Unit Planning

Similarly to long range plans, unit plans are meant to plan with the "end in mind" or "backwards planning".  The idea, again, is to look at the Big Ideas, your long range plans and create a unit that not only meets a variety of expectations but has elements of cross-curricular content, a variety of assessments and time for students to work together and collaborate with one another with a common goal of building on their prior knowledge and gaining a deeper understanding.  Unit planning helps us, as teachers, help students achieve the curriculum expectations.

I often see unit plans as a table of contents for the daily lessons.  It gives a really nice visual overview of what you will be teaching over the next few weeks and what materials and resources you will need to collect.  It allows teachers to see the progression of the learning and gives teachers a quick assessment for learning as the class works through the unit; If you feel the students are not ready for the next lesson, because you can easily see what's ahead, unit plans let you quickly tweak the speed the students are progressing through the content.

On page 61 of  A Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics, Kindergarten to Grade 6 Volume One there is a template for a unit plan
http://eworkshop.on.ca/edu/resources/guides/Guide_Math_K_6_Volume_1.pdf


The NCTM website has lots of unit plans and lesson with very clear progressions of learning and outcomes
http://illuminations.nctm.org/