Dear PLN,
Feeling a little lost at what do for a unit remodeling or creating a new unit. Don’t get me wrong, I can improve so much in my classroom. It’s just that between last year and this year. I have made so many changes. Jeff stated in the November 11 CoetailCast Hangout about experimenting on students. I have to say that I agree and do that constantly. My students don’t miss a beat when I come into the classroom and say, “This is what we are going to try and why. I am not saying it is going to work, but here we go. We are embarking on this together.” I started doing before I even started Coetail in January or February 2014.
Since Coetail, I have continued that model and am constantly finding ways to add to my teaching from the knowledge I gained. This year KAS is also being authorized for MYP and that has been so time consuming. I am already revamping my units to match those as well.
What does that mean?
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO FOR THIS FINAL UNIT!
Things I have changed since October of 2013.
1. Valiant Venture (Genius Hour/20% Time) is given to them every Friday. They can study anything they want. There has to be a product that they are making. The product can be physical or digital. Many of them will several products on their topic by the end of the year. Some will have one project that they are working on throughout the year.
2. Adding more discussion time. Student led and with little to no participation from me. (Paula‘s EARCOS session April 2014)
3. Students do not have to raise their hand to speak in class even when it isn’t discussion time.
4. Students are constantly giving me feed back about what they would like to do or change. Not everything makes the cut, but their voice is important in my class.
5. Students can often choose how to demonstrate their learning when assigned a project.
6. In December, students will be designing their own unit of study on a topic or novel that they really want to learn. This hasn’t happened yet, but that is my goal.
My next unit with 8th graders will be on bias in news and media. I have plenty of resources, but can always welcome more. I did this lession last year with only news and thought I should add other media sources as well after Course 3 on Visual Literacy.
I have no idea what my 7th grade unit will teach.
Any suggestions are welcome!
Sincerely,
Stumped
Ms. Marcum's Mission 
The Bias in the news I wonder if that could be expanded beyond news and be Bias in media period.
You could look at how mis information flows through social networks (I’m thinking course 2 here) where you follow hashtags on twitter, or talk about Facebook, etc. Talk about how misinformation flows in today’s world. You can bring in the visual literacy about how visuals can be sewed to tell the story we want. Then there is YouTube that media and news organizations use to get out their own thoughts on a topic.
Take something like Climate Change. What Bias does American have or China have or (name your country) and why?
There is so many ways to get “news” today that this is a great topic. It also brings up that questions “who do you trust?” and “why do you trust them?” as we get students to start questioning why they trust information from certain websites.
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I think that all of those aspects will be perfect and coincide with the goals of the unit. My question would be for Course 5, can the project or unit be started soon? My unit would start sometime in December, and I am assuming I just need to keep documentation to help with course 5 work. Thank you for those suggestions. With this unit changing from last year and including more, it helps to focus and narrow down the objectives I want students to learn.
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Terea, you can definitely start the project or unit soon for Course 5. Document what you do, when you do it, etc so that you can include that in your final project reflection post for Course 5.
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Thanks! I read over the Course 5 preview, but still a little unsure of what all it entails. Just hoping not to blunder it.
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