Carina Dean/Matthew Wenz Unit Plan: Our Community’s Geography

Introduction - The unit is designed for students in a New York City second grade classroom. It has been created for a classroom where most students are working up to grade level. Students who work well with visuals, physical manipulatives and ESL students have been taken into accommodation. - This area is designed to strengthen students’ understanding of the physical and geographical features of their city. In this case students will learn about landforms, wildlife, communities, waterways and manmade structures and how they impact the everyday lives of NYC residents. The unit will begin by looking at geographical features such as rivers, oceans, parks and islands. These features will be explored by observing how they form communities and influence how people live in an urban setting.

Geography of New York City - Geography of New York City is introduced as the first unit of the year and thus is a very important building block for the classes development through the duration of their grade level. - The unit is scheduled t last for the month of September as school begins so if a class starts promptly, the unit should take about three weeks to cover. It is essential for students to understand the physical features of their city if they are to be able to explain its development and how government works there..

Essential Question How do physical and manmade features around New York City influence the lives of its citizens?

How the Essential Questioned Influenced the Unit - The essential question serves as a common reference among all lessons in a unit. - Having this central question gives a reference point and also keeps the lass focused on a goal. The teacher can combine a great deal of different activities to answer a single complex question. - The question itself as answered by the students allows them to express a variety of different opinions and facts that strengthen their understanding of the topic. - Our essential question evolved over the course of developing the unit. We began with a similar question however after looking a the standards and understanding what students are to know and understand, we determined the unit would be more successful by modifying our question.

Cont. - The essential question also fostered a great deal of focus questions and helped develop a common goal for understanding the unit based around these questions. - The common nature of the focus questions would also help link lessons together as they can overlap and help strengthen students’ understanding by relating similar information in different fashions. - In the long term, the focus questions of different units can be used as a broad outline of student goals for the year and enhance a teacher’s ability to productively educate his or her students.

Google Earth Google Earth is a fantastic tool for use in the classroom. It takes the globe and makes it ultra interactive. Students and teachers can use the globe to zoom in on almost any point in the world. This strengthens understanding of how communities and countries interact. It also has many usable layers that include pictures, panoramic photos, landmarks, boundaries and even weather.

What I Learned: Marvelous Matt - Developing a whole unit strengthens the value of individual lessons. - The Common Core provides a solid outline of subjects that students must master and excellent guidance to developing better lessons. - By following the Core Standards lessons develop better for the use of different learning styles amongst students. - Focusing on major ideas is much more important in younger grades than fined tuned skills. The common core is scaffolded and by realizing this, teachers can hone in on more important subjects. Students will develop more fined tuned skills as they progress through the grades.

What I Learned: Curious Carina I learned a bunch about New York City and how it works. As a new New Yorker I now better understand how the boroughs are connected and why waterways and other natural features shape the landscape of New York City. Differentiating instruction was an important part of the lesson we built, we attempted to make it usable for as many different types of learners s possible. We have learned that this will benefit all students in a classroom and it was an important factor in designing the lesson.