Unit+Plan+Ideas

Please post your ideas for your Unit Plans here. Let us know 1) your content area and 2) 3 possible ideas for a unit to teach in the spring.

Name. Content area. 3 possible ideas. Please **do not hyperlink** your response. Just type it right here.

**Meredith Lindsay:** 7th Grade Social Studies. For my unit plan, I will be teaching WWII and I have tossed around the idea of using division as my theme. I am not completely satisfied with this idea, so I am thinking of other options. I want students to compare firsthand accounts written during the holocaust as an inquiry based learning project. Another idea I have is making "foldables", which will have the causes of WWII on the top and when you open this up there will be a definition of the cause and then a picture that correlates with that idea. I would also like to involve some sort of writing activity whether it is writing a letter to a dictator, or to a pivotal person during this time period. I still have a lot of ideas circulating in my head, just trying to flush out exactly what I want to do, since my teacher just changed what I was teaching!

**Alyson Cockerham**: 6th Grade Social Studies: In staying with the schedule of my cooperating teacher, I have been instructed to teach a unit on The Middle Ages/Renaissance period. I find this topic to be interesting, so I am excited to use a little creativity and make this as fun as possible for my students! I believe a good theme for this unit will be creativity/innovation/personal expression, so I hope to give my students the freedom to express themselves through their work.

**Kelly McGoldrick**: //8th Grade Social Studies//. My unit will start during the end of the 1920's, go through the great depression and end in WWII. My theme is a focus on human made disasters and how societies rebuild from their own depressions/disasters/debts. I want to use Grapes of wrath to show how farmers were affected, the stock market to show how wall street was affected and cause and effect situations through out this time period.


 * Sarah Parker:** //8th Grade Social Studies //. My unit will cover the Industrial Revolution. At first, I could not even figure out how to go about the themes for this topic, but I decided to focus on the innovation side of the Industrial Revolution and it's impact on America. My ideas for theme an rationale are as follows: **Theme:** Changes in America, Integration of Technology, How History Impacts Our Future. **Rationale:** Students will learn the importance of technology (Factories, Cotton Gin, Railroad, etc.) and how it has impacted the changes in America (transportation, need for materials, infrastructure, etc.). All of these details add up to the impact that our history has had on our future (expansion of factory system , transportation systems, accessibility to products, overproduction, etc.).

// **Class** // : 8th grade Social Studies, US History/NC History The students will be coming out of a unit on Industrialization and I will be launching into a World War 1 Unit. This will be a thematic unit on conflict, compromise, and change. World War I is a vital topic in history because this is the first time that major world powers met on a stage of grand destruction, new technology was put to use in deadly ways, and the US emerged as a world power spring boarding our country into the 20th century. Students will learn about the nature of conflict, the value of compromise, and the certainty of change. This unit should be taught because our students need to understand the role of the US in foreign policy as well as how to handle conflict, compromise, and change in real life. // **Rationale** // : My students need to know about the reasons why this war started (conflicts over militarism, nationalism, land, industrialization, mobilization, and the alliance system) about the outcomes of the war (compromise with Wilson's 14 points, the League of Nations, eventually the United Nations) and the effects of the war (change of technology in war, psychology of battle, and devastating loss of human life). My students will also gain a sense of how to resolve conflict with compromise and how to adapt to change or be the catalyst for change.
 * Mandi Harding:**
 * //Focus// ** : World War 1
 * //Theme// ** :Conflict, Compromise, and Change in the Great War

**Ebony Littlejohn:** (6th grade Social Studies ). My unit will be on Ancient Africa and Ancient South Asia. Some of the themes I will focus on will be 1.) History of each (the record of the past), 2.) geography (location, movement, human-environment interaction) and 3.) culture. My unit will focus on cultural awareness as I want students to develop an appreciation of diversity among other cultures. My hope is that through my unit students will recognize many similarities between their cultures and that of ancient cultures. I will be teaching from February 24-March 28.

Kaitlyn Lee- My CT (6th grade ELA) has suggested that I focus on poetry for my unit. At first she asked me to teach the different kinds of poetry but didn't suggest a theme. After a few emails she finally said that the unit she will be on is "Making Choices." I am a little bummed because I wanted to pick my own theme... but I understand that I need to do what is most comfortable with my CT. I have decided to just have fun with it!

**Amy Barton-**- My CT (8th grade language arts ) gave me the idea to do a unit on human captivity throughout history and how it is portrayed through literature. Here is how my unit will be structured: Week 1. Holocaust, Week 2. Slavery in 1800s America, Week 3. Japanese Internment, Week 4. Civil Rights, Week 5. Modern day slavery around the world.

Andi Cooper- Unit Plan Ideas (8th grade social studies )- My CT told me that I need to do my unit plan on "pre-civil war into the civil war". So for my 5 week unit plan I will try to focus each week on a different portion of the civil war. Week 1- identifying the causes of the Civil war. Week 2- The sequence of the first events in the war. Week 3- Life during the war, Emancipation Proclamation, shifts during the war, elections during the war. Week 4- The end of the war. Week 5- Life after the war.

