PLC - Plan Unit Learning Goals

Instructions

This activity is designed to be completed as a group using a video conferencing room. Do not break up the tasks and complete the sections individually unless advised to do so. Submit one assignment per group.

Who: Work with your PLC group members

What: You will work with your Professional Learning Community to choose a common unit of study and determine your common objectives for the unit. You will choose one unit as a group and write 3–5 unit learning goals as a group.

When: You should meet at your regularly scheduled time. 

Where: Meet online using one of the meeting rooms.

Why: Professional Learning Communities plan unit goals together. Unit goals are planned together so that the curriculum is consistent in all sections of the course. It also allows for the group to plan common assessments. You will develop a common assessment later in the course. During this assignment, you will only focus on planning your common learning goals.

Tasks

Do not break up the tasks and complete the sections individually unless advised to do so. Submit one assignment for your group. 

1. Consider the four case-study students as you complete this assignment.
   • James: Case Study Download Case Study
     , Download ,
     IEP Download IEP
   • Brittany: Case Study Download Case Study, IEP Download IEP
   • Shawn: Case Study Download Case Study,  IEP Download IEP
   • Isabel: Case Study Download Case Study
     ,  IEP Download IEP
2. Download this document Download document.
3. Copy and paste the table into a Google doc. Go to Collaborations, click Start new collaboration and title it "Planning Unit Goals." Copy and paste the information from the Word doc so your group can collaborate on it. 
4. Invite the professor and the TA  to your collaboration.
5. Discuss a Course. Use your group's video conferencing room to discuss a course that you could all teach in the future. Choose an age and grade level that you would like to focus on for this unit.
6. Review the Utah Core Curriculum Standards. Review the Utah Core Curriculum Standards for the course you selected above. Most subject areas can find their core standards at this link https://www.schools.utah.gov/curr/main Links to an external site.. If you do not see your standards and you do not know how to find them for your subject area, please email me.
7. Select a Unit of Study. After you review the core curriculum standards, choose a unit of study for your course. Most of the time you can use one standard from the core curriculum for your unit. Sometimes that is too big or too small, and you will want to break the standard into more than one unit or combine standards to make one unit. Both of these approaches are fine for this assignment. You are looking for a unit that would last 2–4 weeks or would consist of about 8–20 individual lessons.
8. Name Your Unit. Choose a name for your unit, based on the content in your core standard(s).
9. Discuss Your Unit. As a PLC, discuss the content you will teach in your unit. Discuss how you will cover the content found in the core curriculum standard(s). How many lessons would you expect this unit to contain? What would the key assignments be for this unit? What method(s) of teaching would you plan to use in this unit?
10. Write Unit Learning Goals. As a PLC, choose 3–5 unit learning goals for this unit:
    • The learning goals should describe the major assignments for the course.
    • The learning goals should be written using the SMART goals format discussed in the PLC Guidebook in the readings.
    • The learning goals may be similar to the objectives found in your core curriculum standards, but they need to be adjusted to specifically address your plans for assignments and instruction in your course.

    Example Learning Outcome:

    By November 15, students will be able to investigate and report how our knowledge of the structure of matter has been developed over time by creating a timeline that displays 5 key points about the structure of matter labeled according to the date they were developed.

    7^th Grade Science, Standard 1, Objective E