/ WROCLAW INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
MYP UNIT PLANNER
Unit title
/
Autobiography – Who am I?
Teacher(s) / Jill Craig and Valerie Van Sice
Subject and grade level / MYP1 Language Arts and MYP1 Design Technology
Time frame and duration / 8 weeks
Stage 1: Integrate significant concept, area of interaction and unit question
Area of interaction focus
Which area of interaction will be our focus?
Why have we chosen this? / /
Significant concept(s)
What are the big ideas? What do we want our students to retain for years into the future?
Health & Social
because the students will be examining themselves and their lives and sharing experiences and influences. / Everybody has a story to tell & that the way we tell a story is just as important as the story itself.
MYP unit question
What makes me so interesting?
How can I make my writing more engaging?
Assessment
What task(s) will allow students the opportunity to respond to the unit question?
What will constitute acceptable evidence of understanding? How will students show what they have understood?
Answering and asking questions
Journal writing
Class contributions
Producing a timeline and a family tree
Writing autobiographical anecdotes with plot, setting and characters (Creating student’s own ‘autobiography)
Which specific MYP objectives will be addressed during this unit?
Recognize and comment on the language, content, structure and meaning of age-appropriate writing.
Use language to entertain, describe and express feelings.
Express a relevant personal response to literary and non-literary texts and demonstrate the ability to approach age-appropriate texts independently (on going)
Express ideas with clarity and coherence in written communication.
Structure ideas in writing in a logical way and support them with some relevant examples.
Use and understand an appropriate range of vocabulary and idiom.
Use correct grammar with appropriate sentence structure.
Show some awareness of the need for an effective choice of register suited to audience in written communication.
Which MYP assessment criteria will be used?
Content, organisation & Style and language use
Stage 2: Backward planning: from the assessment to the learning activities through inquiry
ContentWhat knowledge and/or skills (from the course overview) are going to be used to enable the student to respond to the unit question?
What (if any) state, provincial, district, or local standards/skills are to be addressed? How can they be unpacked to develop the significant concept(s) for stage 1?
Begin to have a sense of paragraphing and order, begin to show accuracy in punctuation, capitalization and spelling and employ an appropriate range of vocabulary, begin to control a variety of sentence structures, express feelings and personal ideas, read for information, summarize a text, recognise dominant and secondary ideas in a text, read and recite aloud with expression, speak in a variety of situations, use dictionaries and thesauruses to expand vocabulary
Approaches to learning
How will this unit contribute to the overall development of subject-specific and general approaches to learning skills?
Communication skills – speaking, presenting, questioning, reading & writing
Thinking skills – organising their own ideas and deciding on the best way to present them, creating a time line for their lives, working through the writing process
Organisational skills – working to deadlines, using class time effectively, organising vocabulary lists to suit learning style
Collaboration – working together to practice presenting their stories orally, group discussions
Reflection – regular self and peer revising of work
Learning experiences1. How will students know what is expected of them? Will they see examples, rubrics, templates?
2. How will students acquire the knowledge and practise the skills required? How will they practise applying these?
3. Do the students have enough prior knowledge? How will we know? / Teaching strategies1. How will we use formative assessment to give students feedback during the unit?
What different teaching methodologies will we employ?
How are we differentiating teaching and learning for all? How have we made provision for those learning in a language other than their mother tongue? How have we considered those with special educational nee
Students will be presented with models, rubrics and expectations before assignment of a task.
Students will read aloud, practising reading with expression – practising in pairs.
Students will read independently and demonstrate understanding through worksheets and discussion
Students will read extracts from autobiographies (particularly Boy by Roald Dahl) and analyse paragraphing and techniques to make writing interesting – e.g. use of dialogue (including correct punctuation), interesting vocabulary to create a visual image – similes, exaggeration etc. These techniques will then be practised through worksheets, small assignments etc. Students will practice using dictionaries and thesauruses.
Students will participate in frequent journal writing to stimulate ideas and allow them to express themselves in writing.
Beginning of unit – Read Smart Ice cream by Paul Jennings
· Review reading strategies
· Review strategies for recording vocabulary
· Review how to write a reading journal entry
· Writing journal – write about a classmate form the past that you liked/didn't like
· Identify 1st person narrative point of view.
· Summarize story
· Discuss main character in terms of attributes of the learner profile
Journal – Who am I?
· Brainstorm what information they could have included
· Graphic organizer to describe themselves – family, personality, interests, strange habits, phobias, plans for the future
· Concentrate on grouping ideas to build paragraphs
· Review paragraph structure & topic sentences
· Students write an introduction about themselves (This will be reviewed towards end of unit with emphasis on revising and adding humour).
· Introduce task – creation of timeline for life with main events – interview families to complete timelines.