I will be teaching from Feb. 3 - March 7.
 * Chelsea Bowman:** Eighth Grade Social Studies - My five week unit plan will be on the Civil War. My 3 themes might be: Freedom, Sacrifice, and Memory. I plan on using a lot of primary documents for the students to investigate and think critically about this significant time in our nations history. I will probably use timelines, primary source documents, and I would love the students to have a project to go along with this unit.

Theme: identity - I will have students examine how the main characters life changes her identity, and we will make personal connections to the students lives and what influences their identity.
 * Meaghan White:** 6th grade LA/SS. I will be teaching the novel, __The Devil's Arithmetic__, for my unit in the Spring. My CT told me I should teach authors tone, purpose, mood, and genre along with the novel. I am currently reading the novel, so upon completion I hope to have some more ideas. I will be teaching my unit from Feb. 3 - Mar 7.

Melissa O'Connor: Sixth Grade Language Arts My five week unit plan will be on Making Choices. The common novel is __ Stepping on the Cracks __. This will allow us to discuss WW2 and bullying. There will be an emphasis on various texts--and I will be pulling in poetry about the bystander, and nonfiction articles related to history and bullying. I am going to be teaching from Feb. 10-March 14. I will begin modeling/taking over two weeks prior to this, which marks the beginning of the unit.

**Katelyn Lorick**: Seventh Grade Language Arts My five week plan will be based on "The Quest for Perfection". This is the theme of the third unit for my CT's class. I will be focusing on using short stories and articles to teach the basis of this theme. I will not be teaching a novel because my CT does not teach many novels in her classroom. Everything I do will be focused on this theme. I have yet to figure out exactly what short stories and other texts I will be using. I will be using many articles because my CT does an "Article of the Week" each week. I will be teaching a lot about writing as well. More to come!

Denel Rhyne: Eighth Grade Language Arts My CT and I are discussing doing a unit on __The Book Thief__, My school's unit theme for this is "risking it all". I would also consider the themes belonging, making decisions, as well as risking it all. I will also be encorporate so part of __Anne Frank's Diary__ into my lesson to tie into __The Book Thief__.

Jessica Baughman: Sixth Grade Language Arts 3 possible ideas: Belonging, Making Choices, and Tuck Everlasting My CT and I are looking to do some form of a unit on making choices.

Joe Kolousek - Unit Plan

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kayla DeWald - Unit Plan

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kyle Davenport: Eighth Grade Social Studies

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My CT has pretty much guaranteed that I'm going to be teaching the Civil War. I'm tempted to just copy Andi's post, but I'll refrain.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The plan: Week one (really the first few days) will go toward the important people, battles, and documents of the war. After covering the basics I will dedicate a week to the reasons why each side fought, what they fought with, and what some of the problems each side faced with their own populations. I want to dedicate at least 2-4 days to the people out in the mountain region of NC who resisted the war and ended up being labeled insurgents for being neutral (they thought it was a poor man's fight for a rich man's war). From there We'll look at how the war ended and how the last campaigns of the war effected how we moved forward as a country from there.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lena McKinley: Sixth Grade Language Arts. My theme will be titled "Decisions, Decisions" and based around the idea of making choices for all five weeks. My unit will be broken down into two parts: the first two weeks will be poetry and the following three weeks will be elements of a story. I will be working with short stories and poems rather than a novel based on my CT's recommendation. I will start teaching the last week in February.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kara Wenberg: Sixth Grade Social Studies. My theme is "People Then and Now". They will be learning about the Middle Ages. The very beginning of the unit will rely heavily on the Black Death. Students will write news articles about the epidemic and present them to the class. We will also look at the different artists of that time and the students will create their own art work and we will have a gallery showing of their work. We will also look at doing a project with Martin Luther and his "95 Theses". My CT tends to rely on a lot of worksheets, I was going to try to incorporate these more for homework, but rely heavily on them.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Catherine Hanes:** 6th grade Social Studies: My unit plan will be covering the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. My main theme over these three events in history is "change is a good thing." Some learning activities that I thought would be fun would be: experiencing the black plague first hand (not literally), building middle age castles and thinking about the geographical features that would help protect it, different types of government, gallery walk of all the artists during the renaissance, write a newspaper article about the new technology invented in the scientific revolution. Some great materials that I was thinking of using would be: staying away from boring text books and using things like primary sources to spice things up, importance of vocabulary, fun projects, active learning, technology and programs provided by SAS, brainpop, etc. My CT has provided me with a lot of support and has totally offered up his classroom to whatever I think is necessary to complete this unit. He also is a very fun and involved teacher so I am really excited to be working in this kind of environment (this is the way I would like to run my classroom).

Jennifer Beichner- 6th Grade Social Studies: My unit plan covers Pre-Colonial Africa. The theme of my unit is Cultural and Geographical Investigations. My reasoning in choosing this theme has to do with the kind of activity and thinking I want my students to be involved in during my unit. I want my students to be active investigators of history. I want my students to be able to explore and discovery new information through looking into the changing cultures and geographical settings. I want my students to feel like they are the one's discovering new information about Pre-colonial Africa versus having me, the teacher, give them a series of facts. The more they are actively engaged in the creation of their learning, the deeper I believe the material will resonate with them. I chose to theme my unit around the idea of “investigations” because I want the core of my unit to involve as many primary sources, (documents, artifacts, pictures, sculptures) as I can. My Unit is two weeks long (10 school days.)