Unit Progress

The Unit..

It’s going…

I feel like I should be more excited to do it, but I’m mostly stressed out about it because it’s hard for me to find just one direction and stick with it. I wish I could do so many things with it, but I know I have to limit myself. Even in doing so, I still notice that I’m trailing off into lesson ideas that would inflate my unit from the original 6-week schedule to a year-long event.

Since my last blog post, I have completely 180’d my lesson. Now, my essential question is, “What is (romantic) Love?” – derived from the lesson Sarah modeled for us in class a couple weeks back. I really liked the idea of this lesson because it was very obvious and vague at first, but once Sarah started branching off into the various texts and directions you could take with it, I decided, “Why not try the obvious!?” Though it was kind of redundant at first, it's shaping up quite nicely so far!

I really am starting to get a bit less stressed because I think I’ve finally chosen all of the “big” texts/short stories that’ll go in my annotated bibliography and will definitely be used in the unit. Not each decision is concrete just yet, and I’m trying to keep my options open just in case other ideas pop up.

One of my biggest struggles is with the timing and schedule of creating the unit. I know we’re supposed to kind of set our own schedule on this thing, but I’m having a hard time backwards designing, when it doesn’t feel like I’m starting with the final project or the end goal. This might be totally due to what chunks my group and I have chosen to turn in when. I don’t know... Does anyone else feel this way? I literally feel like I should start with the last component (like writing the final project prompt or something). It works for me either way, and I’m not minding the steps thus far, but I don’t want to be completely missing the idea of backwards design if I’m doing it wrong!

As a part of this week’s unit chunk, my group and I have decided to turn in a unit sketch (exactly the one we did for The Wednesday Wars at the beginning of the semester), and it’s taking a crapload of time, but, for me, it’s worth it. It’s not a chunk Sarah is asking us for because it’s not technically a component of the unit, but if you liked doing it for TWW, I’d totally do it again. It’s helping me think ahead to some components like the rationale and the individual lessons.

If anyone has any suggestions about the backwards design thing pleeease share!

Thanks for reading!