As much as I love writing resources it's still very easy to feel overwhelmed when programming, not least because of the all the things you're meant to take into account. At the moment I'm putting together a short half-term long Year 10 History unit about 20th Century China and trying to get my head around all the bits and pieces that have to go into it. First, let's take a look at the mandatory stuff:
- Syllabus Outcomes
- Learning Across the Curriculum (broken up into Priorities and General Capabilities)
- Content
- History Continuum (both Concepts and Skills)
- Mode of Assessment
And then, depending on your school, Head Teacher, or personal mantra:
- Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning
- Super Six Comprehension Strategies
- Focus Questions
And (because I'm a sucker for Professional Learning), in this particular instance I'm seeking to also integrate the following:
- 'Focus on Reading' action research
- Grammar and Teaching course strategies
In the case of this particular unit, which I haven't really named yet, I'm going to leave out the Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning; mainly because it's a bridge too far with all the other things I'm putting in, and also because I don't haven't that much of a working knowledge yet when it comes to the Eight Ways.
So this is what I've picked out for the unit...
Outcomes: HT5-2, HT5-5, HT5-7
These were picked out nearly two years ago when our faculty mapped out the History programs using the new syllabus. The first of these outcomes is about sequencing and explaining significant patterns in history, something which can be applied to almost any historical period. The other two outcomes relate to source analysis and perspective, meaning that I therefore have to keep it in my head to use a range of sources whilst programming.
Learning Across the Curriculum: 1 cross-curriculum priority, 2 general capabilities
'Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia' is a no-brainer here, and looking at China's more recent history provides a good opportunity for students to get a better understanding of our most powerful neighbour. This flows nicely into the general capability of Intercultural Understanding, and I've added Literacy in because it fits with my recent training in grammar and reading skills.
Content: 20th Century China
Originally, I was going to program a unit about UN Security (as referenced in the syllabus) but I decided this might be a bit dull for the kids, and a unit about China could build nicely on a Cold War unit that another staff member programmed for Term 2. Thinking ahead towards Preliminary Modern History, I think it's important that the students get a thorough understanding about a few key concepts (such as communism and totalitarianism) and it's useful to map backwards in this way because it helps to build student interest and knowledge should they choose to continue studying history in Year 11.
The Chinese period I'll be concentrating on is 1950-1980, with particular focus on Mao Zedong's rise to prominence and the Cultural Revolution. Admittedly, my choice of China is a fairly liberal interpretation of a few references in the syllabus about modern China/India, but there's certainly room in the use of the term 'school developed topic' for this sort of thing. At the end of the day, focusing on China should hopefully generate some interest amongst students in the subject of Modern History, and getting seniors interested in the topic of History is pretty darn important.
History Continuum Concepts and Skills
I've decided to pick concepts and skills that fit with my source analysis and perspectives outcomes, the concepts being Contestability, Empathetic Understanding and Perspectives, and the skills being Source Analysis, Comprehension (of chronology, terms and concepts), Empathetic Understanding and Contesting significance of ideas or people in regards to historical events.
It's all stuff that fits together really well, and they're things that Year 10 History students should really be starting to get to better grips with at this point in their education.
Mode of Assessment: Source Analysis / Sequencing through Examination
Much like the outcomes, the mode of assessment was decided long ago so it isn't really a flexible element in this process. The mode of assessment therefore became my baseline for much of this unit, and I chose many of the above elements based on how they would support this assessment.
I've generally found it most useful to have the assessment task created and sorted before I start to program a unit. The exception to this is when it's an examination that covers a range of unit elements (as opposed to an take-home assessment task, research project, or something else). In order to balance the content of the exam I prefer to have the whole unit done before I put it together. I'll have an idea of what I want to cover in the exam, and then plan my unit accordingly. In this case, we have the added pressure of needing an exam to happen relatively early in the unit (so results can be gathered in time for Yearly Reports to go out to the Year 10 students before the term ends). So, with all that in mind, this examination will predominantly cover source analysis and the skills that have been taught (rather than content).
Super Six Comprehension Skills
Our school implemented this literacy initiative roughly two years ago. They skills are designed to increase comprehension and literacy across all KLAs, and I've found them pretty useful in engaging students of lower ability. The six skills are: Monitoring, Summarising, Visualising, Predicting, Questioning, and Making Connections.
Focus Questions
As this unit will only go for 8-10 lessons, I've decided to just use one focus question to drive it: To what extent was Chairman Mao responsible for China's emergence into the modern world? This should provide enough scope to cover Mao's astounding and shocking work in the '50s, '60s and '70s, and allow for some discussion of reforms instigated by his successor, Deng Xiaoping.
Focus on Reading / Grammar
These were both quite comprehensive courses that took place over a long time. The Focus on Reading stuff equates to 50 hours of self-directed work revolving around building fluency in order to increase literacy, and the Grammar course took place over 13 weeks (I only just finished it yesterday, actually). Both of these courses require me to incorporate their content into a unit, so I've boiled down my learning into a few 'skills' to be covered:
- Building Fluency
- Monitoring
- Text Chains (for Cohesion)
- Lexical Understanding
- Vocabulary Building
- Taxonomy Building
- Decoding
- Text Sets
- Joint Text Construction
Each of these are tied to various activities that I've picked up from the two courses, and should (hopefully!) help students build their reading and writing skills. I've found that they also work well with source analysis.
And that's my starting point for this unit.
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