1. How many units of this type do the students accomplish
throughout the school year?
I think this varies depending on the class. I've had classrooms
where we go through quite a few units, and I try to have the units
last as long as the students' interest is there and as long as we
can make curriculum connections to it. The World War II project
I expected to go about a month, and it ended up going two months
because the students were so involved in it. The nice part is they
were still learning the curriculum areas I needed them to learn.
For instance, fact and opinion wasn't necessarily something I was
going to work on with the students. But when we started getting
into the nonfiction books, there were books that had to do with
facts of things that had happened, like this happened on this date
or that happened on that date. And then there were books that were
scenarios of what people thought should have happened or how they
had analyzed a situation that had happened during the war, and those
were more opinion-based, and so that's an area I worked on in the
World War II unit instead of a different unit I was going to teach
it in. So I think the key is to be flexible with your time limit
and not necessarily try to get through so many themes, but to try
to teach curriculum areas you need to teach under an interest area
that your students have.
