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Tre’ Gammage is a Social Emotional Learning Specialist focused on building social-emotional competence in school communities through program adoption, implementation, professional development, and team building. In this episode, we build out a “unit” for adult PD using a step-by-step unit planning protocol!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Wanting to curricular-ize adult SEL professional learning experiences. Currently, Tre’ is mostly focused on working with schools and leaders on relationship and communication. Let’s build a unit around this! Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Current offerings focus on general communication preferences as part of adults’ identities. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Let’s elaborate on this. SEL skills are the foundation to be able to have equity conversations and changes. Group size may impact the adaptive, critical work that can be done in a generative way. We want adults to be able to stay in important situations and conversations when experiencing discomfort. Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question Are you showing up as your best self in your community? (A lesson/activity can be defining as a group what “your best self” in community means.) Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Communication summary report for each team that includes information such as: individuals’ strengths, tendencies, whether they are people- or task-oriented and whether they have fast or slow communication styles. Application: Review these reports before and after meetings. Use the collaboration strategy list to support self and others. Final “assessment” is to address an existing tension in the school/team. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Hook: Miscommunication and high stress in the workplace as a hook. Then, take the assessment. Build the Base: Reflect on individual assessment results. Watch videos specific to your communication style. Explore high and low emotional intelligence examples. Case Studies: Case 1: Individuals think about relationships; Case 2: Strategies to support communication in your team; Case 3: Routines to help each person and the team be at their best. Project Work Time: Lower-stakes practice of team communication through “decision by consensus” options like lost at sea or lost on the moon. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.seleducators.com and on social media @tregammage and @seleducators. To help you learn more about adult SEL, Tre’ is sharing a bunch of informational video content with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 121 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about a strategic plan for increasing student voice in the next few years:
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6/19/2023 120. Unit Dreaming: Sustainable Farming + Photosynthesis with Dr. Leena Bakshi McLeanRead Now
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Dr. Leena Bakshi is the founder of STEM4Real, a nonprofit professional learning organization committed to combining STEM and NGSS standards-based content learning and leadership with principles of equity and social justice. It was super fun to brainstorm a justice-centered Science unit using both of our unit planning protocols!
Here’s what we came up with: Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Real-world application: What can students do? Food desserts during the pandemic in California. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Students see themselves in the lesson. Counternarratives via situations, types of farming. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Different communities’ levels of access to food by race, geography and income. Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? If the teachers aren’t having fun teaching, the students won’t be having fun. Phenomenon-based instruction inspires curiosity. Phenomenon-based instruction can happen across the content! Joy is in the possibilities of what can be! Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question How do we farm so that communities of color and low-income communities have access to food? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) The public product can be selected by students. This might be a social media campaign, a letter to the school board, presenting at a city council meeting. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc SHS Planning Approach: Standard: Photosynthesis Hook: Students look at photos of empty grocery store shelves. Society: How are we going to farm? 5 Es Unit Arc: Engage: Experiential, inquiry-based learning (just jump right in without vocabulary!) Show the picture(s), have students generate questions using the Question Formulation Protocol, share via a discussion protocol. Explore: Make observations. Measure plant growth. Explain: It doesn’t have to be teachers explaining to students. Students can explain to each other! Use a text-based protocol (e.g., video, written text, student-created model) Elaborate: Tell counternarratives. Show examples of farmers of color and indigenous farming techniques. Align with Social Justice Standards from Learning for Justice. Look at different contexts like hydroponics. Evaluate: Return to student-created list of questions from the start of the unit. What questions did we answer? Use Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning frame to respond to DQ. Use Circle protocol to discuss. Youth take civic action that feels authentic. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Bakshi McLean on www.stem4real.org and follow her organization at @stem4real on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. To help you design and implement your own amazing unit, Dr. Bakshi McLean is sharing her Lesson Planning Tools with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 120 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about using practical strategies to support student inquiry:
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
