EEND 678 Artifact 1

ARTIFACT 1




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The first artifact I chose was the Understanding by Design Unit. Prior to this class, I had heard of UbD units; however, I had never created one. It seemed like quite a bit of work and research would be involved in creating one of these units. After creating a UbD unit, my thinking was correct - at least for me. Creating the unit was time-consuming and took many hours to plan and incorporate common core standards with the use of meaningful technology. So it definitely took some determination to complete. The article, Understanding by Design Framework by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins was helpful in understanding the concepts of UbD units. According to McTighe and Wiggins, "Teachers are coaches of understanding, not mere purveyors of content knowledge, skill, or activity" (ASCD Online). This really helped me in designing my unit by knowing that I would take a less prominent role in student work, but at the same time, it was a bit difficult to see myself taking a 'back seat' in the classroom. On the positive side, the creation of this unit provides me with a project applicable to my content area that I will have available to present to my students next year. And this is the main reason why I chose this unit as my first artifact.

This unit applies to 10th grade English with the ultimate goal being for students to work with partners to create a graphic novel focusing on a current social issue. Throughout the unit students will engage in brainstorming social issues or injustices, identifying the problem and researching feasible solutions, having discussions, writing a realistic fiction, peer editing and review, creating a video trailer for the graphic novel and much more. The unit will allow students to determine what they want to learn and how they want to approach it - thus empowering them with ownership of their learning. The unit incorporates many activities that focus on technology, but the students can choose the technology appropriate for their project. Overall, this unit will be a valuable and key unit for my English 2 classes moving forward. I imagine I will have to tweak it along the way though.

The main challenge I faced when creating this unit was trying to incorporate the correct projects that would eventually and chronologically lead to the overall project. I found myself constantly rearranging the order of the unit. I also struggled at times with incorporating the right technology in a meaningful way and not being redundant with my use of technology or using it in a substitution manner. Lastly, as I mentioned previously, I expected the unit to take several hours to create; and it did take several hours and then some. In the end, considering the project that was created, I feel it was well worth the time and effort.

Throughout this course I grew as a professional in ways I did not expect. This course seemed to focus less on new technology and more on how to incorporate the technology into academics in meaningful ways. That's not to say that I did not learn about new technologies. The tech tool hunt was awesome and had lots of technology that I was unfamiliar with. I thought I learned more in this class as compared to others on how to incorporate this technology in the modification and redefinition levels of SAMR.

I am looking forward to next year when I can use my UbD with my 10th-grade students after we finish reading the graphic novel Fahrenheit 451. I think that they are going to not only have fun with the unit, but I see creativity and new thinking emerge.


Kumar, J. (n.d.). Understanding by Design [Word Cloud]. Retrieved April 25, 2018, from
     https://image.slidesharecdn.com/understandingbydesign-160911060520/95/understanding-by-design-1-638.jpg?                     

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