What is Integrated Unit Planning?

Question

Task: Prepare a detailed report on Integrated Unit Planning?

Answer

Integrated unit plan concentrates on both the recycling process and the reason of why we should do this through drawing on concepts, knowledge and skills from English, Science, The Arts and Humanities and social sciences.Recycling reduces the demand of extracting products from the earth by logging, digging, quarrying and mining. This knowledge is essential not only for the students to satisfy their academic career rather this knowledge is important for every human being living on earth, in order to save the environment along with saving their own health. However, after being intertwisted by sustainability, cross-curriculum priority and general capability, students further absorb themselves in the theme of the integrated unit by a kaleidoscope of lenses, which offers the students important lessons regarding how to recycle and why to recycle the essential products (Bredenoord, 2017)

The motive of the learning experiences of this integrated unit is to upgrade skills, knowledge and understanding of the students regarding environment, recycling procedures and the need for recycling. This integrated unit plan is prepared to improve the knowledge, skills, understanding and experiences of the students with the help of effective and authenticlearning process and only thus students will be able to apply their learning outcomes regarding environment, importance of recycling and the effective procedure of recycling in various contexts of their own lives (Bredenoord, 2017). With the aim to engage in both the thinking of higher order and in critical reflection, students afforded opportunities as they apply, analyze, evaluate, acquire and synthesis every content (Forey& Cheung, 2019).

The preferable learning pattern of a particular group of students who are having experiences regarding verbal/linguistic, logic/mathematics, bodily/kinesthetic and visual spatial are incorporated through the different lessons and learning experiences of this integrated unit. This has been gained with the help of impetus materials and resources such as excursion, open ended graphic organizers and effective videos. This achievement is beneficial for the students in order to apply their preferred pattern of learning to expand their understanding and knowledge (Goyal, Esposito &Kapoor, 2018).

The disciplines that are related to science, humanities and social sciences as well as the priorities are related to cross-curriculum ‘sustainability’ knowledge, underpin much of the unit plan. Therefore, it is clear that every discipline gives some lessons which are related to sustainability and recycling.Though it is important to conduct extra curriculum activities for the group of students in order to provide them authentic and relevant lessons that are not possible to get only through textual books. One can achieve active and practical knowledge, experiences, effective skills only through excursion, trail walks, group activities provided to them and by watching relevant visual videos. The resources collected from the earths can be used as sustainable products and it reflects that recycling is a process that cares for the environment (Forey& Cheung, 2019) as it does not need logging, quarrying, digging and mining like activities which are considered to be the triggers that affects and destructs nature.

Furthermore, as an added benefit, students improve their effective skills by creating visual art works and informative texts. These skills are used to interact with their understanding and knowledge of recycling, which are aligned with the skills based on English and arts discipline. With the aim to explore further and to be able to answer questions that are aligned with science and humanities, social science disciplines and mathematics, all of the students need to actively participate in such extra curriculum activities that are conducted outside the institutional building. With such active and effective performances, students definitely develop their skills and knowledge regarding various educational activities such as data collection, classification and representation.

As described byChauveetal., (2021), it is clear that an integrated approach to integration is adopted by this unit plan. Concepts, skills, knowledge and experience from various disciplines are seamlessly immersed into the learning patterns of the students and this whole process an integrated approach. These skills and understandings of the students regarding nature, environment, sustainability and recycling are not separated and are very clear and transparent in every subject area such as in English, Science, Mathematics and Humanities (Goyal, Esposito &Kapoor, 2018). Murdoch’sprocess of inquiry commences with the initiation of the unit, where prior skills are ascertained before the engagement of the students with the investigative process that builds the understanding and knowledge of the student by sorting out and further going. This process is conducted before taking actions and creating relations based on the knowledge gained (Chauveetal., 2021).

The assessment of learning can be completed through submitting the final product that is produced at the end of the unit by the group of the students. This assessment of learning has been adopted by this unit as through this assessment learning can be conducted through high order thinking, work samples such as the KWL, used graphic organizers and reflection tasks (Baird, Andrich,Hopfenbeck&Stobart, 2017).

In order to support all of the learning experiences, stimulants and resources are selected which draw on the intelligences and learning styles of a group of students such as excursions, bodily experiences, visual videos and logical experiences through collecting data. The inclusion of the students who are having congenital hearing disabilities is getting support from the Live Caption App. These students are offered to participate in every ICT based excursion which would provide them practical learnings that are helpful for every step of their lives in order to save environment and to improve their own lifestyle. In order to maximize the learning experience, a number of learning theories such as Humanism, Connectivism, Cognitive, Constructivism and Behaviorism are linked with the stimulus. According to the experts and educational theorists, these theories have successful teaching approaches and are used to improve the curriculum and lesson plans. With the aim to provide facilities of collaborating, cooperating and communication to the students, many tasks were also selected that can engage them in learning.

Reference list
Baird, J. A., Andrich, D., Hopfenbeck, T. N., &Stobart, G. (2017). Assessment and learning: Fields apart?. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 24(3), 317-350.

Bredenoord, J. (2017). Sustainable building materials for low-cost housing and the challenges facing their technological developments: Examples and lessons regarding bamboo, earth-block technologies, building blocks of recycled materials, and improved concrete panels. Integrated Unit PlanningJournal of Architectural Engineering Technology, 6(1), 1-11.

Chauve, L., Hodge, F., Murdoch, S., Masoudzadeh, F., Mann, H. J., Lopez-Clavijo, A., ...&Casanueva, O. (2021). Neuronal HSF-1 coordinates the propagation of fat desaturation across tissues to enable adaptation to high temperatures in C. elegans. PLoS biology, 19(11), e3001431.

Forey, G., & Cheung, L. M. E. (2019).The benefits of explicit teaching of language for curriculum learning in the physical education classroom. English for Specific Purposes, 54, 91-109.

Goyal, S., Esposito, M., &Kapoor, A. (2018). Circular economy business models in developing economies: lessons from India on reduce, recycle, and reuse paradigms. Thunderbird International Business Review, 60(5), 729-740.