My Lesson and Unit Planning

Problem: Planning content to cover without consideration of students' diverse needs and starting points is like giving the same driving directions to someone no matter their place of origin.

"[Teachers should] not think of a lesson as a lesson. Think of it as not a lesson just being taught to students, but a lesson being taught to one of your own family members..."
- Paul Chavez (student interviewed in Nieto)

Lesson planning should grow from a real desire to see growth/learning in every student. Traditionally, lesson planning has been about preparing content to be presented to students. This concept ignored the multiplicity of skills, needs, talents, experiences, and abilities of the students to whom that information was presented. A need for a new concept of lesson planning is revealed by science about how the brain connects with new learning. New neuronal networks form in the brain on the basis of old ones. New learning grows on the foundation of what we already know and have experienced. The natural conclusion of this fact for teachers is a need to connect every lesson within every unit with some aspect of every student's prior experience and knowledge... Wow, what a task!

Unit planning should start with a knowledge of the students who are in your classroom. Awareness of this knowledge can come through various means. One simple way is the use of a pre-assessment of some sort with students to find out what they know about a Unit before beginning to teach it. This pre-assessment may be a worksheet, activity, discussion, or something else, but it should inform the teacher about where to spend more and less time to support student learning of the content.

One issue I referred to in the justification blog entry was students' sense that school does not connect with their realities. This includes what is called Funds of Knowledge (FoK). FoK, as defined by Genzuk, include household social histories, methods of thinking and learning, and practical skills related to the community's everyday life (such as language and labor). The idea behind FoK is that education happens in one's community all the time and teachers should learn to connect that education with the education happening in school. For a more description and my plan for how to use the concept of FoK, see the post entitled 'Field Experience Summary.'

To become aware of and use students' cultural FoK, a teacher must become (in a sense) an ethnographer. Ethnographers go out and study a culture to understand its ways of being and report on it for various reasons. Teachers have a specific purpose for becoming ethnographers: to more readily connect new knowledge taught in schools with the knowledge and experiences students already have. Freire outlined a method for doing so:

1. Learn about the place/people (read about, observe, talk with locals)
2. Use their knowledge/reality as the basis for learning
3. Use the problems that are real for the people as themes around which a concept map is developed
4. Investigate the people's real problems with them (inserting necessary information when needed)

In a social studies classroom this may look a bit different:

1. I participate in the community, observe, and chat with my students
2. Vehicles are a large part of my sixteen year old student's realities, as well as their families (many of whom commute long distances to and from work)
3. Gas prices are rising and families are stuck with tough economic choices. Students' limited expendable income is even more limited.
4. I create a concept map around the problem of transportation and fuel prices. In my American history class there are state/district mandates to cover themes such as technology, transportation, and consumer spending. I create a Unit that connects each of these themes with the real problem of my students.
5. We investigate the problem and inform ourselves of the history together, making changes as necessary to build the prior knowledge of each student to connect with the investigation.

This an example, in short, of how both pre-assessment and teacher-as-ethnographer can be used to create a Unit plan that truly grows from and connects with student realities.

I have to mention one other important element in lesson planning and unit planning for social justice. Just as not every cultural group does not learn the same way and connect with the same topics, individuals within any group will be very different. No cultural norms can be applied to all individual students from that group. It is incumbent on the teacher to get to know students as individuals, while at the same time recognizing cultural difference/norms.

One way to ensure individuals are accounted for is by differentiating lessons. That means, I intentionally plan different lessons to connect with different learning modes. Some students learn by writing, some by drawing, some by conversing, etc. I can intentionally work in choice of learning method, and I can intentionally push all students to try out methods of learning that are not their strengths (offering structure and support for growth along the way). This relates to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. I'll speak more about this topic in my entry about my instructional strategies.

Planning to teach for social justice must take into account the different places my students start from, both culturally and individually. Pre-assessments, learning about Funds of Knowledge in the community, and ensuring lessons connect with different learning styles are three methods tools to use when planning a unit and its lessons.

Sources:

Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Genzuk, Tapping into Communities Funds of Knowledge

Gardner, as cited in Nieto

Nieto, Affirming Diversity

My self-assessment rubric: Am I planning for My students?

Problematic

• I plan content to present without considering my students

Working on it

• I have a sense of what life is like for students like mine and attempt to plan lessons that connect with them.

Transformative

• I create units that stem from problems faced by the communities my students live in and connect with subject content
• I pre-assess student prior knowledge of the content and start from where they are.