UNIT PLANNING
The next step in planning is creating a unit plan. A unit plan continues to help me map out in more detail the process of learning that takes place in my year at a glance calendar and my long-term lesson plans. My unit plans sets out teaching goals and pacing for me to accomplish by the end of the unit. My unit plans usually are between a month and six weeks.
Table of Contents
Kindergarten Math Unit Plan
Kindergarten Math Unit Plan Overview
Kindergarten Math Performance Assessments
Kindergarten ELA Unit Plan
Kindergarten ELA Unit Plan Overview
Kindergarten ELA Performance Assessments
A unit plan provides me with a direction to take my class to ensure that they achieve significant academic gains in a few weeks period. My unit plans include standards, objectives, and activities that will help me be certain the students are exposed to concepts over multiple days and through every subject.
My students learn best when they are interested in what they are learning. That is why I organize my curriculum around thematic units. A thematic unit helps students grasp concepts through activities that are spread across all learning. Using themes help me create a sense of purpose and community in my classroom that students are proud of.
Using an integrated, hands-on thematic units in a way that is age-appropriate helps make big concepts and common core standards acceptable to my young students. I am able to teach higher-order thinking skill through thematic units because it takes young students a long time to grasp big concepts. This helps them to gain a greater understanding of what we are studying which students can apply independently as life-long learners.
ELA and Math Thematic Units “Taking Care of the Earth”
In the thematic unit “Taking Care of the Earth” I have incorporated social studies and science concepts for kindergarten into my daily Literacy and Math standards. This unit helps students see what they can do to take care of the earth in their school, community, and around the planet. It helps students gain an understanding of the world around them, beginning with what they see personally and then applying it to the larger picture.
To develop a math unit using a thematic theme I must ground all learning in standards and assessments with the incorporation of the thematic theme. Since backward planning helps provide me with guidelines for what students need to achieve, I start with assessments.
By the end of the math unit “Taking Care of the Earth” students must be able to understand word problems and steps they need to take to solve them in Math. They must present several strategies to help the correctly add two numbers together that equal up to 10. They must provide reasoning and a verbal explanation for their answer.
Throughout the unit, students will be assessed on math problem sets and exit tickets. Students must choose a strategy and show me that they understand how to break down a story problem and take out the important information. Students will use this information to write the math problem, working through the solution and correctly identify the answer. At the end of the unit, students will show all the strategies they have learned to answer three math story problems.
Math Unit plan Reflection
After review students end of the unit assessment I identify students who have difficulties when attempting to use strategies to solve word problems. In order to help them make gains in addition word problems, they are placed into an intervention group that meets twice a week. When reteaching, I focus on increasing students’ proficiency with problem-solving skill and critical thinking.
Word problems help connect math to real life issues in the world. This I use to motivate students to understand the importance of mathematics concepts. Most students who did not perform proficiently on the end of the unit assessment also have difficulty reading. I help provide them with strategies to go beyond basic reading skill. Students learn a way to pull out information and skip over unknown words. Students learn key words to look for and a way to check work.
After two weeks of intervention students then retake the end of the unit assessment. Students who have not picked up the skills needed to pass are referred to the lead math coach.
ELA
In ELA, Students must be able to understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction book. They must be able to retell non-fiction stories in order and use key details and facts. Students must be able to provide with evidence from the read aloud to support their thinking. Lastly, they must move beyond the reading and provide reasoning for why they believe taking care of the earth is important. These are all skill that students will be tested on in M-Class testing.
The materials, concepts, and activities I have chosen for this unit will reinforce learning and help students understand that everyone has to do their part to help keep the earth clean.
Throughout the unit, students will be assessed through discussion, exit tickets, and writing samples. At the end of the unit, students will show their understanding of the importance of caring for the earth by creating a writing describing why they want to take care of the earth.