ABSTRACT
Unit plans are the primary conceptual and organizing frameworks in teaching social studies. That is where you as a teacher decide what is important for students to know and why. There is an infinite amount of material that can be included in a curriculum, unit, or lesson and only a very limited amount of time. The unit plan is where teachers organize ways to subdivide and integrate concepts, skills, and content information. At the preliminary stages, a unit plan is an outline of teaching ideas that are organized into a schedule for presenting them in class. Eventually the ideas get reworked into a series of detailed individual lesson plans that retain the unit’s conceptual connections. A complete unit plan contains completed lesson plans. This chapter discusses what should be included in a unit plan, how social studies curricula address differences among students, and units that focus on content, documents, and themes. Key concepts include choice, flexibility, inclusion, middle schools, planning, structure, and tracking.
