Last school year I had been using lessons previously created by Leayne Patch-Highfill. The goal for this year along with a bit of encouragement I was able to take some of content that was already there and make it my own. I needed to look at what the learning objective of the unit was trying to accomplish and how I might be able to create some of my own lessons, infuse my ‘ike and try them out. The focus for these lessons was to build in more writing in order to prepare the haumana for the summative assessment and to also lend kōkua to my DOE kumu as they prep their haumāna for research writing. For this unit, I followed the pacing map provided to me upon joining my grade level at Keonepoko. I am also referencing HCPS III and CCSS standards as the guide for setting up the lessons. Along with the standards, I am also incorporating the Depth of Knowledge and Target Method Matching references for identifying the skill sets the students’ will be engaging in.

Lessons 1-3 are the beginning of the new unit and I really needed to reflect on what was important for this quarter, why it was important, and why did the haumāna have to know this. This was challenging because I needed to figure out what was important to a keiki and not necessarily cool or interesting to me personally. I had to figure out what was going to stick out and be the “aha” moment for them and stay. I wanted to get them to start thinking independently to cause more inquiry and curiosity. For my student samples I have two levels a high and a low. This is a sample of an introduction to an informational writing that was used in lesson 1. After completing the outdoor activities we came back in to do the wrap-up and begin the writing.

Although I struggled through this process it was definitely productive for me as I move forward into a new realm of content, teaching methodologies, strategies and philosophies.