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Learning Activities

At this point you have a Unit Plan that is mostly filled out.  You know what you are going to teach (learning objectives), and you know how you will assess your students mastery at the end of the unit (final summative assessment).  Then you determined your sequence (chunking), and made sure that each learning objective is assessed before the final summative assessment (with formative and summative assessments within each chunk).

All that's left is to figure out HOW the content is going to be presented to your students, and HOW their skills and mastery will be developed.

Source: Taken by author, November 2016. Students were asked to figure out how to solve a difficult, mulitple step problem. Each card has one piece of the problem on it. Students had to arrange the cards into a flowchart to show how they would solve the problem. They didn't know how to solve the problem before starting the activity.

Step One: Presenting the Learning Objectives

The traditional way for your students to get the content delivered to them is direct instruction.  Keep in mind however that it is not the only, nor always the most appropriate, way to deliver the content.  There are many ways to accomplish this.  Not convinced?  Don't forget to check out the results of my research.

Start with your first chunk, and look at what learning objectives there are.  You need to make sure that every objective is EXPLICITLY, rather than just implicitly, taught.  

Step Two: Developing their Skills

Of course, just because you've taught something doesn't mean that your students will be able to use their new knowledge effectively.  This is where development comes in handy.  You need to make sure that students have a chance to use what they have learned in a relatively low stakes environment in order to increase their skill.  This is analogous to practicing your scales on an instrument, or an NBA player practicing their free throws.  Traditionally this is only done with worksheets and homework, although there are many other ways of going about it.

​Again, look at your learning objectives for each chunk.  You must give your students an opportunity to practice and develop their skills for each objective.

​Finally...

Check out the References section for inspiration on other ways of doing things.  Let the Unit Plan sit untouched for a day before coming back to it and editing it.  It is important to look at other ways of doing things, and then giving yourself time to ponder the implications.  Your mind will be mulling over the plan and, perhaps at the most unexpeted time, you will come up with an even better way of doing the lesson. Be open to change!

After a day of rest, edit your Plan with a once over, and then call it done.  Remember that this is just a plan, we all know that you'll be changing things as you go.  But the better your plan, the less stressfull those on-the-fly changes will be.

​Congratulations!  You are done!  Head over to my Example Unit to see what I came up with.

SELECT YOUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES

TYPES OF ASSESSMENT

CHUNKING