Unit planning can sometimes seem like a daunting task. The number of expectations packed into each curriculum document can be overwhelming for any single person, and the goal of covering every expectation can detract from the learning experience. Thankfully many opportunities for collaboration exist in education today. Whether with teachers from the same department, board, or even province, there are numerous ways in which we can collaborate using the technology of today in order to break unit planning into a more manageable task.
For this term we had two unit planning tasks---social studies and science---and I decided to take different approaches for each based on my experiences from last term. In our first term we had several lesson planning assignments. Unfortunately, the majority of the work was collaborative, and I never felt that I personally had a firm grasp of the process as a result. For this reason I took the approach of doing my science unit plan individually, and the social studies plan collaboratively, in order to have both experiences.
Aside from the obvious benefits of a shared workload, collaborative planning introduced a strong element of technology into the workflow. The incorporation of shared Google Docs and Slides not only allowed for more efficient work on our end, but made it apparent how these tools could be implemented effectively into the classroom. The ability to streamline this aspect of collaboration is important to both students and teachers, as all changes are saved and accessible from anywhere, which is a far cry from when I was in elementary school and we were saving to floppy disks. As convenience can drive motivation, the simplicity of these tools will benefit all parties in the process. Collaborative planning was also a great way for the diverse interests of participants to shine through. Each lesson took a unique approach to the content and delivery and this helped break the tedium of planning and sequencing a large volume of lessons all at once.
The breakdown of the course content into weekly themes worked well with the unit planning task. Each week we were able to individually read and reflect on certain topics, before bringing our knowledge into the classroom and our work period as a group. Having prior knowledge and ideas of how to incorporate the course's themes into our unit and TLCP chart made the planning process very straightforward even when we were covering such a wealth of material.
For me personally, I took this project as an opportunity to employ my skills in creating presentations. As my background in industrial chemistry exposed me to a countless number of seminars, I feel I have a good grasp for what makes or breaks a practical presentation. It is very common that presentation materials lose all meaning when the context of the speaker is removed, and I do not feel that this ambiguity is an effective way to present a unit plan. Therefore I made it my goal to create slides that could stand on their own as an overview of our unit, but at the same time were not bogged down with text. I feel as if I have achieved these goals through the effective use of imagery and tables that highlight the critical components of each lesson, and I believe the slides convey the important aspects of our TLCP chart, both of which are listed below.
Overview Presentation
Link to TLCP chart
