My First Unit Plan

Last week we each constructed our first unit plan in AEE 412. This past week, we received feedback on each of our units and were able to submit them subscribing to that feedback from our peers. The unit I created was titled "Principles of Poultry Production and Management," and was focused on introducing students to basic poultry care and flock management.

The goals of my unit were to introduce students to basic poultry knowledge that they can apply in the real world. My intent was to show them how to properly care for poultry on their own since several students have their own birds at home. Mr. Clark told me that he doesn't have many students interested in poultry, so I planned with capturing some interest in mind.

Specifically, my goals for this unit were:

1. Understand the basics of poultry anatomy and physiology
2. Assess the importance of poultry for humans
3. Outline the key components of the poultry industry
4. Evaluate the productiveness of meat and egg producing bird
5. Analyze the parts of the egg and their significance in reproduction
6. Examine career prospects within the poultry industry
 7. Describe poultry diseases and how they can be prevented

I wanted students to be able to apply what they learn in this unit to others, as well as enhance some of the skills and topics covered from their STEM type classes. My goal was to show students how poultry isn't just chickens, and that they can become much more efficient flock raisers and more educated consumers by applying what they learn.

Some of my feedback was to include better PA SAS standards and appeal my unit rationale to the local level. My goals were kind of narrow at first, and my materials list was a little too brief. Other than that, I just needed to improve some formatting.

I revised my goals to be more general to:

1. Evaluate animals using applied principles of anatomy and physiology 
2. Connect key concepts of bio-chemistry to animal systems
3. Examine career prospects and job requirements within a given field
4. Outline disease methods of action and prevent through biosecurity

I reformatted the unit plan an beefed up my resource lit a little more. I wend back through and made sure that my lesson titles were more appropriate and incorporated some assessment days. My objectives weren't up to par originally, so I went and improved them to be more appropriate. The one thing that was suggested to me that I did not do was to add in the criteria and conditions to my lesson objectives. I wanted the unit plan to be concise and useful for quick refrence. I felt that the condition and criteria were more appropriate to specify in the individual lesson plans, rather than the unit plan. I enjoyed getting feedback on my unit and I hope to keep improving as time goes on and I develop better ideas for teaching this content.