Handouts are available below

Big Idea

Are you happy with your unit plans – or, do you go through them and, afterwards, wonder if you really hit everything you’re supposed to? And, did I do it as well as I had hoped? And, was there a better way? To be honest, I fall into the latter. Of course, we’re all taught in our teacher education programs to plan everything at the beginning of the unit, but things don’t always go as planned. Below, I’m sharing a quick organizer I’ve used at the end of a unit to see what outcomes I actually covered so that I can revamp my unit plan for the better next time around. 

Visualizing Your Unit Plan

First, a quick shout out to Kent Rockwell, fellow Burnaby Science Teacher, for sharing this with me: a map of the assignments and tests he has students complete that all connect to a skill we’re supposed to assess students on. In British Columbia, we’re supposed to assess students on 6 competencies (aka skills or practices): questioning and predicting, planning and conducting, process and analyze, evaluating, applying and innovating, and communicating. In the NGSS, these are known as Science and Engineering Practices. According to the Mr. Rockwell’s map, he assesses a Chemistry 12 student’s ability to question and predict through Lab 18A, 18B, and his assignments on Le Chatelier’s Principle, Weak Acid Titration, and Ksp Lab.

The advantage of planning this way is that it does 2 things: (1) it makes sure I cover each competency equally – so, I don’t assess one skill five times and another just one time. And (2), this overview frees me from the homework or tests I need to formally mark and include in my marks book. Thus, I don’t have to collect and mark everything. There could be some things we do in class that are just for practice and therefore I give a completion mark. And, those completion marks or homework checks don’t go into their overall mark, just towards their work habits. Ultimately, this saves time – but, of course, before we do that, we first need to know what we’re going to assign to meet each goal.

So, I applied this template at the end of my chemistry unit with my grade 9s to see what skills I covered and what skills I left out. And here are the results – as you can see, I had quite a few assessments for this one skill – process and analyze – but I didn’t assign anything to cover this skill – question and predicting. So, 2 things I’ll do: (1) add some more question and predict assessments to my other units and (2) next year, add a couple ways to assess this skill in the chemistry unit.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to do the same at the end of your unit plan to help you create a better one next time. One that, hopefully, covers everything you need and saving you time when it comes to marking.

Thanks for reading, and let’s talk science again soon.

Resources

Handout(s): Ep48 Handout – Unit Plan Visualization (pdf) (docx)

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