New Trimester, New Unit Plan

I am so ready for this trimester to be over!  After so many snow days and poor planning on my part, I am done with trimester 2!  So after feeling quite lost after this last trimester at times, I started going through some of my books from my methods classes to look over methods on planning.  After reading/reviewing some of the methods I felt like quite the dummy.  I have been planning by lesson rather than by unit and I have been lacking on the student objectives.  Using the textbook has proven to be actually hindering rather than a help.  Instead of looking at the big picture and figuring out what I want the students to be able to do at the END of a unit, I have been looking at each individual lesson and not thinking about how they all connect.  To say the least the last unit I did felt haphazard and poorly planned.

To compete against this feeling I made a Unit plan for my next unit.  It has helped immensely!  Although I am using the textbook to guide me, I am looking at the big picture more.  In my unit plan I included the following:

1) The main goals (ACTFL language goals) that I plan to touch on in this unit
2) The standards I will be covering in the unit
3) What the expected/desired outcome for the unit is
4) Progress Indicators (what the students should be able to do)
5) The essential skills and knowledge the students will need to accomplish the desired outcome
6) The assessments I will use in the unit
7) Instructional strategies I will use throughout the unit
8) Resources I think will be helpful/necessary
9) And the Performance Task the students will complete at the end of the unit to show they have acquired the desired outcome for the unit

This plan has really helped my daily lesson planning.  I look back at my unit plan often to make sure that my lessons are meeting my own goals and when I look in the textbook, I can decide what pieces of the textbook are necessary to include and which parts are not that important to accomplish the desired outcome (which is often as my book is poorly designed!!!).  The textbook has been my downfall for the last few units.  I felt I needed to cover all material that was in the book, but I didn't like the order or the way that it presented the material so I got lost in how to present the topics in the order presented.  Having the unit plan is really helping me get-over this "drill and kill" rut I was in for the last unit.  I am looking to the textbook for a general guide of when to teach the necessary skills, but because I have the Unit Plan I can now change things up and introduce skills/vocabulary at a time that makes sense.  I lost sight of the comprehensible input method during this last unit and I want to get back on the horse and really try to get more authentic texts into their hands and provide more opportunities to get the students speaking.

I found a blog about a conversation circle that I might bring into this unit a little farther down the road.  Thanks you to amylenord for this great idea and rubric! (Check out her website!  It is FULL of great resources!!)  I have very small classes this year so this could be a quick conversation activity.  Maybe even a warm-up idea.... hmmm  I really hope this activity will help my students speak more.  They just completed their 2nd Oral Proficiency Interview and the problem I am having with some of my students is that they are very hesitant to answer any questions and to speak in the language still scares/worries them.  I want more natural conversation in my classroom instead of goal driven classroom questions/discussions...


FOLLOW UP on previous post about the competition (I talked about it here on another of my posts).  I had students fill out an Exit Ticket on their thoughts of the competition and I was actually quite surprised.  Where I thought students were not liking the competition, I found that all of my students liked the competition but had a few tweeks that I loved!
Tweeks my students suggested that I have incorporated:
1) Have an emergency escape card- student suggested that they have a certain number of "Emergency" cards that they can use in a class period when they need clarification of something in English.
2)  I win a point if someone asks me how to say a word they should already know - I REALLY LIKE THIS ONE!

The competition is going really well.  I lost the first week (my own mistakes....I kept saying the word "blank" in English...grrr) Students told me (via their Exit Tickets) that they really felt the competition was helping them and that it really pushed them to think about what they were saying and figure out a way to say it in French.  The level of French in my students has sky-rocketed!  I am just amazed at how well they can communicate in the TL when they want to!

Now on to planning and getting my next unit complete.  I will write a post soon about how the unit is progressing and how I am incorporating comprehensible input into my classroom!  Leave any comments or ideas you have!  Thanks for reading!