Humanities+Unit+Plan

= Humanities Unit Plan = Teacher(s) || Mr. Dias, Soleiman || Subject and grade level || Humanities – Level 1 || Time frame and duration || 6 weeks ||
 * ===== Unit title ===== || ===== UNIT 1: Exploring and Understanding the Earth ===== ||

Stage 1: Integrate significant concept, area of interaction and unit question
Which area of interaction will be our focus? Why have we chosen this? || ===== ===== || ===== Significant concept(s) ===== What are the big ideas? What do we want our students to retain for years into the future? || Community and Service Because no matter where they live, people have duties and responsibilities as citizens. Students must also learn how people use world’s resources. ||^  ||  Using Geography Skills to Analyze How People Change Their Environment. || What are some features of the Earth we must know in order to build a better tomorrow? ||
 * ===== Area of interaction focus =====
 * ===== MYP unit question ===== ||

What task(s) will allow students the opportunity to respond to the unit question? What will constitute acceptable evidence of understanding? How will students show what they have understood? || FORMATIVE: Reviews, discussions, written proposal for a community service project. On an electronic world map online, students must trace how manufacturers ship their goods to other countries. SUMMATIVE: End-of-unit discussion, written response after the community service project, performance assessment. Distribution exploration and discussion on a map found on the Internet. || Which specific MYP objectives will be addressed during this unit? || People, Places and Environment Understanding the Earth: Explain how the movement of the Earth affects our environment and the climate. The Five Themes of Geography: Define the study of geography. Identify the five themes of geography and use them to learn about the world. Using the Tools of Geography: Understand the advantage and disadvantages of globes and maps in depicting the Earth’s surface. Appreciate the work of geographers and how technology has helped to understand how the Earth is studied by researchers. Identify the main parts of a map. || Which MYP assessment criteria will be used? || Criterion B: Concepts Criterion D: Organization and presentation ||
 * ===== Assessment =====

Stage 2: Backward planning: from the assessment to the learning activities through inquiry
What knowledge and/or skills (from the course overview) are going to be used to enable the student to respond to the unit question? What (if any) state, provincial, district, or local standards/skills are to be addressed? How can they be unpacked to develop the significant concept(s) for stage 1? || World Geography: Use appropriate data sources and geographic tools to generate, manipulate, and interpret information. Know the relative location of, size of, and distances between places. Describe social effects of environmental changes and crises resulting from natural phenomena. Use newspapers online to find out what are the main events revealing human influence on nature today. Describe ways that human events have influenced, and been influenced by, physical and human geographic conditions in local, regional, national, and global settings. || How will this unit contribute to the overall development of subject-specific and general approaches to learning skills? || Knowledge-acquisition skills: forming understandings geographical concepts Information-processing and organizational skills: gathering and sorting information and data ; comparing and classifying, including those available on websites of important international organizations. Collaboration: working with a team; recognizing the contribution of others as well as exchanging and integrating ideas. Reflection (meta-cognition): reflecting upon their understanding and evaluating their own thinking and their preferred ways of learning. || How will students know what is expected of them? Will they see examples, rubrics, templates ? How will students acquire the knowledge and practise the skills required? How will they practise applying these? Do the students have enough prior knowledge? How will we know? || ======** Teaching strategies ** ====== How will we use formative assessment to give students feedback during the unit? What different teaching methodologies will we employ? How are we differentiating teaching and learning for all? How have we made provision for those learning in a language other than their mother tongue? How have we considered those with special educational needs? || Students will complete a unit introduction that introduces the main theme, areas of interaction and guiding questions. With projects, they will be given the rubric when the project is assigned and explained. They will also be shown student and teacher examples. Students will practice the skills taught throughout the unit through homework, individual/partner work, small and whole group activities, formal assessments and projects. Examples and geographic tools will be explored through electronic rubrics, videos and websites. || Projects will be student-assessed, teacher-assessed and corrected. Tests, quizzes, class work and homework assignments will be graded by teacher, student or whole class, to give timely feedback. Students will correct errors. Whole-group activities, independent work, partner work, small group literature circles, Socratic Seminars, think/pair/share, reflections, read aloud, and guided practice will be the teaching methods employed. Vocabulary focus and student choice for independent reading will be considered for ESL students. Special accommodations such as extended time, read aloud, separate settings, etc. will also be used. || What resources are available to us? How will our classroom environment, local environment and/or the community be used to facilitate students’ experiences during the unit? || Dictionaries, short readings, graphics, maps, video. Technology: 1. Students will be introduced to blogging, and create our own blog, which will last for the entire year – or Wikis 2. “Friending” important people and/or important places in history, using popular sites such as MySpace or Facebook 3. Current events come to life project: reading newspapers available online. 4. Creating Prezi presentations to share with others online 5. Create a comic with Comic Life to demonstrate in words and pictures students ideas for changing the world. Textbook: World Explorer: People, Places and Culture. Prentice Hall. 2007 Guided reading and review material. Classroom Manager. Suggested readings: Fisher Staples, Suzanne. 1989. “Shanabu: Daughter of the Wind.” Knopf Houston, James. 1992. “Drifting Snow: An Arctic Search.” McElderry ||
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 * ===== Approaches to learning =====
 * ======** Learning experiences **======
 * ===== Resources =====

Ongoing reflections and evaluation

 * ===== In keeping an ongoing record, consider the following questions. There are further stimulus questions at the end of the “Planning for teaching and learning” section of //MYP: From principles into practice//. =====

** Students and teachers X **
What did we find compelling? Were our disciplinary knowledge/skills challenged in any way? What inquiries arose during the learning? What, if any, extension activities arose? How did we reflect—both on the unit and on our own learning? Which attributes of the learner profile were encouraged through this unit? What opportunities were there for student-initiated action?

** Possible connections X **
How successful was the collaboration with other teachers within my subject group and from other subject groups? What interdisciplinary understandings were or could be forged through collaboration with other subjects? Were students able to demonstrate their learning? How did the assessment tasks allow students to demonstrate the learning objectives identified for this unit? How did I make sure students were invited to achieve at all levels of the criteria descriptors? Are we prepared for the next stage? How did we decide on the data to collect? Was it useful? ||
 * Assessment **
 * Data collection **