unit IV Instructional planning

 

Unit -IV

Instructional planning

UNIT PLAN

Meaning of unit

               A unit is a large block subject matter, which includes a series of meaningful activities designed to achieve the purpose of education i.e., to provide the appropriate learning experiences and bring about significant behavioral changes in the student.According to the present concept, a unit also includes the procedure of   presentation of the subject matter that means the unit is not only a block of content but also a method in itself.

Therefore a ‘unit’ can be described as :

·       An integrated whole

·       A threshold, which includes a systematic arrangement of teaching methods, materials and learning experiences

·       That brings about the  desired behavioral changes in the learner.

Definitions of unit

According to Preston, “A unit is as large a block of related subject matter as can be over-viewed by the learner”.

According to Wisely, “The unit is an organized body of information and experience designed to effect significant outcomes for the learner”.

Criteria for a good unit

               While planning a teaching unit the following points should be kept in view:

Ø  It should keep in view the capabilities the needs, and the interest of the learner.

Ø  It should allow a variety of demonstrations, experiments, field trips, projects, etc.,

Ø  It should also consider the background and previous experiences of the students.

Ø  It should provide experiences, which are new and interesting for the students

Ø  It should have an appropriate length to maintain the interest of the students throughout.

Ø  It should consists of material, which looks familiar and related to the topics, unfamiliar and strange material should be avoided.

Ø  It should be flexible so as to allow the above average pupils go beyond the limits of the unit.

Ø  It should be associated with the physical and social environments of the students.

Ø  It should help to foresee and satisfy some of the future needs of the students.

Ø  It should be a part of a series that allow continuous development year after year.

Ø  It should be the product of the mutual planning of teacher and students as much as possible.

Types of units

1.Resource unit

               The unit which consists of material which provides information about the teaching activities, teaching aids and different learning experiences is considered as resource unit.

2. Teaching unit

It is the unit, which is developed by the teacher to teach the required content in a classroom. It is based on the information provided by resource unit.

 

Unit Planning

A unit plan is based on Field theory of learning of Gestalt organization.In a unit plan the entire syllabus is divided into small sections of related material called as subunits. It is developed by the teacher and contains the topics that are related to each other. Unit plan provides a plan for learning a major portion of a unit over a fixed period of time i.e., a few weeks. Each topic of the unit leads to the other.The learning goals are fixed which implies that there is conceptual and skill attainment at the end of learning. It helps in organizing systematically a series of lessons over a period of time.It suggests many varied activities, which provide an in-depth knowledge about the subject-matter.

While designing the unit planning the teacher has to develop the weekly programme first. Then it should be divided into hours of work. The sub-units are suitably adjusted for each hour. These units contain lessons to be covered in the teaching periods for the entire week. A teacher should pay more attention those units in the curriculum,which may need more periods over those, which could be completed in few periods.

CHARACTERISTICS OF UNIT PLANNING      

Whatever the type of units, there are certain general characteristics which a unit should possess. They are:

1)        The aims of the unit should be clear and well defined. Each unit should indicate its general and specific objectives. A good unit is organized around the purposes of learners.

2)        A good unit indicates activities of students and the procedures to be adopted to carry out these activities to a successful completion of a unit. Some of these activities will be pre-determined by the teaching; and some of them will emerge as the work of the unit progresses.

3)        A good unit incorporates a good body of instructional material and the sowrces to be used. These materials are related to the aims, activities and procedures. The materials should be within the range of understanding of all the students and allow for individual differences.

 

4)         A good unit is unified and with its emphasis on a series of related and meaningful activities, suggests wholeness in the organization.

5)         A   unit provides place of beginning and ending. This means that it starts with a definite problem situation. Once the problem has been solved  answered the pupil sees clearly whether his goal is reached.

6)         An effective learning-teaching unit is generally comprehensive.It provides learning situations which are large and unified and which can be completed in a couple of class periods.

7)         Heidgerkan explains certain characteristics of unit planning. They are:

·       Learning is developmental and therefore provides for vertical and horizontal organization of learning experiences.

·       Learning takes place most effectively when there is an understanding and acceptance of goals to be achieved, and when there is full and free participation in planning for the attainment of the goals.

