Let’s imagine that I’m an elementary school media specialist in the state of North Carolina. Animals are a key part of the 4th grade science curriculum in North Carolina. At my imaginary elementary school, a fourth grade teacher has approached me. She’s interested in inquiry learning and wants to incorporate popular culture into her class; she’s noticed that her students seem especially interested in Pokemon. Some of them have even been sneaking their Pokewalkers into school hoping to rack up more steps to help them in the most recent Pokemon releases, HeartGold and SoulSilver.

She knows that Pokemon look a lot like animals and she thinks she can somehow put that to use in her animal unit plan, so she turns to Google. A search for “Pokemon lesson plan” brings up JP’s post a little down the first page of results. She’s also familiar with the Thinkfinity project (let’s just assume it’s because I’m an awesome librarian and make sure my colleagues know about these resources). She performs a search there for “animals” and limits it to lessons for grades 3-5. She finds Animal Adaptations, which addresses adaptations and habitats – exactly what she wants to address in her unit.

Armed with these two lesson plans, she comes to me looking for any additional resources which might support her students’ research. I indicate to her that I’m very interested in games in education and ask her if she would mind if we collaborated more fully on this unit plan and offer to assist with the assessment of the final product as well. As you might imagine, she is thrilled to have an offer of help with that part of things. I give her a quick overview of the backwards design process, much like I gave in my previous post, and we set up a meeting to work through the backwards design template and create a unit plan with JP’s post and the Thinkfinity plan as inspiration.

Next time: Desired Results.

Earlier posts in this series:
Introduction

My work at LEARN NC consists primarily of reading lesson plans and aligning them with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. This means I’ve read many lesson plans about animals and their habitats. It also means that first and foremost in my mind in any lesson planning project are the standards, both from North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction and from the National Science Teachers Association (the relevant professional association in this case).

This focus pushed me to consider using backwards design to write my inquiry-based Pokemon lesson. Backwards design begins with the end in mind, asking three key questions:

1. What do we want our students to know and be able to do?
2. How will they demonstrate their knowledge and ability?
3. What activities will support them as they move through this process?

It was my original intention to write a whole unit plan and then present it to you, The Internet, fully formed. But I’ve since changed my mind. I’m going to walk you through this process with me. So get ready, because we’re in for what might be a lengthy ride.