An educator with over twenty years of experience, Debbie Tannenbaum works each and every day to “transform” learning using technology. She’s also an educational technology consultant, ISTE Certified Educator, author, blogger and speaker. In this episode, we apply our step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new unit!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Debbie teaches a 14-week technology course as an enrichment activity for fifth and sixth grade students. She’s taught the course once before, but wants to elevate the student ownership of the learning and enable students to create something they’re really proud of. She wants students to become tech leaders. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Identity as tech leader in justice realms: “creative communicators” and “global collaborators” in ISTE standard language Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Critically discuss how people can use tech to harm (and how to use it to elevate justice). Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? [Joy is: beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, personal fulfillment, art, music.] Creation and creativity! Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question What is the formula for becoming digital leaders? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Publishing Opportunity: Space on the public website or an option to share live PD Possible Formats: Students can create virtual tech PD for students, teachers, and/or family members. They may use iMovie trailers to create videos to get people interested in specific student training. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Lesson 1: Introduce DQ. Circle Protocol: discuss and come to consensus on community agreements (Who do we want to be?) Mind map protocol: Use keywords to develop name and logo as an exit ticket. Tech tool: Canva Lesson 2: Build a Base Phase (build foundation). Look at the district’s vision of how to use tech (e.g., transformational, equitable access) and unpack ISTE standards. Lesson 3: What does equitable access mean? Trust of students with responsibility Lesson 4: Case Study- 3 presentations: visual appeal, creative commons, digital responsibility Lesson 5: Case Study- YouTube for good. Come up with 3 interview questions Lesson 6: Case Study- Interview stakeholder (e.g., family member, teacher) about their PoV on the DQ. Share out response. Use DQ as exit ticket. Lesson 7: Case Study- Becoming a Creator Lesson 8: Case Study- Situation where you got feedback- was it helpful or not? Which protocol do you like? Lesson 9: Return to driving question. What is the best answer? (What is your lens) Exit Ticket: What is your draft? Lesson 10: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 11: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 12: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 13: Presentation Lesson 14: Reflection Stay Connected You can find Debbie on www.tannenbaumtech.com and on Facebook and Twitter @TannenbaumTech. To help you help your students with tech, Debbie shares free teacher tech tips to educators on her email list. You can join here. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 119 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about how to prepare teachers to use new curriculum:
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
I love co-creating new units. In this series, I brainstorm with guests to dream up units across a variety of content areas. In this episode, I’m inviting you into the unit planning protocol we’ll use to create our justice-centered units.
Why Unit Dream? In her book, Unearthing Joy, Dr. Gholnecsar Muhammad urges us to develop curricular fluency. For one, it’s joyful, and when we are more readily able to create on the fly, we are better equipped to co-create curriculum with students, which for me, is the ultimate goal. How do we do this? Unit Planning Step 1: Find inspiration! I’ve started to post potential sparks of inspiration on Twitter and LinkedIn using the hashtag: #UnitDreaming to make these sparks searchable. Your inspiration may come from your daily commute, listening to podcasts, reading or watching the news, listening to music, experiencing nature, grappling with a big question about life or the human experience. Unit Planning Step 2: Brainstorm the pursuits! Specifically, I like to focus on 3 of Dr. Muhammad’s 5 pursuits in her HILL model: Identity, Criticality, and Joy. In my experience, these are the ones I see the least in curricula and also have massive potential for positively impacting students’ sense of belonging and meaningful engagement at school. Unit Planning Step 3: Start Playing with Your Driving Question This is hard. It doesn’t need to be a perfect first draft. This might take months to finesse. When I get stuck or need a headstart, I’ll use a DQ frame like: What’s the formula for ____? or What would it look like if…? Unit Planning Step 4: Civic Action as Summative Assessment Now, think about what students will do to apply what they learned in this unit to better their community? If this isn’t relatively easy to answer, it may be helpful to return to your DQ with the end project in mind. For the civic action project, consider a publishing opportunity(s) in which students will be able to share their work with an audience beyond the teacher. Also consider the variety of formats this project could take so you can share options with students and then completely open it up for more student ideas. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc What are the protocols you’ll use to engage students throughout the unit? Consider which protocols elevate student talk and grappling. My goal is 75% of student talk/work time in each lesson. Unit Planning Step 6: Content/Texts When you’re ready to start thinking about content, I like to outline broad content ideas and maybe a “text” for a Hook lesson, a few Build the Base lessons, and a couple of Case Study lessons. The rest can be co-constructed with students. You may want to consider a “text library” or website where you can direct students to find texts if they will be selecting case study materials or doing their own research and need a bit of guidance. Finally… Once you’ve created something with this unit planning protocol, share it with me! Tag me on social media, reply with a comment to this blog post, or if you’re not ready for public eyes on your idea, you can email me at hello@lindsaybethlyons.com. I can’t wait to see what you create! To help you dream up your own unit, I’m sharing the one-page template I use with guests on Unit Dreaming episodes with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 118 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about how to run a staff meeting on unit dreaming.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
September 2023
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