·       Unit planning should recognize the necessity for providing for individual differences in learning and interests and therefore a variety of learning experiences are needed.

·       True learning renders the learner increasingly skilled in self direction and therefore opportunities are provided for the student steadily and gradually to assume more responsibility for selection, organization and evaluation of many of his/her own learning experience.

·       Unit planning provides a sound basis of evaluation by setting up goals in terms of desired changes of behaviour

 

 

Content of a unit plan

The following contents are to be included in a unit plan:

1.     Overview of the unit: here the emphasis should be given to the outlines or summary of the subject content included in the unit.

2.     Instructional objectives: relevant instructional objectives to be achieved at the end of the unit should be identified.

3.     Content analysis: the important concepts to be taught during the teaching process should be emphasized.

4.     Teaching learning activities: all the activities of the teacher and the students during the teaching learning process should be given.

5.     Teaching aids: the various teaching materials like charts, models, specimens, demonstrations and any field activities to be conducted should be mentioned.

6.     Evaluation of knowledge gained by the students: after the completion of teaching every unit evaluation of the knowledge gained by the students should be done through test either oral or a written test.

7.     Worksheets: the teacher should provide worksheet for immediate evaluation at the end of each lesson.

8.     Bibliography: the different reference books and audio-video utilized during the teaching unit should be mentioned.

Steps in unit planning

                   While planning for the unit the teacher should bare in mind the aims and the methodology of teaching. The teacher has to select the instructional objectives, analyze the contents, identify the appropriate teaching methods and teaching aids and evaluate the learning outcomes.

                   The various steps involved in the unit planning are:

Preparation or motivation:

Students should be provide with a purpose to achieve and are motivated in accomplishing this task. Introducing the topic and the topic and correlating life situations or giving examples for the topic could motivate students. The motivation as far as possible should be natural and self-directed and the teacher should not by any means force them. Students by themselves should able to overview the unit they are studying and find out the scope of it.The process of motivation should not be restricted to the beginning of the lesson but should continue throughtout the lesson.

Testing of previous knowledge:

                   The second step that should follow motivation is testing the previous knowledge of the students.This is an important step, which give insight into the abilities of the students.Through this test, the teacher may avoid repetition of the content and also comes to know about the comprehension capacity of the students.

Presentation:

                   This step provides new experiences to the students.Here the teacher needs to present the content in a clear,precise and interesting manner by including the teaching materials, aids, and other classroom activities.While providing new experiences, the teacher should see it that the experiences available to the students are according to their capacities and acceptance level

Organization of learning

                   The students must be provided with the opportunity to organize the content what they learnt so that they could establish the relationship between the new experiences and could also able to assimilate them properly in their minds.The organization could be done in the written or oral form.

Summarization

                   At the end of the unit, the entire unit is summarized in a systematic order to bring all the learning together.Summarization could also be done at intervals during the progress of the unit.Usually organization and summarization go together.

Recapitulation

                   During the teaching of the unit it is quite possible that some part of the unit might not been understood by the students or might have been forgotten by them after sometime.To compensate for this limitation the teacher should revise the new experiences taught during the presentation.The unit is revised by asking simple questions to the students regarding the topic.It is not necessary to do recapitulation only at the end of the unit one can also do during the progress of the lesson.

Evaluation

                   This last step is meant to chech the achievement levels of the students. Self-evaluation is the best option to test the students capacities.This test may be oral or written and could be conducted in between the lessons, they may be given in the form of performance tests, interviews, self-check test, puzzles etc.the final evaluation test is given at the end of the unit to receive grades to the students as well as to check the effectiveness of ones teaching methodology.Based on the evaluation results further remedial measures should be planned.

Advantages of unit plan

                   Some of the important advantages in unit planning are:

1.     It is based on aims and objectives of teaching

2.     It creates interest and curiosity in the learners

3.     It makes the teaching learning clear, precise and more comprehensive

4.     It vitalizes learning and makes the learning process more life-like

5.     It develops the content knowledge in the teacher

Disadvantages of unit plan

                   Some of the disadvantages in unit planning are:

1.     It requires committed and hardworking teachers

2.     Confusion sets in when the topics are unrelated and unsystematically arranged

3.     Evaluation is difficult to do at lower stages.

Model format of a unit plan

                                                                           PROFORMA 1

Subject…………                                                                                                            Class…………

Name of the unit…………..

