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Unit Planning

There are a variety of ways to go about planning a unit. No one method of planning is inherently "better" than any other. Regardless of the planning methods used, all unit plans have some important things in common.

Before unit planning can begin, teachers should develop a comprehensive year plan, not just for science, but to include their entire teaching load. In this year plan, the Core Units that need to be developed should be considered first. Timelines and organizational strategies for Core Units should be developed. Patterns may exist which allow teachers to group Core Units together. This is particularly important when integration between subjects takes place. Once the Core Units are planned, any Optional Units or thematic units that will be covered should be considered. Alternately, thematic units could be planned first. Then the objectives from the Core and Optional Science Units, as well as objectives from other subject areas, can be integrated.

Part of the process of developing a comprehensive year plan should be to coordinate activities with other teachers in the school. This coordination should occur between grades, and among teachers at the same grade levels. The purpose of this coordination is to search for patterns that emerge with other teachers' planning strategies, striving to achieve a coordinated learning environment in the school based on common goals and common expectations. This year plan could be a major focus of teacher inservice activity near the beginning of the school year.

Once a coordinated yearly plan for the entire teaching and support staff in the school is in place, teachers can concentrate on organizing their unit planning in keeping with the year plan that has been established.

Unit Planning Guide -- Elementary Level Science

Planning a Science Unit in Eight Steps

  1. Read the first two pages of the unit outline -- the Unit overview, the Related units, the Suggested themes, the Factors of scientific literacy which should be emphasized, the Common Essential Learnings foundational objectives which should be emphasized, and the Science foundational and learning objectives -- to give yourself an idea of the scope of the unit.

  2. Use Science: An Information Bulletin for the Elementary Level -- Key Resources to identify the resources which have been recommended for this unit. Refer to Science: A Bibliography for the Elementary Level to select additional resources. Check with the teacher-librarian in your school or division and in the resource centre of your school. Public libraries may have useful resources. Media House Productions and the National Film Board are two sources of video and film resources. List any people who may act as resources, or sites which may be appropriate for field trips. Retrieve any activities, lesson plans, or information from your files which you can use in the unit. Develop any activities which are needed to enhance or enrich the unit. Use your copy of Saskatchewan Education's resource guide for incorporating the Common Essential Learnings to assist in planning approaches to instruction.
  3. Use one of the following methods to select activities.
  4. If the thematic planning option has not been chosen, consider each activity to determine how it might be linked to topics in other Required Areas of Study. Modify the activities to strengthen these connections.
  5. Organize the activities into lessons. A lesson need not be a specific length. A lesson may be only 15 minutes long or it may extend over a number of days or weeks, using a variable amount of time each day.
  6. Analyze how the Common Essential Learnings can be developed within the activities of each lesson. In some cases the activity will dictate which Common Essential Learnings are developed. In other cases, the activity may be such that the instructional approaches used to guide the student can be selected to emphasize particular Common Essential Learnings.
  7. Create a time schedule for the unit, which shows the lesson structure within the unit. Consider splitting the unit into sections which can be done at various times during the school year.
  8. Develop an evaluation plan for the unit. Help on this aspect of planning is available elsewhere in this guide and in Saskatchewan Education's student evaluation handbook. Just as a variety of activities will have been chosen to accomplish the objectives, a variety of evaluation strategies should be employed so that all aspects of learning can be assessed.

Preparing to Teach the Lessons

Identify the materials needed for each of the activities. Make plans to obtain what will be needed.

Decide how the learning activity centre and classroom displays could enhance the unit.

Ensure that all resources will be accessible when they are needed.

Create a detailed lesson plan. The lesson plan should contain the specific science learning objectives to be addressed in that lesson, and which factors of scientific literacy will be stressed. It should detail how the Common Essential Learnings will be developed, and indicate which resources will be used. One way of structuring a lesson is to use the categories engaging, exploring, evaluating, extending, and integrating. Three examples, for lessons 1, 2, and 3 of the grade 3 Core Unit Earth are provided.

