Y'all weren't kidding when you said mapping out the entire daily calendar was an arduous task. I just finished after many hours of trying to put together everything I want my unit to accomplish. What I'm noticing is that there is a huge difference between the ideological goals of a unit and the practical one. In other words, I think it is much easier to imagine the types of ideas you want your students to explore and come into conflict with and another to actually tie those to skills. In effect, the question that kept coming into my head was, "what does this critical engagement with these ideas actually look like in a classroom?" and "What is the language arts takeaway from these texts?"
I think, too, that we don't realize how long it takes for something to be taught. So, say you want to have your students complete a POV activity in which they write a letter from a perspective that is not their own. You must first teach POV, perspective, the conventions of a letter, model correct usage, find a way to engage your students, and so forth. Before you know it, what you thought could easily fit into a 6-week unit starts to look more like a semester. I had to cut away some of my goals because of this, but I don't think the unit is worse off for that reason. It's kind of like a depth versus breadth conflict. All in all - rewarding process.
The article I read concerns the uses of computer grammar checkers - you know, those green squiggly lines when you write a run-on sentence in Word. The idea of using this to teach grammar by having students become critical of these suggestions is a rather clever idea. I don't know how many times I scoff at Word's suggestions without thinking of how these can be learning moments for those learning grammar rules.
I think, too, that we don't realize how long it takes for something to be taught. So, say you want to have your students complete a POV activity in which they write a letter from a perspective that is not their own. You must first teach POV, perspective, the conventions of a letter, model correct usage, find a way to engage your students, and so forth. Before you know it, what you thought could easily fit into a 6-week unit starts to look more like a semester. I had to cut away some of my goals because of this, but I don't think the unit is worse off for that reason. It's kind of like a depth versus breadth conflict. All in all - rewarding process.
The article I read concerns the uses of computer grammar checkers - you know, those green squiggly lines when you write a run-on sentence in Word. The idea of using this to teach grammar by having students become critical of these suggestions is a rather clever idea. I don't know how many times I scoff at Word's suggestions without thinking of how these can be learning moments for those learning grammar rules.
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