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Georgia Performance Standards

Unit Planning inEnglish Language Arts


Standards-Based Education

1. Identify Desired Results (Learning Goals)

2. Develop an Assessment Plan(Evidence of Learning)

3. Make Instructional Decisions (Planned Learning Opportunities)


Collaborating to Determine a Course Plan

1. Block or traditional

2. Number of instructional units per semester/course

3. Focus of each unit (This may be a genre, a literary period, a theme, etc., but not a particular novel or resource.)

4. Order of units


Power Standards in ELA

R1 Comprehension and Interpretation R2 Acquisition and Application of VocabularyR3 Oral Reading Competency

RC1 1,000,000 wordsRC2 Discusses topics related to content

readingRC3 Content vocabularyRC4 Puts reading in context

Power Standard


Power Standards in ELAW1 Organization, structure, and context

W2 Competence in a variety of genres

W3 Research and technology to support writing

W4 Timed and process writing

C1 Usage and mechanics

LSV1 Verbal interactions: S-T; S-S; Group

LSV2 Media literacy

Power Standard

Power Standard


Want to teach a child to read? Give him a pencil.

Want to teach a child to write? Give him a book.


It makes sense to teach the two together.

• You will note that many of the terms and concepts found in the reading standards are also included in the writing standards.


Reading and Writing Standards walk hand in hand

Expository TextsReading Writing

• Applies knowledge of organizational structures/patterns

• Recognizes and traces development of author’s argument or perspective

• Identifies supporting evidence/details

• Develops a controlling idea or perspective

• Develops with supporting evidence/details

• Creates and organizing structure

• Follows an appropriate organization pattern


PersuasionReading Writing

• Applies knowledge of organizational structures/patterns

• Recognizes and traces development of author’s argument or perspective

• Identifies supporting evidence

• States a clear position or perspective

• Supports with evidence

• Creates and organizing structure


ELA Writing and Reading standards walk hand in hand.

• ELA8R1 The student demonstrates comprehension and can explain a variety of literary genres.

• C. analyzes character traits

• F. Evaluates elements of plot

• G. Analyzes the effects of sound, figurative language, and author’s use of words

• ELA8W2 The student demonstrates competence in a variety of genres (narrative account.)

• A. Engages the reader by establishing a plot, setting, and point of view

• E. Develops complex characters

• H. Uses a range of strategies (including figurative language.)


Reading, writing, and listening/speaking/viewing all work hand in hand to help students internalize or synthesize important information. Consider it this way, most teachers will agree that they learned more about their subject area after they started teaching it. To teach content we must first process it ourselves. Taking information that we read and converting it to a written or spoken product requires us to summarize, categorize, and synthesize new information. We have to connect it to prior knowledge and decide how to best assimilate that new information with what we already know. The same process is true for students. If we ask them to process and share new information through reading, writing, and listening/speaking/viewing activities they must begin to connect and assimilate that information.

When creating units for ELA plan to integrate these three components.


Determining Learning Goals for an ELA Unit

Unit

Listening, Speaking, and

ViewingWriting

Reading


VIPs—Very Important Points

• All planning directly connects to the standards, and the language of the standards should become familiar to all teachers.

• Standards are revisited continuously throughout the teaching/learning process.

• Planning takes place at the unit level, and units are usually 3 to 6 weeks in length, regardless of whether the course is block or traditional schedule.

• Although standards do not have to be posted, they should be pervasive in the classroom.


Group Work

• Group yourselves by grade level, unit, or course.

• Identify the focus of your instructional unit.

• Identify the learning goals included in your unit, classify the learning goals in the unit by GPS strand. Highlight those goals on the standards document.

• Determine the concepts that students should have deep understanding of as a result of this unit of instruction.


Assessment for Learning• Not all students learn at the same rate or in the

same way.

• Assessment guides instruction.

• Assessment provides evidence of student growth toward the learning goals.

• Almost everything a student does is assessed, but grades/evaluations come later rather than sooner in the learning process.


Assessment

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

--Albert Einstein


Determine an Assessment PlanDetermine an Assessment Plan

Info

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Chec

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Dia

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& D

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Test

s & Q

uizz

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Acade

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Perfor

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adapted from Understanding by Design

Self-A

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Teaching for Understanding

• In order to provide evidence of understanding, students must be able to apply acquired knowledge and skills to new situations.

