Reflecting on Unit Planning Unit planning involves lots of planning in many different directions.

Planning ahead and planning backward at almost the same time. The planning ahead part happens first. The first step at designing a lesson plan is figuring out what your end goal is. What do you want your students to know when they reach the end of the unit? What are the big ideas that you want them to come away with? Once that is figured out it is time to design the end of unit assessment. After the assessment is made then you go backwards and plan each individual lesson out to make sure that it fits into the plan of what you want your students to know at the end of the unit. I struggled with the planning ahead part of the unit planning during the fall semester as I am a fairly linear person. I like to know where I am going AND how I am going to get there before I get my hands dirty. So the backwards planning was a challenge for me to implement as it required me to figure out where I was going to end up and getting my hands dirty without first figuring out how I was going to get there. The first unit plan I did I started by making the end of unit assessment first, assessing my students on what I thought were the big ideas. Then I went and planned out each individual lesson. As the end of the unit started to approach I realized that the assessment that I had created was not going to do as good of a job assessing what the students had learned during the unit as I had originally thought. So I ended up changing the assessment to better assess what my students had learned during the unit. This totally defeated the purpose of the backward planning. So I worked harder the next time to create an end of unit assessment that actually captured the big ideas in the assessment but more on that later. For me I really grew in my ability to backwards plan a unit by the time the second semester and my lead teach rolled around I had a much better grasp of how to approach the backward planning method successfully.

For my early unit assessments I was caught up more on trying to assess everything that my students would learn in the unit rather than just finding the big ideas and assessing my students on the big ideas of the unit. Here are some examples from one of my first assessments: y = 3x + 6 Slope: _______ y-int:_______ y = -5x +7 Slope: ________ y-int: _________ y = 6x-9 Slope: ________ y-int: _________

Notice how the questions are very specific only asking students to identify parts of the equation. What is the slope? What is the y-intercept? These types of questions only tell you that students know what the different parts of the equation are. While it is important that they understand what the different parts are it is more important that they know how to use the equation to answer a questions and/or to set up the equation from given information. A students knowledge of what the different parts of the equation are can be seen in a much more complex question. Such as one that gives students some information (yes the oft dreaded story problem) and has them set up the equation and use it to solve for something. An example of a more complex question that actually assesses students knowledge of the smaller ideas while also testing their knowledge of the big ideas can be seen below. It is a question taken from an end of unit assessment from this spring. Your grandparents decide to give you a monthly allowance for helping them with household chores. They give you two payment options: 1. Receive a penny to start with, and double your money each day for 30 days. 2. Start with $0 and receive $20 each day for 30 days. 1. Create an equation for each payment option: Payment Option 1 Equation: Equation: Payment Option 2

This question above was one of four questions asked about the two given payment options. This one question alone assesses whether the students know what the different parts of the equation are as they have to put the pieces together to make the equation. But before they can put together

the pieces they first have to find the pieces of information that they need from the given information. They have to know that for option 2 it is linear and the constant rate (or slope) is 20 and the y-intercept is 0 since you start with no money. For option 1 a student must recognize that the relationship is exponential and that the y-intercept is 0.01 since you start with 1 penny and the growth factor is 2 since it doubles every day. This type of problem assesses students understanding of far bigger ideas than just what the different parts of the equation are, yet it is still apparent from a students response to this question whether they understand what the different parts of the equation are. These are the types of questions that I started to use in my end of unit assessments (and the rest of my assessments for that matter). For one it cut down on the number of questions that students were asked to complete. It also goes straight to the point on assessing the students on how well they understand the bigger idea of the concept while still allowing me to see if the students understand the smaller ideas. It gives me and my students more bang for our buck. Another change that I made from my first semester unit plans to the ones I made second semester was in the plans themselves. Below is an example of my unit objectives from one of my first unit plans in the fall.

Knowledge
Students will know

Objectives Skills
Students will be able to - Use the slope of a line to sketch a graph of a line - Find the slope of a line from data in a table, graph, or equation. - Find the y-intercept of a line from data in a table graph, or equation. - Use slope m and y-intercept b to write an equation in the form y = mx + b - Write an equation for an applied situation when the only information given is two data points.

