​​​​Jason Wakeman​

While I do the majority of planning and design work before I begin a unit, I believe strongly that planning needs to be ongoing throughout a unit. Breaking down a task into manageable parts is not a purely abstract task. What is and isn't "manageable" will depend on your students. What may be a non-issue for some students will need to be a major area of difficulty for another. Because of this, adjustments need to be made throughout a unit as misunderstandings and difficulties arise. 

 

Throughout a unit I try to stay on the lookout for these difficulties and misunderstandings through planned formative assessments and on-the-spot observations as well. When I notice these, I design ways to address them. 

 

To the right are the directions to the first workshop for our fourth culminating project. In the workshop I asked students to evaluate one another's papers in small groups and make revision plans for their second drafts. Specifically I asked them to look for issues I had noticed in the short essays they had written earlier in the unit.

 

In their essays, I had noticed a number of recurrent issues. I left comments on the papers themselves, but by designing our first workshop around identifying and addressing those issues in different context, I was able to actively involve my students in understanding and addressing the difficulties picked out through my formative assessments.