How to Outline a Curriculum Unit
Curriculum units are the building blocks with which teachers create classroom activities and lesson plans. A curriculum unit outline organizes a unit into main concepts, building concepts and essential skills students must master in order to achieve the unit objectives. Create a curriculum unit outline to organize all the essential elements of the unit and prepare yourself for implementing lesson plans and activities that are well integrated and unified.
Instructions
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Use your word processing software to create a list of all unit objectives. You should have one rationale for the unit that explains the purpose of the unit as it aligns with the ultimate purpose and nature of the course. The unit objectives are a way of making the unit rationale actionable. For example, a World Literature course might have the rationale, "To instruct students on critical analysis and interpretation of literature from around the world." The accompanying unit objectives for a unit revolving around world mythology might be, "Students will read and analyze world myths," "Students will identify characteristics of world myths," and "Students will interpret world myths as a reflection of the cultures that created them."
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Beneath each objective, type the skills needed to accomplish that particular objective. For example, if the objective is, "Students will read and analyze world myths," the skills required might be completing a graphic organizer with recognized items, reading a myth in its entirety, and analyzing any symbolic elements. Be sure to arrange the outline by hierarchy of skills and knowledge, so the skills are indented beneath the objectives, which are indented beneath the unit rationale.
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Identify unit activities and add them into the outline beneath the skills you have listed. The activities are ways in which students will practice and incorporate skills. For example, some typical classroom activities for literary analysis are Venn diagrams, class discussion, Socratic seminar, small group work, short constructed responses, quizzes and tests. You may wish to place assessments in bold to differentiate them from other classroom activities.
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Tips & Warnings
You may wish to place a list of materials at the beginning or end of your outline if you are conducting a new unit and fear you might forget some materials. Some materials needed might be anything from an overhead projector to graphic organizer handouts for students.
References
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