Baby Steps in Backwards Planning. Haaaay!

For the sake of not repeating Kelsey’s post below this one, I will just say that our arrangement of the unit chunks is working out better than the process I had envisioned when we started creating pieces of the unit.

As Kelsey pointed out, this week we’re focusing on creating our final project prompts. Working this way helps us a) see the initial, broad scope of the unit. Now that we’re actually looking at the, “what do we want them to take away from the unit?” question, we’re looking at it from a true backwards planning perspective in which we plan based on what the students will need to learn in order to succeed in the final component/end of the unit.

I am definitely much more confident in this new unit I’m creating. It seems like it’s giving me a lot to work with and a lot of potential, which I’ve already mentioned is also a disadvantage when it comes to trying to narrow the scope.

I’m using Blending Genre, Altering Style by Tom Romano as my methods text because I want the final product to be a portfolio of their previous work, but they will need additional material in order to create one, coherent portfolio. I’m drawing from Blending Genre because Romano brings up a lot of activities for writing in multiple genres, which is largely what the unit is composed of, and how to make clear connections (with other pieces of writing) between each component of the work. So, as a whole, the portfolio will consist of past work, reflections on said work, connector pieces, and 1-2 new pieces of writing that they will do for the portfolio.  

Based on the things I want students to have created for the portfolio/multigenre, I anticipate that they will need the following throughout the unit:

- Promote organization (potentially a binder they’ll put all work into)
- Multiple genres of writing (analysis, synthesis, film review, short story)
- Making connections between the work they produce (deeper than chronology)
- Annotations
- Responding and reflecting to progress and growth throughout (i.e. quality of drafts versus final products).

I am a little bit worried about how to fit everything in because I really want to do so much with it. I hope I can fit it into a 6-8 week timeline, so I will be creating a bare-bones week-by-week calendar. I am anticipating that seeing really how short 6-8 weeks is will kind of help me weed out some less important components, readings, assignments, etc.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, I’d love to hear it!

:)