Mid-Planning

Christina and I have completed our project planning which presents the big picture. We decided to title our unit "One World. Many Cultures - an integrated unit on Uniqueness." Both of us felt that concentrating on how people are basically all the same, we would generate a sense of community in our own classrooms. Our collaboration has in itself been unique, because we are teaching the same grade level in the same school. We exchange daily for Lanugage Arts (reading and writing) which means that we see each other frequently, and do a lot of planning together. We are very creative and found it difficult to limit our objectives. Finally, we picked appropriate standards from the Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum, and came up with an eleven-day plan that included a rubric covering a lesson in uniqueness with an accompanying objective and assessment. The lessons are more focused on the language arts curriculum. I will assume the responsibilities of gathering the resources, generating assessment tools, co-planning the unit, and designing rubrics. Christina will be responsible for teaching the unit, co-planning the unit, facilitating discussion and administering evaluations. As the unit progresses, we will be concentrating on differentiation and adjusting plans as needed. We are pround of the amount of classic literature and hands-on activities that our third graders will be exposed to. We have spent many hours picking and choosing materials that will keep our students engaged as we journey into the global world and the unique world of each student. As we work on this assignment, I am amazed at the influence the media specialist can have on the classroom teacher.