Continuing Education Option

Continuing Education Option
Designing Instructional Units/Action Research
Designing Instructional Units, Lesson 7. Section 2
 

Using the content and instructional goals and objectives you have established for your CEO Plan, you will design instructional units and gather data from the units demonstrating you have met your goals.  You must demonstrate your growth over time in developing the skills needed to address the goals and objectives you have established for your CEO.

 Lesson 7 will provide guidance as you read articles and other resources by which to gather research-based strategies and knowledge of skills needed to address your goals for successful instructional units. 

 Your instructional units:

According to KDE, an instructional unit: 

• contains cohesive, sequential connections to previous and current learning and aligns with school curriculum map.
• provides an organizer around an issue, problem, question, or goal that engages students and connects their learning to prior knowledge, experiences, skills, beliefs, and customs.
• proposes essential questions that address selected content strands, promote students' thinking, result in active application of learning, and draw attention to the relevance of learning in students' lives.
• includes opportunities for student inquiry, conferencing, reflection, research-based activities, and problem-based learning.
• includes equitable instructional practices and multiple cultural perspectives that address the needs of all students.
• contains authentic assessments that include appropriate writing tasks (e.g., open response, on-demand, and portfolio-appropriate writing tasks) that reflect the identified content and performance standards and essential questions.
• communicates clearly the focus of instruction and performance expectations to students, parents, and others. 
• communicates clearly behavioral expectations to students, parents, and others.
• aims for students' real-world understanding and lifelong application of learning including career options.

Instructional Unit Templates 

Once you have completed Phase I, you will be gathering resources to complete the other phases.  During Phase II you will complete your action research. Instructional units will be developed and implemented during Phase III based on action research.  To create your instructional units the following templates will be used.

CEO Instructional Unit Templates: (Save your work to your computer or jump drive).

Document 1: Designing an Instructional Unit  

• The instructional unit and the objectives selected will directly align to the instructional and content goals you’ve selected, as well as to the Kentucky curriculum.  Click http://www.education.ky.gov/KDE/ for links to the Kentucky curriculum documents. 

Document 2: Assessment Plan 

For your instructional unit you will design assessments that align to your learning objectives and desired depth of knowledge.  Your assessments will encourage higher-order thinking and will be aligned when: 

1. pre- and summative assessments cover the same material.
2. assessments are consistent with the types of knowledge and skills identified in your objectives.
3. instruction given is matched to objectives and to the way students must demonstrate knowledge and skills in assessments.

Your assessment plan must include both formative and summative measures conducted at key points during instruction.

 Document 3: Teaching and Learning Context

 Complete this document for each class to which you present the unit. Update as needed to capture any changes to your classroom demographics.

 Document 4: Lesson Plan 

Complete this lesson plan template for each lesson in the units.

 Document 5: Organizing and Analyzing Data

 Use the unit organizer to capture data.  The following documents will need to accompany the data entered in the template:

1. Pre-assessment documents used/student examples
2.  Formative assessment documents used/student examples
3. Summative assessment documents used/student examples

 Document 6: Reflections

Reflecting on the impact of instruction is a powerful teaching tool. When students do not meet the objectives, you must reflect on the objectives themselves, the planned assessments, and the instruction that took place.  The reflections template will allow you to identify gaps in students’ understanding and help you construct differentiated instruction to meet those needs.

Item # 5 of the template will require you to reflect on what you have done to help students who did not meet or master the objectives to improve their learning.

Present evidence of instructional strategies to help students understand the concept, with additional documentation of gains of those students.  You will use Document 5: Organizing and Analyzing Data again to identify the gains (or losses) of the identified gap group after differentiated instruction has occurred.

As mentioned in earlier lessons, the use of your school or district’s system of interventions will help you design differentiated instruction for these students.

Kentucky Systems of Interventions.

Response to Interventions Home Page.

 Document 7: Communication and Follow-Up

Document the information and the methods used to communicate with students, parents/caregivers, and colleagues regarding classroom expectations, student progress, and ideas for involvement by others in the students’ learning. 

Providing mid-terms and final reports are important, but these must not be the only means of communication to students and others. Data analysis of student progress and communication of results is an on-going process. 

If you have an established professional learning community in your school, you have an avenue by which to extend your communication network.

Link to Professional Learning Community