- That the slope of a line is the ratio of vertical change (change in y) to horizontal change (change in x) between two points on a line or ratio of rise over run. - That the slope and rate of change represent the same information about the given situation. - That parallel lines have the same slope and that perpendicular lines have slopes that are negative reciprocals of each other.

The objectives themselves were very basic and very specific. These objectives were similar to the types of questions I was asking on my assessments; they were smaller ideas that missed the bigger picture from the unit. This focus on the smaller ideas for my objectives is part of the cause for my assessments to also contain such surface level questions as what is the slope and yintercept of the equation. In the spring semester I really focused on my objectives and making sure that they hit the big ideas of the unit. Then when I developed my end of unit assessment I went through and mapped out which problem in the assessment addressed which objectives. This allowed me to make sure that my unit objectives were in line with my unit assessment. Below is an example of my unit objectives from a unit plan during my lead teaching.

Knowledge
Students will know

Objectives Skills
Students will be able to - Construct equations to express exponential patterns that appear in data tables, graphs, and problem conditions. - Apply the rules for operating on numerical expressions with exponents. - Solve problems about exponential growth and decay from a variety of different subject areas, including science and business. - Compare exponential and linear relationships

- How to recognize situations in which one variable is an exponential function of another. - How to recognize connections between exponential equations and growth patterns in tables and graphs of those equations. - The difference between exponential and linear relationships and be able to identify the type of relationships from graphs, tables, and/or equations.

These unit objectives were not as specific as the ones from my first unit plans. These objectives got at the big idea rather than each tiny detail that added up to the big idea, though if the students could achieve these objectives then it would be apparent whether or not the students knew the smaller details or not. These improved objectives also helped me improve my end of unit assessments in order to be sure I was testing my students on the big ideas. These more broad objectives required my questions to address the larger idea rather than having lots of questions asking surface level details in order to assess the understanding of my students.

Another thing that changed from the fall to the spring was my daily lesson plans for the unit. In the fall I simply included a description of what the students would be doing for the day under each daily lesson learning objective. This made it difficult for me to know as I was teaching if I was staying on track for the objective of the day. Also the way the descriptions were written it sounded like it was all my responsibility to get the students to learn the material. Here is an example from the fall:

Get students to connect slope to rates of change. Get students to be able to find the slope and y-intercept from different representations and create an equation. In the spring however I made some changes. First of all I added a question to each lesson learning objective. This question was to serve me as a guide as I was teaching. If I was wondering if I was staying on topic all I had to do was refer to the question. It made it easier for me to check and keep myself on the right track each day. Here is an example from the spring:

How do different exponential patterns compare? Students expand on Problem 1.2 by comparing new reward plans. Students continue to recognize exponential patterns in tables, graphs, and equations. They also compare different exponential growth patterns and their representations in tables, graphs, and equations. The second change I made this spring and almost as important as the first change was how I worded my lesson learning objectives. Though I still included a description of what the students would be doing for the lesson each day I changed the wording. Instead of the focus being on me and it seeming like I had to do all of the hard work (get students to) it became more about what the students would be doing to learn the material themselves (Students expand onStudents compare). That wording change made a huge difference in how I viewed the success of a lesson. It went from being Did I do a good enough job telling the students

everything they needed to know? to What did the students discover during the lesson?. The change from the more negative (Did I) to the more positive (What did they learn?) helped keep me from getting discouraged when the lesson didnt go quite as I had originally planned. I have greatly improved my ability to use the backwards planning method from the beginning of the year to the present. The evidence can be seen above. In the beginning it was like I was looking at the individual brush strokes of a painting and ignoring the beautiful picture that the strokes make together. I was caught up in the tiny little details almost to a fault. As the year progressed I began to realize that though each brush stroke was important, it was the picture that they made together that was the most important. I learned to see the big ideas that were the important takeaways from each unit rather than each small concept. I learned to keep my eye on the final picture and not become too focused on the individual strokes.