My First Unit Plan....Many More To Go

First Unit Plan Reflection

I really enjoyed putting this unit plan together. Honestly I love to be organized and when I was able to lay out how I wanted the unit to go made me feel very accomplished. It made me plan ahead and get student teaching semester one step closer to being completely planned out. However it definitely was not an easy task and was definitely time consuming since I am not yet a professional at doing them, but I felt that I had a better understanding of what I was going to teach during the spring semester. I decided to break the unit into three parts : Monogastric, Ruminant, and Avian digestive systems.Each of the systems have a specific part in the overall unit. As well as having a project due at the end of each section. I decided to have two of the sections (Monogatric and Ruminant digestive systems) projects be the same, because to me they will be able to utilize this more by actually seeing the difference between the systems rather than doing to different projects. What I will have the students do is make a "Travel Guide" through ruminant and monogastric digestive systems. I really liked the way the project came across because it helps the student be creative in how they want to display their guide. However the avian digestive system project is a diorama of digestive system and the students will have to go through and display the different parts and functions of the that digestive system. I felt by planning it this way would show that the avian digestive system is very different compared to the monogastic and ruminant digestive system.

I believe that this is going to be one of my favorite units to teach, because I really enjoy animals and understanding how their bodies work. This will be great for the animal science class that I am teaching because it will allow the students to get an idea of how each system works, because most of the kids either work or grew up on a farm and have worked with animals before. I enjoy how I am ending the unit with avian digestion,  because I found out from my cooperating teacher that we are going to teach a poultry unit and hatch some chicks during the time of the unit. So this helps the students have an understanding of the digestion system,so when we begin poultry this portion of the unit would be review. This helps the students get their hands-on learning.

Like I said before in putting this unit plan together it wasn't all cake and ice cream. I did have some trouble getting all of the PA Academic Standards. I feel like there has to be an easier way to find these. I know how important these standards are so you would think that they would make it easier for us to find and mark on our unit/lesson plans. Also distinguishing what objectives would be covered during each lesson, that was very troubling for me because how do you know what exactly would be covered during each lesson?

Overall I feel as though my unit plan could use some improvement, however I am not sure where. So it should be interesting to see when Dr. Foster gives feedback. Until then we will see!