Planning out a Unit Plan

I haven’t had much experience in creating a unit plan. Single day lesson plans was more the focus in my classes and even then they were theoretical because I would never use them. The first problem I encounter was that I didn't know the numbers of days I would need to plan for which made it difficult to start working on the unit plan. Once the number of days was discovered I set out to plan a unit based around the MIT programming language called scratch.

Scratch is a simple drag and drop programming language meant for beginners and students who haven’t ever programmed before. Granted it can do very complex programs if you know what you are doing, but it reads more like a pseudo language rather than a higher level computing language like C++. The first step was figuring out a goal for the students. During the course of the unit students need hands on experience programming and creating something. I wanted something to keep their attention so having them program an animation or simple game is great way to keep them invested.

When planning out the dates I wanted to keep the main document more like a guideline for what the students should look forward to those days. The next hard part was deciding what students needed to know in order to accomplish their goals. The way I set out to do this was by picking a sample program that accomplished but I wanted the students to achieve and looked at its code. Once I had a good understanding of that code I broke it done to different topics. Each topic was placed in a day in an order that seemed like a slow escalation to the final objective. The first three days don’t seem that hard, a lot of information but a good amount of time dedicated to exploration time for students.

Days 4 and 5 were the hardest because that involve conditional statements and loops which in any programming language is a huge factor. I really don’t think a day to each subject is enough time to truly grasp the subjects and wish there was a way to increase time to give students a chance to explore those concepts more. Granted for a simple animation or maze game students shouldn't need anything too complex to accomplish the goals set forth.

I planned only for 6 out of 7 days to make sure that if it comes down to it students have an extra day to work on their programs. It also helps having extra days in case of snow days or other events. My concerns for the unit plan at this moment in time is that it is too condensed and way too straight forward. It’s planned like a long term class in a small amount of time with half the time dedicated to students exploring the different elements of the programming language. If students fall of task they may miss something important or not really grasp the concepts or goals of the unit.I plan on asking for advice and ideas from my mentor teacher in order to better the unit plan.

My mentor teacher is giving me advice and commenting on my unit plan to give me a better idea about what I need and what I can do to improve it. Google Docs are a wonderful tool for learning. My unit plan can be found at that link along with comments my mentor teacher has provided. I included this because it is part of the reflection process. I'm getting to work on and improve my knowledge with information from a peer/someone in the field.