What to consider in a unit

It turns out that unit planning is, to me at least, kind of fun. I didn't really anticipate unit planning with any sort of excitement, but as an activity it allows you to ask bigger, more interesting questions about your curricular development and what it is that you want students to know. This is really powerful, considering that, even moreso than lesson planning, unit planning allows you as a teacher to get at your long-term desires for your students' learning. Lesson plans ask you to consider what growth your students will complete today - unit planning asks you ton consider what growth your students will complete over weeks, or even months of learning. So, instead of having to ensure that students know how to use the quadratic formula, for example, a unit plan challenges you to reflect on why the learning is happening in the first place, and how you can help students relate their learning to their worlds from a broad perspective. It's fun!!

In the future, and for any students who are planning to develop units of their own, I would emphasize the importance of backward design in unit planning. Trying to construct a unit, that is, putting together pieces until you have a cohesive product, might work, but I think you're going to set yourself up for a lot more success if you think of unit planning like painting a picture, in that you want to have a final product in your head before you start working. That, I found, allowed me to keep all my thoughts and potential lesson ideas on track, while also serving as a fundamental guide for where I could go next if I couldn't come up with any ideas that felt good.

It's that guiding, overall picture that does it. Unit plans allow for discussion of learning on a large scale, and with that comes the need for larger goals and dreams for students. Focus on the big picture, and go down from there!