• Culminating performance tasks allow students to provide evidence of understanding.


Culminating Performance Tasks . . . are created over time during the unit

. . . result in tangible products or observable performances

. . . usually involve multiple means of presentation (nonlinguistic,

written, spoken presentations)

. . . involve meaning-making

. . . encourage self-evaluation and revision

. . . require judgment to score

. . . are evaluated using predetermined criteria

. . . sometimes involve students working with others

-adapted from Marzano, Pickering, & McTighe


VIPs—Very Important Points• Assessment and grading are not the same thing.

• Students should be assessed on nearly everything they do, but it’s generally unwise to over-grade or to assign grades before the learning process is complete.

• Students do not all learn at the same rate or achieve the learning goals at the same time.

• Students need multiple opportunities in different formats and modalities to provide evidence of learning.

• Real learning results in growth.

• Conceptual understanding rather than discrete knowledge and facts is the goal of GPS.

• Students who learn conceptually perform significantly better on standardized tests.


Group Work

• Locate the performance task and the other assessments in your unit.

• Refer back to the important concepts and/or processes, as well as the standards you identified for your unit, to determine whether your assessments are designed to move students toward the conceptual understanding necessary to demonstrate deep understanding on the culminating performance task.

• Evaluate your performance task using the criteria for a performance task; if you don’t have a culminating performance task brainstorm to list some possibilities.


Culminating Performance Tasks . . . are created over time during the unit

. . . result in tangible products or observable performances

. . . usually involve multiple means of presentation (nonlinguistic,

written, spoken presentations)

. . . involve meaning-making

. . . encourage self-evaluation and revision

. . . require judgment to score

. . . are evaluated using predetermined criteria

. . . sometimes involve students working with others

-adapted from Marzano, Pickering, & McTighe


Group Work• Examine your overall assessment plan.

• Do students have multiple opportunities to provide evidence of learning?

• Do students have opportunities to provide evidence of learning in different formats and through different modalities (informal checks, observation/dialogue/discussion, tests/quizzes, academic prompts, performance tasks, self-assessment; AND nonlinguistic, written, spoken products)?


Making Instructional Decisions

According to Grant Wiggins:

"Good planning leaves room for the unplannable. You do not know what you'll be doing on April 11, and you're a fool if you think so. If you do, then the curriculum is more important to you than your students."

(Grant Wiggins, "Designing and Using Student Reflections and Self-Assessment," ASCD Summer Conference on Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design, June 2005)


Procedures for Making Instructional Decisions

1. Assessments should be scheduled on unit calendar first.

2. Next, the instruction necessary to equip students with everything they will need to provide evidence of learning on these scheduled assessments should be determined.

3. Third, the most appropriate instructional strategies for providing students access to learning should be selected.

4. Finally, these instructional activities should be scheduled on the unit calendar.


VIPs—Very Important Points

• All instructional and assessment activities should be designed to move students toward the learning goals—the GPS.

• Students need multiple opportunities to learn using a variety of instructional strategies that incorporate a number of different modalities.

• Instruction should focus on growth for all students. Often the students who come into a classroom knowing the most, learn the least.


More VIPs—Very Important Points

• Unit plans must be flexible in order to allow assessment to guide instruction.

• In standards-based classrooms, teachers create student-centered learning environments.

• In student-centered learning environments, instruction takes place when students work independently, in pairs or small groups, one-on-one with the teacher, and in the class as a whole.


Group Work

• Look over the instructional plan (calendars and activities) in your unit.

• Do the instructional activities provide students with multiple opportunities to acquire the specific knowledge and skills they need in order to provide evidence of learning on your scheduled assessments?

• Does the unit include a variety of learning activities: individual, small group, large group? Is the focus student-centered learning? Do students have opportunities for practice and for trial and error?

• Have you included any activities that allow for differentiation by INTEREST, LEARNING PROFILE, and/or READINESS?

• Are the unit assessments designed to guide instruction? Are they assessments for learning?


Begin with what’s

doable!


Thank you to Dr. Cynde Snider for creating and sharing the unit

planning slides 1-5 and 12-29.


Your Questions?

Contact InformationChristie McCarley

4-8 English Language Arts

[email protected]

404-463-0507

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