Major objectives of the unit

S.No	Concepts (Topics)	Number of lesson required	Time required	Scope of the subject content	Procedure to be adopted(Indicate the method of teaching)	Teaching Aids
1. 2. 3.

After completing proforma ‘1’ detailed unit plan should be prepared according to proforma ‘2’                                                                                                                                                               

PROFORMA 2

Concepts: (From proforma ‘1’)…………………….                                                 

Lesson no                          …………..

S.No

Sub-Concepts

Behavioural objectives

Procedure(Teacher pupil activity)

Pupil’s assignments

Evaluation

 

Year Plan

The whole educational system is relied on proper planning. The schools plans its activities , the parents plan the education of the child, and the teacher plans her academic activities. Appropriate planning helps in systematic and organized deliverance of content and the related activities. Concept of planning is objective-based. As school plans for achieving the educational aims, a teacher plans for the entire academic year. Year planning is nothing but a sequential “organization of the topics” to be taught in a year. A teacher makes a year plan for the teaching activities meant for the whole academic year.

 

Essential of the year plan

               Following points should be kept in mind while preparing a year plan:

i)      Achievement of the educational objectives

ii)    Arrangement of the topics

iii)   Correlation of the subjects

iv)   Teaching methodology followed

v)     Resources available

vi)   Seasonal and natural situations

Principles for the year plan

               For an effective year planning,teachers need to follow certain principles and those principles are:

i)      The concepts should proceed from simple to complex

ii)    Unknown subject matter should follow the known subject matter

iii)   Division of topics should be for each week followed by each month

iv)   The periods should have a fixed duration

Importance of the year plan

               Adequate year planning is very important in teaching learning process.

v The year plan helps the teacher in smooth conduct of the teaching activity.

v The entire syllabus to be covered in a year is divided into weeks.The content is divided into simple logical units and subunits and the topics to be dealt into the individual periods. This helps in an easy preparation for the classes.

v Periods required for teaching different units are also mentioned in the year plan.

v The year plan not only deals with the details of classroom instruction spread over the entire academic year but includes   the schedule for examinations, co-curricular activities like excursions, discussions, debates and workshops.

v Methodical year planning leads to effective teaching.

Steps in making the year plan

        The following steps should be followed while preparing a year plan:

1.     The subject matter should be divided into small teaching units

2.     The objectives of lesson should be identified

3.     The time required for teaching the units should be calculated.And it should be noted in the form of periods.

4.     The time duration required for achieving these objectives through teaching learning should be calculated

5.     The co-curricular activities like science fairs, field trips, project works should also be mentioned in the year plan.

Some general points which should be considered while making a year plan include:

·       Total working days in the academic year

·       Total number of holidays

·       Tests and examinations to be conducted

·       Working days of a teacher excluding the leaves

The teacher has to be consider the above points and calculate the number of period allotted for the science subjects. The total number of periods required for the teaching the entire content should be calculated. The teacher should utilize some of the periods for conducting demonstrations and examinations. The year plan has to be prepared in mind all these total periods.

Model format of a year plan

S.NO

Name of the month

Name of the unit

Name of the sub- unit

objectives

achieved

No.of periods

Activities to be conducted

Whether completed in time or not

Teachers signature

Signature of the head

                                                                                                                                       H.M Signature

Objectives

K-Knowledge                     S-Skill                                   A-Appreciation

U-Understanding              I-Interest                            V-Values

A-Application      A-Attitudes

Advantages of a year plan

               Preparation of a year plan helps the teacher in many ways:

Ø  To complete the syllabus in time

Ø  To maintain the teaching discipline

Ø  To achieve the educational objectives

Ø  To evaluate the credibility of teaching methodology and strategies followed

Ø  To undertake necessary modifications as and when required

Ø  To allot time for  activities other than teaching