Journal – Describe your first day at school
· Start Reading Boy by Roald Dahl – How does he describe his first day at school? What information does he include? What else could you include?
· Graphic organiser to brainstorm first day at school.
· Concentrate on grouping ideas to build paragraphs.
· More work on topic sentences.
· How to use dialogue in their anecdotes.
· Students start collecting photos to use in their autobiographies.
Journal – A day you got into trouble at school
· Read Great Mouse plot and Mr Coombes
· Look at humour – how has Dahl made the story interesting and humorous – choice of vocabulary, similes, use of dialogue, exaggeration etc.
· Summarizing – comic strip of incident
Journal – A holiday to remember!
· Read Going to Norway and track journey
Journal – A trip to the doctors/hospital
· Read ‘a visit to the doctors’ – how does a good writer evoke an emotional response from the reader.
Journal – describe a teacher you liked/didn’t like
· How do good writers describe people – look at Matron, Mrs. Pratchett etc.
Encourage students to choose three to five incidents from their life to write about – they can write about new incidents or reshape some of the topics they wrote about in their journals. Emphasis is on engaging the reader. / Formative assessments:
Teacher will monitor students carefully throughout the whole unit, keeping anecdotal records. Feedback is provided on written tasks – both through written pointers and through individual conferencing and immediately after oral discussions.
Students are directed to rubrics and encouraged to evaluate themselves and their peers at different stages of the writing process.
Students will complete worksheets to demonstrate their understanding at various stages of the unit and will receive feedback on these.
Teaching methodologies include:
Demonstrating and modelling
Independent work, pair work, group work
Think – pair- share
Class discussions
Cooperative learning
Student to student learning
Differentiation strategies include:
Modified tasks
Different student groupings depending on task
Use of visuals such as pictures
Modelling & demonstrating
ResourcesWhat resources are available to us?
How will our classroom environment, local environment and/or the community be used to facilitate students’ experiences during the unit?
Boy by Roald Dahl
Families – interviewing family members
Dictionaries, thesauruses
Teacher made worksheets
Internet Resource Links: Teachit.co.uk
Ongoing reflections and evaluation
In keeping an ongoing record, consider the following questions. There are further stimulus questions at the end of the “Planning for teaching and learning” section of MYP: From principles into practice.
Students and teachersWhat did we find compelling? Were our disciplinary knowledge/skills challenged in any way?
What inquiries arose during the learning? What, if any, extension activities arose?
How did we reflect—both on the unit and on our own learning?
Which attributes of the learner profile were encouraged through this unit? What opportunities were there for student-initiated action?
Possible connections How successful was the collaboration with other teachers within my subject group and from other subject groups?
What interdisciplinary understandings were or could be forged through collaboration with other subjects?
Assessment
Were students able to demonstrate their learning?
How did the assessment tasks allow students to demonstrate the learning objectives identified for this unit? How did I make sure students were invited to achieve at all levels of the criteria descriptors?
Are we prepared for the next stage?
Data collection
How did we decide on the data to collect? Was it useful?
Students were engaged in the unit. They really enjoyed sharing stories from their past. They made good progress from their first piece of writing to their final piece.
Avoiding reading pg 13-23 of Dahl’s autobiography and giving ss a summary instead worked well. Last year We started at the beginning of the book which is not the most interesting part and can numb enthusiasm. Should have asked students to fill in a timeline of the information I gave them – Would prepare a handout next time asking for main events on a time line to be filled in. This could be continued through the whole autobiography. Or better readers read & fill in chart while other students are working on something else. When I asked students to read my feedback on their writing and reflect on how they would improve their work, answers were very vague e.g. use more interesting vocabulary, give more information etc. l prepared a reflection sheet to add to their work to encourage them to give more specific suggestions for improvement which helped encouraged them to think more deeply about improvements they would make.
Idea to get students to draw a mean teacher, student or neighbor from the past worked well, but students didn’t use thesaurus as asked – more differentiation required here – More proficient students use thesaurus and go on to write a paragraph, ESL students concentrate on just labeling.
My worksheet to figure out the rules of punctuation for dialogue was too difficult for most students. I should have started with a simpler model and perhaps used that worksheet at the end to review the rules. Students were still making mistakes with dialogue in their writing after this exercise, so I needed to go back and review again. I should have done another practice activity when first discussing the rules.
The students were able to demonstrate their learning well and were aware themselves of the progress they had made from the beginning of the unit to the end when comparing stories. However, I felt that the unit lasted too long – two weeks more than planned. This was partly due to schedule changes for events such as UN Week. However, I would probably only expect 3 -5 pieces of writing from students instead of expecting 5 from everybody. I would have them working more at their own pace instead of having set deadlines for each piece of work.
The students are still in the process of putting their writing into books that they designed in DT class. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

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