I think my Unit planning is going . . . . somewhere that's pretty ok. I think. For the most part, all I've done is throw out everything I had already. It seems that after printing all my work and thinking and reading and thinking and reading I just decided to say, "EFF it!"
One of the biggest deciding factors for scratching some, or actually most, of my work was the arrival of my copy of Tom Romano's "Fearless Writing." I think I wrote about it briefly last week. I read it all on Thursday and it was phenomenal! I wanted my final project assignment to be a Multi-genre Research Paper, but even though I had read two of Romano's books on Multigenre, this last text was incredible helpful. It focuses on many things that made me consider my approach to weekly lessons. For example, after reading this book, I redid the instructions for my Multigenre Project. I required two specific pieces (of genre) be included. However, as Romano discusses in one of the chapters, often times teachers require things that students don't already know how to do. I think we also touched on this subject briefly last week in class. So, I decided to scratch many things from my original Unit Plan. I looked at the Multigenre Project and decided that, as Romano explains, this is an opportunity to teach kids so many different things that the Common Core requires. So, one of the required pieces of the project was a short piece of expository writing. I would have to teach this, just in case. Another required piece is a poem. I thought, "cool!" The two poems I want to work with from Poetry 180 would be introductory poems, and then we could focus on poetry for the rest of the week. We can look at copy-changing different styles, which Romano talks about, btw. I also ask for footnotes and a bibliography, so this would also be taught. In retrospect, this "fluff" I'm teaching (multi genre) is also an opportunity for my kids to learn other skills they'll need in college.
Writing about it now, I feel comfortable for throwing away what I previously had. Now, my concern is organization. How do I work on that?
One of the biggest deciding factors for scratching some, or actually most, of my work was the arrival of my copy of Tom Romano's "Fearless Writing." I think I wrote about it briefly last week. I read it all on Thursday and it was phenomenal! I wanted my final project assignment to be a Multi-genre Research Paper, but even though I had read two of Romano's books on Multigenre, this last text was incredible helpful. It focuses on many things that made me consider my approach to weekly lessons. For example, after reading this book, I redid the instructions for my Multigenre Project. I required two specific pieces (of genre) be included. However, as Romano discusses in one of the chapters, often times teachers require things that students don't already know how to do. I think we also touched on this subject briefly last week in class. So, I decided to scratch many things from my original Unit Plan. I looked at the Multigenre Project and decided that, as Romano explains, this is an opportunity to teach kids so many different things that the Common Core requires. So, one of the required pieces of the project was a short piece of expository writing. I would have to teach this, just in case. Another required piece is a poem. I thought, "cool!" The two poems I want to work with from Poetry 180 would be introductory poems, and then we could focus on poetry for the rest of the week. We can look at copy-changing different styles, which Romano talks about, btw. I also ask for footnotes and a bibliography, so this would also be taught. In retrospect, this "fluff" I'm teaching (multi genre) is also an opportunity for my kids to learn other skills they'll need in college.
Writing about it now, I feel comfortable for throwing away what I previously had. Now, my concern is organization. How do I work on that?
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