It has been a little while since I informed you all about my progress at Penn State University in the Ag Ed major. As part of our requirements for the major and to get ready for student teaching, each cohort member must have a contract between their cooperating teachers (CTs) and themselves on how many unit and lesson plans we must write during this fall semester. Our goal is to have our contracts completed in time for final presentations during finals week. For my contract, I am required to create 12 unit plans and 40 lesson plans this semester, which I can admit seems like a lot right now with all the other assignments that we are given in our classes. Still trying to figure out how to add time in my schedule to work on my plans in between getting other assignments completed for the major that are due much sooner. It is a struggle! However, I am determined to stick to the goals that I have created and shared with the cohort and professors. The first goal is coming up here this coming week.
Now, you might be wondering why I am mentioning this tedious aspect of the life of an Ag Ed senior. Well, to help us reach our unit and lesson plan goals, the professors have portioned out some class time to spend on learning how to make effective unit and lesson plans. So, for the last couple of weeks, we have been tasked with creating one of our unit plans that we will be using in the spring. The goal of the assignment was to try and create the best unit plan that we would be proud of anyone using for inspiration (even with other cohorts). During the first week, we were to create a rough draft of this unit plan and send it in for peer review. Our unit plans had seen two assigned peer reviews based on a comprehensive grading rubric that included the 14 essential elements that we are instructed to include in our unit plans. From this experience, I was able to pick up a lot of tips and suggestions on how to improve my unit plans as I continue to write 11 more plans for my contract completion. I'm not saying, by any means, that my unit plan for this AEE 412 assignment is perfect, but much better than I ever could have dreamed thanks to participating in this assignment and the peers who gave me amazing feedback.
How It Started
For this assignment, I decided to choose a unit plan from a course that seemed easy, but still challenging in the creation of interesting activities. That unit plan was General Shop Safety for the 7th and 8th-grade Woodshop course that I will be teaching at Big Spring Middle School. First, I started creating my unit plan by creating a design/template that I wanted to use for all of my unit plans. The design was my first focus because of some different "Ah Ha" moments that I gathered from Bootcamp. As Mrs. McIntire and I were creating a structure for a unit plan in a short Bootcamp activity, I realized that it was taking me forever to find a template that we both liked and would accommodate the 14 elements that we later learned that day. The entire time was basically spent on the template and I never got to put any content in it before that activity's time was up. So, with this in mind and understanding that I cannot be a perfectionist in creating unit and lesson plans, I started with a strong template that I liked from a previous cohort's example, which we also received at Bootcamp.
After creating the template, I started to think about general shop safety utilizing the method of Backwards Thinking - "beginning with the end in mind". I had to figure out what I desired the students to take away from this unit in order to create interesting activities that would serve as helpful tools to fulfill these goals and learning objectives. Therefore, I started work on the unit rationale to understand the importance of this unit and how it impacts the community in the Big Spring/Newville area.
Standards and CIP Codes
Once the rationale was created, I was able to find PA Academic and Agricultural Standards for my unit. I had the PA Department of Education SAS standards and AFNR Standards, but I was unsure if CIP Code Task Lists were truly standards or not. With some helpful feedback from my first peer review, I was able to establish that these do need to be included within the standards section. I ended up using standards from the Agricultural General CIP Code and Agricultural Production CIP Code. It was not until the second peer reviewer that I learned that I should tailor these specific standards to the CIP Code that my CT site uses. However, I was surprised to find out that Big Spring Middle School does not have a CIP Code, but the high school does. The high school is an Agricultural Production CIP Code. It has been interesting learning about the different rules that middle school ag programs have compared to your typical high school ag program regulations. Regardless of this information, I still decided to use the Ag Production CIP standards to give me practice for when I create some high school unit plans this semester. Plus, if I ever have to utilize these unit plans for high school ag programs or middle school ag programs that have a CIP Code, these unit plans will be one step further in their conversion for such purposes.
How It Went
Overall, after I had the standards in place, creating the unit plan became easier as I moved on to goals, learning objectives, and then activities and assessments. I was able to create some cool activities that deal with general shop safety, such as a group career safety project and PPE relay races. I was also able to find some videos that I could use as interest approaches or supplements for the lecture content. This way I keep the lecturing to a minimum and allow the students to find their own meanings of why safety in the workplace is important that tailors to students' different domains and modalities of learning and multiple intelligences. All aspects that we have been learning and building upon in AEE 412 and other courses.
The Difference Between Goals and Learning Objectives
Nonetheless, it was evident from the peer reviewer feedback that there were aspects of the unit plan that I struggled with. For instance, the goals and learning objectives section. In my mind, the goals had to be SMART goals, which were hammered into my head since I became a member of the FFA. With these being narrow SMART goals, I created learning objectives out of these goals in a very broad sense. Even when peer-reviewing other unit plans, I still could not understand the difference between the two and how to improve them. Thus, I think that these two sections stumped a lot of us in this process. It was not until the last peer review on my unit plan that I realized I had these two self-defined definitions backward. The goals are to be broad in order to find specific and narrow learning objectives from these goals. In addition, the learning objectives are to be built on three criteria: behavior, conditions, and criteria. A lesson that I was reminded of from AEE 100. Yet, I was still stumped on how to create better learning objectives. This was definitely evident in the AEE 412 lab this week when creating my "1st Days" lesson plan. I definitely need better action words from Bloom's Taxonomy. Plus, I need to write the learning objectives from a student-driven standpoint instead of what I want to help the students accomplish. Therefore, I don't really have much advice on this topic right now, but hope to have some as we talk about learning objectives next week in AEE 412!
Materials Needed
I also learned from the feedback and reviewing other unit plans that I need to have a separate chart for the supplies/materials needed for the unit. At first, I had a great idea of adding the materials needed to the daily lesson chart that I created in the unit plan. This chart included lesson titles in essential question form, the lesson duration, both standard sections, learning objectives, and materials needed. Why did I do this? Well, I thought it would make my unit plan look more organized and less redundant. Also, I wanted to know what materials I would need for the specific lessons for preparation purposes. Although, my peers still thought it was important to have another separate chart for materials so that I could take that piece of paper and go to the store to gather the materials needed. This idea does make sense in that respect, but I still feel that it is redundant and adds more to the unit plan that might not be necessary. Yet, I still ended up taking their advice for the final draft of my unit plan. However, I am still questioning: How can I integrate the materials needed section into my unit plans that is most effective for shopping and teaching, but not redundant and take up space?
End Thoughts
Hence, I am grateful for this experience and those who have helped me through this journey of writing a unit plan! It has certainly taught me a lot. Aspects that I will take into consideration as I complete the other 11 unit plans and 40 lesson plans. Hopefully, by the end of next week, my skills in writing learning objectives will be improved even more! Moreover, by the end of the semester, I should be 10 times better at planning for units and lessons than ever before!
To complete these unwritten goals, all I need to do is dare to make mistakes, dare to learn from those mistakes, dare to learn from critiques and feedback, and dare to plan! Dare to plan for the future of agricultural education, but most importantly, dare to plan for my future students!
Thanks for reading! Keep on daring!
Keeping It Veal,
Emily Jay
