instructional+unit

Instructional Unit __Description __

This assignment was meant for us as students to create an instructional unit using blackboard. An instructional unit consists of four to five lessons that need to be taught to address one piece of information. These lessons should take a week long to teach when in the regular face to face classroom. The instructional unit was meant to give the students a step by step process what they needed to accomplish and learn in these set of lessons. The students needed to be assessed on their previous knowledge and then their knowledge after taking the course and completing it. The instructional unit should be interactive and collaborative in some parts. THe student needed group work to be done and also individual work as well. We needed to make sure that the unit was only four to five lessons long and had to incorporate many types of media. We also had to make sure that we had a rubric to follow of items that needed to be included in our unit. The purpose of this assignment was to evaluate our capabilities of serving an online course to our students.

__Process __

To begin this assignment I tried to think about what my students have difficulty with and something that I could do using blackboard. I went through many optioins, such as writing complete sentences with punctuation, spelling, fractions and decimals but many of those things either seemed too cut and dry or too involved. I started to take the route of writing. My students have an extremely hard time with organizing their thoughts. Once they are organized they can write great essays but many times they get stuck with the organizational part. I then decided to do something with organizing ideas for writing. I looked at the standards for fourth grade and many of the writing standards was to create an outline. I decided to do my instructional unit on writing outlines. At first it was difficult for me to get started because I making the project too involved, but once I realized that my only goal was for the students to create a good outline to help them write an essay, it was much easier. I decided to break the days down into parts of the outline and each part would be due each day. I wanted the students to learn to different ways for creating outlines, so I decided to use microsoft word and bubbl.us. Each day the students would have a part of their outline due to me, one with microsoft and the other with bubbl.us. Each day I had a screencast or reading material on each part of an outline and its purpose, such as the topic sentences, subtopics and details. THe final lesson was for their outlines to be completed both in bubbl.us and in microsoft.

__Reflection __

I felt like this was a hard unit for me to do. After getting involved in it I wanted to go back and do something else, but I decided to stick it out. After I got the point that there was only one thing I was focusing on, writing outlines, other things fell into place. I was trying to make this bigger then what it was and really there was no need for it. I thought that the lessons turned out really well. I had a screencast for everyday and every part of their outline. I found that jing was great help to me because it allowed me to teach the students without being right there with them. I also had websites and reading material for the students so that they could access the information that I wanted to them in a variety of ways. I think that by having a part of the project due to me each day was very productive. It made it seem less overwhelming to me as a teacher and to them as students if they filled out their outline as they went along. I also enjoyed doing the google docs for their collaborative work. I think it was good that each student had to do their part in making their outline and one person's information was based on another so they really needed teamwork to complete the assignment. At the end of the instructional unit I thought it was very productive but it might have been easier if I chose a more interesting topic to teach.

__Link __ [|My Blackboard Course]

__Resources __ Retrieved from: [|http://bubble.us]
 * Edelman, K. & Amelyan, L. (2006) //Bubble.us Beta//

Aitchison, S. (2007, January1) //How to use bubbl.us to make 2008 your most productive year ever.// Retrieved from []

Davis, B. (2007, April27) //Success with bubbl.us// Retrieved from []

Harroff, B. (2007) //The use of outlines to improve research papers// Retrieved from []

(2007) //Maryland voluntary state curriculum// Retrieved from []

She, V. ( 2005). //Core rules of netiquette//. Retrieved from []

Winnington, D. (2010) //Plagerism clause// Retrieved from []

Purdue University (1995) //Purdue online writing lab.// Retrieved from //[]///

Luman, R. (2001) //Making an outline.// Retrieved from //[]//

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