weektwo

Part A-One way to get our students to interact meaningfully with reading and writing materials across the content areas is building lesson plans around an Instructional Unit. Last week, you completed Phase 1 of your Literacy Unit Plan.

For this week’s discussion, you must upload your Literacy Unit Plan Phase 1 file to share with your peers to give and receive feedback before moving onto Phase 2 of our Literacy Unit Plans. In your initial post about Phase 1 of your Literacy Unit Plan, make sure to address the following questions: What is your instructional unit about? What is the central, essential question at the center of the unit? What subject matter does it cover? What is your experience in creating instructional units? What are the learning objectives you have outlined? What are the strengths and limitations of using instructional units to teach literacy across the content areas? 300-400 words

Part B-

When creating a Literacy Unit for content areas, it is important to realize the teacher will more than likely supplement the ‘traditional textbook’ by using additional materials to engage and instruct students with specifically aiming to target literacy skills. Supplementing materials is a sign that the teacher views textbooks as structuring tools, rather than the ‘end all be all.’ It also allows students to read multiple texts on the same topic, which broadens the learners’ understanding. This week’s assignment you will practice selecting, rating, and justifying supplemental literacy materials you would like to include in your Literacy Unit Plan. Make sure to read over pages 65-74 in your text about “Diverse Reading Materials are Available for Instructional Units”.

To start, you will first need to research and select three supplemental texts. This could come in many forms! One of the forms must be a book - any genre is permissible as long as the content is appropriate for your instructional unit. The other two forms could be: newspaper article, magazine, blog, or any other item that uses language to convey a message. Be creative in your selections and make sure you schedule ample time that you will need to research and select your three supplemental texts. Keep in mind the supplemental resources should be student materials. Do not list ‘instructional manuals’. List materials that students will personally handle and use to acquire the content of the unit as well as experiencing literacy.

The next step is to complete a Rating Guide for each supplemental text type. The final step is to write a short justification of why you would like to include these supplemental texts into your Literacy Unit Plan. The justification response is at the bottom of each rating guide (three in total for each selected supplemental text) and should be 250-300 words each

Part C-

This week, you will continue to build upon your Literacy Unit Plan by completing another critical analysis table that assists you in thinking through what supplemental text items you would like to include. When you open the Week 2 Literacy Unit Plan template, you will notice that you need to include the Pre-Instructional Planning Content from Week 1. Remember, we will add a new phase to our Literacy Unit Plans every week!

To complete Phase 2, you will need to list at least 6 supplemental resources for the unit, which is an average of two supplemental resources per week for a 3-week long unit. Keep in mind the supplemental resources should be student materials. Do not list ‘instructional manuals’. List and analyze materials that students will personally handle and use to acquire the content of the unit as well as experiencing literacy. Supplemental materials that are acceptable include books, newspapers, blogs, and magazines, for example. Try to use a variety of materials. You may re-use the 3 resources from your Critical Analysis assignment from this week if you would like, in which case you would need to only find 3 additional resources to add to your supplemental materials table. However, you must complete the Critical Analysis table in the Week 2 Literacy Unit template for all 6 resources.