The Unit Plan

The first time I taught Brit Lit in this new format, I simply replaced the traditional unit plan I would have designed for the course with a simplified, blank version for the students; this unit plan design is a modification of the Understanding by Design unit template. There are three basic building blocks to Stage 1 of each plan: the standards, essential questions, and outcomes. When my students and I attempted this in the Fall of 2010, they chose texts first, then developed essential questions, and chose state standards (this quarter, students rewrote the standards in student-friendly language). They were required to only have three standards: one reading, one writing, and one "other," which could be a language, speaking/listening, or technology standard. The next element students developed were outcomes: what skills or knowledge did they want from the unit? Stage 2 of the plan involved designing an assessment: how would the student demonstrate that they had attempted mastery of the standard and worked to answer the essential questions? The final stage was the learning plan: what would the student do to practice the standards and interact with the texts? This is one of the first unit plans developed by a student.  Each time we completed a unit, the plan was tweaked a bit and as my second class of students moves into their second unit this week, they'll be using this unit plan.  By not requiring my first class of students to attempt all categories of standards, I was doing them a disservice; we'll see how this next unit goes!  


For the first attempt, students completed four units over the course of nine weeks, an overly ambitious goal in hindsight. They were required to cover three of the five major literary periods: Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation, Neoclassical, Romantic/Victorian, and Modern; they were allowed to repeat one period. Students also had to read "long texts," meaning books, plays, or the equivalent in essays or poems; supplementary material, like artwork or poetry, was also a requirement, but that has subsequently been removed. Instead, students are now required to read fifteen poems of their choosing over the course of the class; I'll have to blog more about this in the future, since it is still an aspect of the course that I am working through. With the first class, we did not work through periods together; students could choose any book at any point. This proved to be completely chaotic--it separated students from each other since there were always a handful that chose completely unique texts that no one else read. There was a lack of class community, which I disliked, so this quarter, our first two units are designed around time periods: Medieval/Renaissance and Neoclassic/Romantic. This has provided a better opportunity for students to work collaboratively with other students who are either reading the same text or working through the same time period.

I wish I had started blogging when I made my first attempt at a totally student-designed course this past fall. Aspects of the course change nearly daily since there are so many decisions to be made.  My students in the fall were truly pioneers in their own right; while I may have "developed" the idea for the course, there is no way I could have kept it going if it hadn't been for them. Because really, that's the beauty of this type of class: it's exactly what the kids decide it will be.