ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

Needs Assessment/Rational

I would like to design a unit of instruction for a group of five 3rd Graders with emotional and behavioral disorders. These students all have difficulties with written expression and with finding information as efficiently as their peers in the regular classroom. The goal of the unit would be to provide basic skills on the computer and would incorporate lessons in Social Skills, such as taking turns and following directions. I would teach the unit during my Social Skills group, which meets twice per week. Skills that I would like for students to learn would be: word processing, locating information through search engines, using on-line resources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, printing documents, and using software such as the Oregon Trail.

Understandings & Goals

Enduring Understanding: 1. Students with emotional and behavioral problems have difficulties generalizing things learned in one setting and applying them in another setting. 2. I would like my group of students to learn important, basic skills that they can apply in the regular classroom, at home, and eventually, in the real world.  3. I would like for them to become independent at producing documents, locating information from a variety of sources, and being able to interact appropriately with others.  4. If they can learn these things and generalize them to other settings, it will greatly improve their level of success in all areas.
Goal(s): 1. Students will improve their social skills by interacting appropriately with teachers and peers in order to function better in other settings. 2. Students will learn and improve basic technological skills by completing class assignments and activities in order to help them in other settings. 3. Students will work collaboratively on activities and projects and, in turn, will gain higher-order thinking skills and valuable peer interaction.

Questions Answered

Essential questions:1. Can I turn the computer on and access a word processing program? 2. Can I create a document with the necessary information asked for by the teacher? 3. Can I print a document to the classroom printer? 4. Can I find the definition of a word on the computer? 5. Can I locate information on a subject the teacher has specified? 6. Can I interact appropriately with teachers and peers during classroom activities? 7. Can I follow directions correctly as given by the teacher or a peer?
Objectives:1. Students will be able to turn on a classroom computer when instructed to by the teacher and access a word processing program with 90% accuracy. 2. Students will be able to create a word processed document with information specified by the teacher with 80% accuracy. 3. Students will be able to print a document with correct information to the specified printer with 90% accuracy.  4. Students will be able to locate information on the computer and answer teacher questions with 80% accuracy. 5. Students will show that they can locate information from 5 different sources on the computer with 80% accuracy. 6. Students will complete activities using the Oregon Trail computer software with 90% accuracy. 7. Students will earn points for interacting appropriately with peers and teachers with 95% accuracy. 8. Students will earn points for properly following directions during class activities with 95% accuracy.

Assessment

What quiz and test items (e.g. simple content-focused questions that require a single, best answer) will provide evidence of understanding?
1. I will give a teacher-made pre-test at the beginning of the unit on basic skills and knowledge of a computer and computer software. 2. I will give the same quiz at the mid-term point of the unit. 3. I will give the quiz at the end of the unit to assess progress and to determine how much each individual student has learned. 4. Each individual student’s grade will be determined on how much progress they have made and how much they have improved from the start of the unit.
What academic prompts (e.g. open-ended questions or problems that require students to think critically and then to prepare a response / product / performance) will provide evidence of understanding?
1. Students will be given an open-ended question to prepare a word-processed document. 2.Students will be given a choice of what kind of document they want to prepare. 3. Specific items the document should include: student name, title, class title, teacher name,and should be at least one page, double spaced and spell checked. 4. Some examples of choices students can pick for their document: a letter to a friend, a creative story, a critical analyses of a topic researched on the internet, etc. 5. This question will be posed to each individual student at least two times during the unit. 6. The students much create a different kind of document each time.
What performance tasks and projects (e.g. complex challenges that are authentic, mirror the real world and require a performance or product) will you include that will provide evidence of student understanding?
The students will do two cooperative learning activities during the unit: 1. The first will be a research project geared toward using search engines and locating information. (a) I will split the class into a group of two students and a group of three students (I have one student who has particularly low academic skills and it will be a benefit to him to have two peers to learn with). (b) The students will pick a topic to do research on. (c) They will be required to show evidence of five sources of information to produce a two page report. (d) The group will delegate tasks and will have to document who performed what task in the group. (e) They will include a typed page with their report that shows the sources they used for their information and what each person did to help the group. (f) When they are finished, they will present their report to the class. 2. Another project will be done after that is completed. (a)It will include activities associated with the Oregon Trail software. (b)The teacher will determine if the groups should be changed for the second project. (c)The teacher will assess the student’s informally as they are working on the project.(d) I will be particularly looking for who is performing what tasks in the group and the peer interaction being shown while working on the projects.(e) Each group will also get a grade for how well the finished product turned out and how well they presented their information. What other evidence (e.g. observations, work samples, dialogues, student self-assessment) of understanding will you collect?
1. The students will be required to produce a daily journal on the social skills topic of the day. 2. It will be word-processed, double spaced, at least half a page, and have the topic typed and centered at the top of the page. 3. They will print out their journal entry each day and will put it into a folder to create a portfolio. 4. At the end of the unit, the students will present their portfolio to the instructor for a grade.

Instructional Strategies

Inquiry-based strategies will be used in the daily journal entries that students will create. Real-world questions will be posed to students and they will have to come up with an answer, opinion, or perhaps pose another question as a response. For example, “What would you do if a student came up from behind you on the playground and pushed you down? Come up with at least three appropriate responses and two inappropriate responses”.
Problem-based strategies will also be used throughout the unit. Students will be given problems to solve and must search for information to solve them. For example, “I really need information on butterflies for my science project. Where can I find it?”  Objectives one through five will be worked on using problem-based strategies.
Project-based strategies will be used in the two projects the class will do. This should stimulate group interaction and cooperation; skills that these students desperately need to work on. All objectives will be worked on using project-based strategies.