Unit Plan Proposal

I had the fortunate opportunity to meet with my coopearting teacher for student teaching, Ms. Telega, at South Junior High to discuss the initial concepts for my unit plan that I will be teaching in the spring. She informed me that her seventh graders are ready to tackle a short story unit by the time I arrive. The list of outcomes that she gave me include plot triangle, setting, conflict, the writing process, and editing. If there is time, Ms. Telega also said, as an extra bonus, students could learn about characterization and dialogue.

For now, I will focus on the first five main outcomes and ensure that I plan quality lessons that go in-depth rather than trying to juggle too many outcomes at once. The essential questions that come from these outcomes are:
-What role or purpose does plot, setting, and conflict in short stories and why are they important to include?
-How do writers effectively use plot, setting, and conflict in short stories during the writing process and editing?

The rationale for this unit:
Through this short story unit, students will learn about another genre of literature that they may not have encountered at all before or have had limited exposure to. As they learn about plot, setting, and conflict and how it is used in short stories they read, they will simultaneously focus on how to incorporate these facets of good writing into thier own short stories. They will have the opportunity to learn about the writing process and how a writer may need a different approach to writing since it is a different genre. They will practice their editing skills as well and have the opportunity to focus on specific aspects of thier pieces as they edit and revise.

The texts I will use to accomplish the outcomes of the unit are "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Kipling and "Thank you, Ma'am" by Hughes. These are the short stories Ms. Telega wants to ensure students read during the unit but she said I could incoprporate any other texts that are appropriate. If you have any other suggestions for texts that I could use or have a favorite short story that you would like to share, I would love to hear your ideas.

The standards and skills that are associated with and will be met through this unit include...
-Use knowledge of narrative and expository text structures and subject specific texts to summarize content
-Use texts' structural organizers to aid comprehension
-Critically read and evaluate to determine the author's purpose, point of view, audience, and message
-Scan a passage to determine relevant information and skim the text to locate specific information
-Read a variety of high-quality, traditional, classical and contemporary works specific to America, as well as significant works from other countries
-Identitfy and analyze various genres and subgenres as forms with distinct characteristics and purposes
-Identify and analyze the relationships among elements of fiction including setting, character, plot, conflict/resolution, theme, and tone
-Create narratives that develop settings, people/characters, dialogue, and conflicts using descriptive, concrete language to engage audiences
-Draft-organize, support, and put ideas into sentences and paragraphs
-Revise-improve the quality of content, organization, sentence structure, and word choice
-Edit-correct errors in spelling and grammar
-Publish-produce a document and share the writing with the audience

Remaining questions and resources:
1. I would like to compile a list of potential, appropriate, quality short stories that I could choose from to add to the unit.
2. I still need to transfer the 2003 standards that Ms. Telega is still working with to the 2010 standards. I need to look through the document and find the correlating updated standards that are met with this unit.
3. Looking ahead to the assessment portion of the unit, I would like to know how Ms. Telega usually has her students share thier work with others. Is there a typcial strategy she uses or am I able to choose my own?
4. Looking even further ahead to the instruction portion of the lesson, I wonder how much freedom I will have in creating my lessons. WIll I be able to incorporate my own ideas and my own methods into the lesson or does she expect me to follow how she has done it in the past?

This is the current condition of my unit lesson plan. I am anxious to begin working on it and am motivated by the opportunity to actually implement it in a real-world classroom setting this spring. I am also looking forward to any and all feedback pertaining to my unit plan, thus far. I will enjoy reading my group members' unit plan proposals as well to learn about all the unique and insightful concepts that they have come up with.