Colleague+Correspondent+Reflection

Colleague Correspondent Reflection

My colleague correspondent is Nancy Cibor, a Life Management and Social Studies teacher at Groves High School in Birmingham, Michigan. She teaches mostly Life Management, but has taught Social Studies throughout her teaching career. When I talked to her about designing a unit plan, she was very specific and detailed on how she designs a unit. As I asked her how she goes about making a plan, she began to give me a list on what she does. First, check the benchmarks the state has for each unit. Those benchmarks can provide a base for what you have to teach and provides a skeleton to your units. Next, check on what your department wants you teach. When you have those benchmarks and know what you need to teach, look at the end product, decide what you want your students to know by the end of the semester. When you know what the students should know by the end of the year, teachers will have a better understanding on what you need to teach in order to make your students successful in your class.

She began to tell me how then start designing a unit plan, or at least how she designs a unit plan. She begins by reading the book. She won't read the entire book in detail; skimming some pages/chapters and spending more time on others. She will then cut out what she doesn't think will be important in what she wants her students to know by the end of the semester. If there is material in the book that is not in there, she will supplement it with outside material such as projects in order to fill in the gaps. Once she has established all that, she will begin to design her unit plan for 1, 2, or 3 chapters if the are relavent to each other. She will use quizzes, test, and projects to make sure her students are understanding and on track for what she wants them to know and sometimes. Before her final, she will sometimes make a smaller version of her final to make sure that the students are fully grasping what she expects.

After my interview with her, I liked how she had her unit planning in bullets and in the form of a plan. She is clearly no stranger to unit plans and has done many throughout her career. Her steps also seemed like they were similar to how we were making our unit plans. Her expectations for her students during the semester is similar to our Essential Understandings. I like how she goes about designing her unit plan, she sets goals, finds out what she wants her students to learn and make sures her students learn it.