It is obvious that plans such as those provided in the following examples can not be written for every lesson. The intent of providing them is to encourage unit and lesson planning which incorporates the Dimensions of Scientific Literacy and which integrates the Common Essential Learnings. These examples may cause you to further consider what transpires in the classroom, and thus to examine and to improve your teaching practice.

Sample Unit Plan -- Elementary Level Science

In the following sample, each section of the Unit Planning Guide is presented and is followed by the unit plan. The plan is shown in italic print. The unit selected for the sample is from the grade 3 Core Unit entitled Earth. Similar planning is recommended in all grades at the Elementary Level.

  1. Read the first two pages of the unit outline -- the Unit overview, the Related units, the Suggested themes, the Factors of scientific literacy which should be emphasized, the Common Essential Learnings foundational objectives which should be emphasized, and the Science foundational and learning objectives -- to give yourself an idea of the scope of the unit.

    The three main topics of this unit are:

  2. Use Science: An Information Bulletin for the Elementary Level -- Key Resources to identify the resources which have been recommended for this unit. Refer to Science: A Bibliography for the Elementary Level to select additional resources. Check with the teacher-librarian in your school or division and in the resource centre of your school. Public libraries may have useful resources. Media House Productions and the National Film Board are two sources of video and film resources. List any people who may act as resources, or sites which may be appropriate for field trips. Retrieve any activities, lesson plans, or information from your files which you can use in the unit. Develop any activities which are needed to enhance or enrich the unit. Use your copy of Saskatchewan Education's resource guide for incorporating the Common Essential Learnings to assist in planning approaches to instruction.

    Resources for this unit:

  3. Use one of the following methods to select activities.

    The method selected is the 'activities' option.

    Activities

    Using the resources identified, select activities which are appropriate for the facilities, student needs and interests, or equipment which you have. Then analyze those activities to determine which of the science learning objectives and factors of scientific literacy for that unit are covered. Select more activities, or modify, adapt, or extend those which you have chosen, in order that all the science learning objectives and the appropriate factors of scientific literacy are covered.

    Keepers of the Earth

    Journeys in Science Silver Burdett and Ginn Science Who Says You Can't Teach Science? Teaching Science With Everyday Things Curriculum Guide Grade 3 Core Unit: Earth

  4. If the thematic planning option has not been chosen,consider each activity to determine how it might be linked to topics in other Required Areas of Study. Modify the activities to strengthen these connections.

    Activity 2 from the Grade 3 Core Unit: Earth in this Curriculum Guide has been revised by the additions or modifications indicated in boldface, as follows:

    Activity 2.

    Observe the school yard or a vacant lot over a period of time, from several weeks to an entire year. What changes are noticed when a strong wind blows, or during and after a rain? Go on a hike and look for large scale changes caused by wind, rain, and other forces. Students will keep a journal containing records of what they have observed, and take photographs for a visual record. An album of those photographs could be passed from each year's class to the next, and a multi-year record of change produced.

    Near the end of the activity, ask each student to pick one object from the area that has been observed -- a particle of soil, a puddle, a large rock -- and write an imaginative story about the object. (The story could begin long before the student's observation started or continue into the future. It could be one day in the life of the object.)

    This modification uses observations made during science for an English Language Arts activity. The observations useful for a discussion of the changing surface of the Earth in science class could also be used to generate ideas for imaginative writing in English Language Arts. Daily recording of the observations provides students with an opportunity to practice written communication. When the stories are written, the students could share them with the other members of a small group, or the whole class group. Another approach is to have students work in pairs to create a story.

  5. Organize the activities into lessons. A lesson need not be a specific length. It may be only 15 minutes long or it may extend over a number of days or weeks, using a variable amount of time each day.

    All references in this section to Curriculum Guide activities refer to activities from the Grade 3 Core Unit: Earth.

