Organization and Outline for the Unit Plan
(Revised 10/26/03)
Randy L. Hoover, Instructor
    Important Items to know:

  • You must explicitly include all headings and sub-headings in your plan. This facilitates the turn-around time, enabling you to get it back for revisions sooner.
  • The unit plan must be typed and use appropriate spelling, grammar, and syntax.
  • The first submission must be complete from start to end.
  • Please use the online coversheet or a resonable facsimile of it. You can view it or download it here.
  • Unit plan readings are conducted orally with me.
  • Toward the end of the semester, particularly during the week before finals and finals week, a schedule of when I will be in my office reading unit plans may be accessed from your class home page. I will also place a copy of it outside my office, 2210 Beeghly.
  • Do not send unit plans via email.
  • Your unit plan must be bound together with a removable clasp or binding before I will critique it. Please do not use slip-on binders.
  • All revisions made as a result of our conferences about your unit plan must be added just behind the original pages.
  • There is no due date for this assignment. You may begin submitting them to me as soon as we have covered all the elements of unit planning in class.
  • You may choose to either take the grade I give you when I read the plan or you may make revisions we talk about in order to raise your grade.
  • You may revise as many times as you wish up until there is no more time left, ususally this is Tuesday of finals week. Also, you may revise only up to the point at which revision will significantly raise your grade and not beyond that point. I will inform you when that point is reached if you are in doubt.
1. Theme or Title:
     The central unifying principle that connects all of the parts of the plan as a cohesive whole. It should be descriptive and informative. In other words, name it!
2. Intent:
     Explicit statement of purpose and rationale given in terms of the instrumentality and value of the knowledge the students will acquire as found within the learned society standards of your teaching area. This considers both the efficacy of the concepts, principles, and ideas that are to be taught as well as the relevance to the students in terms of its being liberating and empowering. The substance of the knowledge to be taught as well as the processes by which the knowledge is used are equally important to empowering pedagogy. Beware, this is not state as subject matter but as concepts, principles, and ideas that give meaning to the subject area content.
3. Knowledge to be taught:
     Identification and itemization of the specific concepts, principles, and ideas, and processes to be taught.
  1. List the concepts, principles, and ideas to be taught. These are the CPIs in your instructional objectives.
  2. Immediately below each CPI or group of CPIs listed, give the Ohio Social Studies Academic Content Standard(s) associated with what you are teaching and note the page number from the standards book.
    (See http://www.ode.state.oh.us/academic_content_standards/)
  3. List any concepts, principles, and ideas from other fields and disciplines.
4. Overview of major activities:
  1. Introductory Activity:
    How will the students be brought into the unit. Usually formulated as a Set Induction.
  2. Core Activities:
    Overview of the focal situation(s), the central learning activities the students will engage.
  3. Culminating Activity:
    How will the unit conclude for the students such that there is a sense of closure and coherence for them.
  4. Assessment Activity:

    1. Tell how will instructional objectives be assessed in terms of student learning. This assessment must be designed to have as much validity as possible the degree to which the learner knows what, how, where, why, and when the concepts, principles, and ideas specified in the instructional objectives are used in authentic situations or contexts.

    2. Give a definitive statement of how grades will be assigned and a defense of the construct validity of the assessment procedures in terms of the knowledge specified in the instructional objectives and the intellectual processes appropriate for associate, interpretive, and applicative uses of the specific concepts, principles, and ideas that have been specified.

5. Daily Lesson Plans: (Note: Place each day's lesson on a separate page.)
  1. Specific instructional objectives:
    Itemized objectives containing explicit conceptual reference and general indication of the activity being used to provide the students the opportunity to experience the material.
  2. Parallel listing of Teacher/Student activities:
    Briefly put the Teacher Activities on the left and the Student Activities on the right with a solid line seperating the two.
  3. Brief indication of how you will assess teaching and learning on a daily basis:
    Very briefly note what informal items will give you clues as to how the students are doing and how you are doing as the teacher for each day's lesson.
  4. Note: Any and all assignments must be included and placed just behind the lesson plan for the day they are being given. The must be written for the student audience, not me. What I do here is read the activities section of your unit plan as if I were a student in your class.
6. Management:
     Table of Organization and Equipment that will identify materials, procedures, and their use in scope and sequence. Notation of possible problems and solutions.
Remember, your unit plan must be typed, bound, and complete before I will critique it. I will go over the plan with you in person in order to make clear the strengths and weakness so you can revise accordingly.