Unit planning and building has been an intersting experience. There are many thought processes and requirements to work through to reach the vision you have in your head. My biggest takeaway from building a unit is that you really have to consider what is going to be happening in each lesson, even if you're not planning each lesson individually. This is because you're thinking through the standards and trying to make sure that your big ideas and essential questions match the standards, as well as what part of the DOK matrix you expect students to be able to meet. Essentially, my biggest takeaway is that everything ties together and you really need to consider all the moving parts, even when you're specifically working on only one. This part can seem hard at first, but I can also see, how with practice, it becomes like second nature.
Connections in the unit, as I said above, really seem to be in every single part of the planning. For instance, when I figured out what standards my unit would be meeting, I then had to make sure to think about them and refer back to them as I wrote the learning objectives, which I then needed to connect to the DOK matrix and ensure that I was meeting different levels and different skills to create an overall well-rounded unit. These all had to be connected to the final summative project, so that what students learn throughout the unit is then properly demonstrated and applied at the end. Making these connections seems key to me so that the unit plan flows togeher smoothly and makes sense every step of the way.
I think I would probably want to think of something that could connect this unit with more traditional science standards, honestly, so that I could find standards that are appropriate for the unit easier. Agriculture has a lot of connections to environment, comparisons to wild animals, as well as understanding anatomy and physiology, down to the genes, which are all important things to know in science. This could easily move into a unit on evolution or genetics. I would also want to maybe think more about the sequence of how I would want my lessons to be, so I could order the learning objectives in a more chronological way. This would also help me with creating a final assessment that can demonstrate all of the learning objectives. I think this would help me show the scaffolding and increasing challenge as I move up the levels and skills of the DOK matrix in a more sensical order.
The best thing I can tell others about unit planning and what to do, is don't be afraid to plan your dream unit. Yes, it was harder for me, because I was basing this more around my own education and something I'd like to see, rather than things I have witnessed in practice at a high school level and it was harder for me because finding specific agriculutrally related standards that would also meet science standards was difficult without help. However, I now have a better understanding of what goes into unit planning and I have my dream unit to present at interviews or at the school I end up at, should it come up. I think having the thought out evidence and work done could make it so the dream is more likely to become a reality and also gives you experience should you end up at a school that doesn't necessarily provide a curriculum for a unit. Make sure to give it your time and share your thoughts with others, because having people to bounce ideas off of and help make it that much better is alwasy an asset that you want to utilize whenever you can.
