Chunking
More Than a Surface Structure Decoding Strategy
Organizing Curriculum Into Units of Study

by Andrea Frasier Cornerstone Associate

Reflecting on my session at the 2008 Winter Conference, Inquiry Through an Integrated Unit of Study, I pondered what it would take for schools to put units of study into place. What are the prerequisites for framing curriculum into meaningful “chunks”, otherwise known as units of study?

This is no easy feat because of the traditional nature of American schooling!  If we are to improve achievement on standardized tests and prepare our students for the future, we must change the way we think about curriculum and instruction.

Why the Urgency?
During a study of the Civil War, a colleague of mine once said, “I’ve got to shoot Lincoln by Friday!” The state test was quickly approaching and she was in a panic over all the social studies standards she still had to “cover”.  It made me wonder, how deeply will these students understand the Civil War? Will they remember any of this beyond the test? 

The standards-based movement has required teachers to use numerous district and state standards to make decisions about curriculum, instruction, and assessment. However, teachers have traditionally been encouraged to measure factual knowledge and skills. To make matters worse, the pressures of accountability on standardized tests leads to stressed-out teachers rushing through or “covering” the standards with little thought to depth of understanding.

Can we go beyond facts to deeper levels of understanding while improving achievement on standardized tests? Yes! Through well-designed Units of Study, we can help students think in terms of concepts and “big ideas.”  If we use an inquiry approach geared towards solving problems and answering essential questions, motivation to learn increases as well.

So, what is a Unit of Study?
Units of study are curriculum guides that focus teaching from three to six weeks at a time. A unit is a series of lessons happening over an extended period of time that all focus on a larger topic, concept, or theme. I compare units of study to an umbrella under which all of lessons fit, to help avoid a random or hit or miss feel to teaching.

Using units of study completely changed the way I think about curriculum and instruction!  It created an atmosphere of determination and intensity in my classroom.
I am currently working with Marci Marcus, a Stamford coach, to develop a third-grade nonfiction unit of study.  When I asked her thoughts about planning a unit like this, she stated, “It just makes sense! It ties everything together. There are no longer isolated or disconnected skills and strategies being taught.  It brings focus to your teaching.”

How Does Inquiry Play a Part in Units of Study?
In Planning for Inquiry: It’s Not an Oxymoron (2007), Diane Parker writes:

“You have to be better prepared than ever because you have to be able to respond to children’s interests and questions, both anticipated and unanticipated-and believe me, those wonderful, surprising, unanticipated questions will astound you.” (Parker, 2007, p. 7)

Allyn (2007), Calkins ( 2003), Lattimer (2003), and Ray (2001, 2004, 2007), have brought attention to teaching inquiry units of study. I first began the shift to planning and teaching this way in writing workshop after reading these researchers’ suggestions. I started with genre and author studies instead of focusing on a mode and rushing children through the writing process.  I took an inquiry stance requiring me to learn alongside my students, to coach them, to enable them to develop an understanding of the genre.  For example, in my first genre study on memoir, I did not begin by telling my students the characteristics of memoir or provide them with a definition. Instead, I began the unit with the question, “What makes a good memoir?”  I provided them with examples to study and discuss throughout the unit; I modeled my own process; and provided guidance as they composed their own pieces.  As a class, we explored the genre and discovered what made memoir unique, the structures, the topics, and the language.  We used what we learned to inform our writing.  Although memoir was my writing focus for this period of time, I found that it was imperative to align it with my reading workshop. I often reread “snippets” from texts that we studied during reading and looked at them with a “writer’s eye”.

By aligning reading and writing workshop in a way that flows seamlessly, instruction is more coherent for the teacher and enables students to see the connections between subjects. Reading the kind of texts we expect our students to write makes sense.

In Conversations (2000), Regie Routman explains,

“When inquiry is both genuine and integrated, then reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing are naturally part of the exploration or investigation.” (Routman, 2000, p. 468)

Before planning units of study that integrate science and social studies, it is essential that reading and writing be integrated into one language arts block! (In the online version of this article I have included an outline of this memoir unit, so you can see how the reading and writing workshop align.)

Planning a Unit
Those of you who were in my session at the Winter Conference heard me rave about Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry (Wilhelm, 2007), a new book which provides a much simple format for planning an inquiry unit. This book shares many of the general features of Understanding by Design. Wilhelm describes three basic steps for planning an inquiry unit:

Identify an Essential Question & Enduring Understanding: What is our focus and why does this matter?

Identify a Culminating Project & Assessments: Where do we want to go with this & how will we know we’ve arrived?

Create a Backwards Plan (Instructional Sequence): How can students be helped to get there?

Some Prerequisites
1.) Time
The first and often biggest challenge to unit planning is time.  Professional learning communities, grade level meetings, and extended school days provide time in which these plans can be done.  At first, planning may seem labor intensive, but once you get the “ball rolling,” teachers develop the habits of mind to support curriculum planning in this way.  I still receive feedback from colleagues who say they are glad that we pushed our grade level to write units of study since the units make the school year so focused. All of the best units of study will be useless if students do not have uninterrupted blocks of time for reading and writing.  A comprehensive literacy block consisting of crafting, composing meaning, and reflection is fundamental to teaching a unit of study.

2.) Curriculum Map
Before considering which standards, skills and strategies will go into a unit; you must consider where this unit fits into the “big picture” of your entire year.  Units of study fit together like interlocking links.  Each unit builds upon the next.  Planning this way combines comprehension strategies, writing genres, and standards into a cohesive whole so they do not feel like separate components. (See an example of my 4th grade reading & writing curriculum maps in the online article).

3.) Resources
The quality of the texts you use is more important than the quantity!  Short, high-quality texts for crafting are invaluable.  It is crucial that the texts lend themselves to the strategy or writing technique so you are able to communicate ideas clearly to your students.  Select fewer texts for modeling and delve into them again and again throughout the unit.  These “touchstone texts” are books that you and your students will revisit multiple times because they exemplify what you are studying.  By looking at the books for a different purpose each time you can “squeeze the text” for deeper learning.

Conclusion
I am passionate about organizing curriculum into units of study because the quality of writing and depth of understanding my students achieved during these units was amazing. The Literacy Fellows and I are committed to assist schools in making units of study a standard practice. We want to continue our discussions around this topic and help teachers move to this level of planning and instruction. Check out the next Spotlight on Literacy for more contributions on Units of Study!

References

Akhavan, N. (2004). How to Align Literacy Instruction, Assessment, and Standards. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Erickson, H. L. (2002). Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.
Lattimer, H. (2003). Thinking Through Genre: Units of Study in Reading and Writing Workshops. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Parker, D. (2007). Planning for Inquiry: It’s Not an Oxymoron. Urbana, IL: NCTE
Ray, K. W. (2007). Study Driven; A Framework for Planning Units of Study in the Writing Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Routman, R. (2000). Conversations. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wilhelm, Jeffrey. (2007). Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry. New York: Scholastic.

Memoir Unit of Study
4th Grade Curriculum Map: Reading Workshop
4th Grade Curriculum Map: Writing Workshop