  6. Analyze how the Common Essential Learnings can be developed within the activities of each lesson. In some cases the activity will dictate which Common Essential Learnings are developed. In other cases, the activity may be such that the instructional approaches used to guide the student can be selected to emphasize particular Common Essential Learnings.

    See the examples listed in the detailed lesson plans that follow. Note that the Common Essential Learnings emphasized depends on the approach taken to instruction and the modifications made.

  7. Create a time schedule for the unit, which shows the lesson structure within the unit. Consider splitting the unit into sections which can be done at various times during the school year. The following estimates are based on an average of 30 minutes of science instruction per day. The number of days per lesson will vary depending on how the activities are modified, extended, or integrated with other Required Areas of Study.

    Lesson Number 1234567 8
    Number of Days 4363232 2

  8. Develop an evaluation plan for the unit. Help on this aspect of planning is available elsewhere in this Curriculum Guide and in Saskatchewan Education's student evaluation handbook. Just as a variety of activities will have been chosen to accomplish the objectives, a variety of evaluation strategies should be employed so that all aspects of learning can be assessed.

    Evaluation ideas are included in each specific lesson plan which follow. A goal for each unit is to use a wide range of appropriate assessment techniques, such as those listed in Table 2 of the Curriculum Guide.

Prior to starting the unit:

Lesson organization:

Lesson 1:activities:

Lesson 2:activities: Lesson 3:activities: Lesson 4: Activities: Lesson 5: Activities: Lesson 6: Activities: Lesson 7: Activities: Lesson 8: Activities:

Sample Lesson Plan

Grade 3 Science

Core Unit: Earth

Lesson 1

Activity: Soil Collection

Factors of scientific literacy which are emphasized:

B5, C3, C4, C6, E1, E2, F3, F4, G1

Objectives:

2.1 Observe and describe the surface features of the local area.

2.2 Observe and describe the composition of soil.

Common Essential Learnings:

Critical and Creative Thinking. The sorting of the soil particles and analysis of its components is an opportunity for students to use critical thinking in a real problem, and to see how knowledge about the soil is created.

Resources: Journeys in Science p. 146

Organization:

Divide the class into working groups of four for the analysis activity and the English Language Arts extension. For other activities, the work will be done as a class group.

Materials:

Lesson

A. Engaging:

Inform the students that they will be learning about soil and its composition.

Question students to talk about rocks and soil. Have students discuss the surface features of their local areas. Brainstorm a list of words which can be used to describe soil. Record this list on a poster, and retain for future reference and writing activities.

B. Exploring:

Students will collect and analyze soil samples as described in the activity on page 146 of Journeys in Science. The screening of the samples will be modified to use three screens in sequence from large to small, to divide the soil into four sizes of particles for analysis. Students, in their own journals, should record all the observations made by the group members.

C. Evaluating:

Have students compare the charts produced in the analysis activity. Ask members of the group to fill in one group activity checklist on the next page, which represents the opinions of the group. Ask them to fill in the individual form on the following page after the group form is complete. Observe group and individual participation, and record on a form similar to the teacher checklist and record sheet on page 27. Store these in individual student files. (Photocopy the completed group activity checklist for each group member's file.)

D. Extending:

Have students add to the class list of words for describing soil.

E. Integration:

Mathematics - When students bring in their samples of soil in the plastic bags they have used for collection, ask them to estimate how many jars -- large baby food jars could be used -- could be filled with their sample. Create funnels by having them fold sheets of smooth paper into a cone shape, and have them test their predictions. Their estimates can be checked against their observed volume. Each group should label its jars of soil, and store them for future use.

English Language Arts - Ask students to create an acrostic poem using a word from the vocabulary list. Assign a different word to each member of the group, and one word to the group as a whole. Give the individuals time to compose poems and share them with the other group members. The group can then cooperate to produce one poem using the group's assigned word. A group member would then read this poem for the whole class.

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