week+of+mar+16+and+18

During this week we will know different kinds of reading strategies (visualize, connect, synthesize, infer, predict, analyze perspectives), and we will identify what we want students to be able to do as readers (process) when they read the texts we choose for our units and what we want students to know or think about when they are reading (content).

March 16

Writing our way in ... (These can be fictional or true)
 * Write about a time when a stranger became a friend
 * Write about a time when you saw generosity in action
 * Write about a time when a child taught you something

Reading

Meeting in our book club groups to prepare for Thursday's presentations

March 18 Writing our way in ...

Book Club presentations (you'll need a sheet detailing your strategy's steps and purposes so that we can refer to it when we go teach)

Drafts of all the performance tasks you imagine you'll ask your students to try in your unit. (Pick the three most central performance tasks. Use the GRASPS heuristic)

For next week ... On Tuesday March 23 - bring in a stack of student work. We'll take time on this day to talk about creating rubrics, which means we'll look at UBD chapter 8

On Thursday March 25 - You'll want to bring in drafts of rubrics for each of your performance tasks. For this, you might begin with a description of what you would want an effective performance to look like and/or do. Also, bring in the texts you think you'll use during your unit, so that we can begin to plan what strategies you want your students to engage in and what activities you can design before/during/after the reading of each text to help students practice that strategy.

Just as a reminder ... your final annotated unit plan portfolio will have the following elements below. As you'll notice, you have finished about half of the work for this, which means you have made some of the most difficult planning decisions already. After Spring Break, we'll be "workshopping" our units, conferring with one another and with me, and mapping out both the overview of the unit, as well as specific lesson plans.

This annotated unit plan portfolio will include the following: · A rationale for this unit of study · The essential questions that serves as a frame the unit and that students will pursue during the unit · The learning goals · The Key Performance Tasks and the Rubrics for them · 7 consecutive days of daily lesson plans · The progression of front-loading activities that begin the unit · A calendar that serves as an overview of the unit (what might happen in class each day) · A list of resources needed for the unit · Reflections for the unit rationale, the PTs and rubrics, the daily lesson plans, and the front-loading activity