. I would like to give students the opportunity to work in such a way that their specific gifts and talents might shine in the end product. I am certain that we will develop a rubric for the students and us to use as a guide in the creating and grading process. One specific area I would like to access is the students' abilities to ask good questions that lead them into the researching process.
Thus far, we have not had a major hindrances to our collaboration process. Our only challenge has been timing. Diane has spent this last week in Kosovo on a mission trip to teach teachers. If you would like to connect with us in a different way, check out what they did this last week here.
For our planning, we will attempt to create an inquiry based unit plan. Our main planning categories are Final Product, Learning Objectives, Content Standards, Resources, and Process. We will begin by identifying what we want our final product to be. From there we want to determine what the students should learn along the way and coordinate that learning to the content standards that are addressed. After that we will both gather resources and organize a time line for accomplishing each task.
This is the broad scope of our planning process intended to explore the new things I am learning about collaborative planning as a school library media specialist (SLMS). The reason we are trying to create an inquiry based plan is because this method has been identified as the most beneficial approach to teaching that enables students to have the most meaningful learning experience. The initial categories we have selected are very basic when in comes to inquiry planning. The reason is to give us room as collaborators to discover for ourselves what needs to be more specific as we explore the planning process. It gives us room to ask the questions how and why as we proceed.
My hope is that we will have a variety of ways to assess student learning during this unit. I would like to give students the opportunity to work in such a way that their specific gifts and talents might shine in the end product. I am certain that we will develop a rubric for the students and us to use as a guide in the creating and grading process. One specific area I would like to access is the students' abilities to ask good questions that lead them into the researching process.
Thus far, we have not had a major hindrances to our collaboration process. Our only challenge has been timing. Diane has spent this last week in Kosovo on a mission trip to teach teachers. If you would like to connect with us in a different way, check out what they did this last week here.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Pre-Planning
Diane and I are really excited about taking this collaboration journey together. We have both taught at Southfield Christian School. Diane teaches high school English and I taught high school Biology and Science. I consider Diane my mentor in many ways and I am looking forward to the insight she will offer me during this process.
In some ways our strengths may also be our weakness. Diane and I love to talk with each other which will eliminate many potential communication issues that one might experience when collaborating with someone he/she does not know well. On the other hand, our friendship may make it more difficult to stay on task. One of the main benefits of our relationship is that we do not have a fear of being honest with one another about what we think. In light of that, I think our collaborative unit will be a work of high standards.
While we agree on many things in the area of teaching practice, we will face some challenges. My background is in science, which means I will have to process the benchmarks Diane is striving to reach. Also, my teaching style is different than Diane's which will influence some of our decisions as we plan.
I am excited to work with Diane because I know she desires to be on the cutting edge in the classroom. She also values the potential outcomes of a good collaboration. When we were teaching at the same time we began talking about cross curriculum collaboration. We are both excited to finally have the opportunity to follow through with a collaboration unit.
We have chosen to collaborate for an English 9 class.
In some ways our strengths may also be our weakness. Diane and I love to talk with each other which will eliminate many potential communication issues that one might experience when collaborating with someone he/she does not know well. On the other hand, our friendship may make it more difficult to stay on task. One of the main benefits of our relationship is that we do not have a fear of being honest with one another about what we think. In light of that, I think our collaborative unit will be a work of high standards.
While we agree on many things in the area of teaching practice, we will face some challenges. My background is in science, which means I will have to process the benchmarks Diane is striving to reach. Also, my teaching style is different than Diane's which will influence some of our decisions as we plan.
I am excited to work with Diane because I know she desires to be on the cutting edge in the classroom. She also values the potential outcomes of a good collaboration. When we were teaching at the same time we began talking about cross curriculum collaboration. We are both excited to finally have the opportunity to follow through with a collaboration unit.
We have chosen to collaborate for an English 9 class.
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