Age 10/11 The Red Planet: English Unit Information

Lesson plans and structures are suggestions only. It is up to you to use this plan as you see fit, changing it to suit your class and teaching. The lessons provided may not match the learners in your class, so it is important that you change the plan and resources to what suits them and you. Prior learning is also a consideration, and if you are using this unit in isolation, consideration is needed as to whether your learners are at the correct stage for the lesson objective or starter. Again, this may mean changing or differentiating the lesson.

We aim to provide lessons plans that are detailed, thorough and extensive. You will have to decide if they are realistic in terms of time and information, considering the abilities in your class, and how you want to teach. You might want to extend lessons over two days or only concentrate on one level of differentiation.

We also aim for the lesson plans to be straightforward so that they can be simplified to one level of ability if needed. Some lessons may need to be split so that half of the introduction is for an ability grouping, who then work independently, while you introduce and guide the other ability grouping. Modelling and consideration of time is important here.

We have aimed to differentiate to allow you a solid base to differentiate further, depending on your class. Of course, we can’t satisfy all eventualities, but we aim to provide a base to start from to include all in the theme.

Lessons that are suitable to create displays from are indicated in the summary above to allow for prior planning.

Timing
A lesson is split into four periods of time – Starter, Main, Groups and Plenary. Suggested timings are given for each period, as a teacher’s awareness of timing is vital in allowing learners to achieve the learning objective in a lesson. They are only suggested, and can, and should be changed depending on your teaching, the levels of your learners and how the lesson progresses (your formative assessment). We aim to provide detailed and thorough planning, so there will be more information and examples in planning than are needed, and teachers need to decide on how much detail, and how many examples are needed, and realistic, in the timing of their lesson.

Starter
Starters are planned for a reason, whether it’s to revise an objective that was covered earlier in the unit or to re-introduce an objective that the learners are familiar with. These objectives are then be used in the forthcoming lesson/s so the starters serve a purpose, and do not swerve the lesson ‘off-track’. They include time for a settling down process as learners enter the classroom.

Starters should be ‘punchy’ and active and get the learners to be working on whiteboards, discussing problems or working together as soon as possible.

Main
Again, planning is detailed and thorough and teachers need to consider timing and their class as they decide on their pace in the main introduction of their teaching. Planning considers breaking up this main introduction so learners ‘active’ listening times are considered. Talk time and animations help to do this, but teachers need to consider their own learners, and include more breaks in listening, or shorten timins accordingly.

Groups
We have organised the lesson into four groups/levels of differentiation, and this would obviously mean that these groups are seated together. Three of these groups should be independent with the teacher then focusing on one group (indicated in Assessment Group box on the plan) to support or challenge them. To enable independence in groups, clear modelling and differentiation is needed.

Instructions for activities should be included in the main introduction of the lesson, with learners then working independently or in a group supported by an adult. Depending on formative assessment the teacher should adjust the length of this period as suitable. At times, there may be a need for the teacher to return to the main introduction to consolidate learning or move to the plenary before extending, changing the structure of the lesson.

Plenary
Plenaries are planned and consolidate or extend learning preparing for future lessons. Again, the timing of this period in a lesson is flexible, depending on your formative assessment.

Support
We have aimed for lessons to be planned with the idea that you are teaching in a large class with wide ranging abilities, and with no support. This might mean that within the plans you feel that some abilities are not challenged within a lesson, but with our wide range of differentiation, there is scope for you to re-organize the lesson.

Marking Group
Marking is organised on a rota basis for each week, where each Assessment Group has a slot of detailed marking. This means that all other children’s work is marked, but one group per lesson is marked in detail with comments to support or challenge, written by the teacher. The group is indicated in the Assessment Group box on the day’s plan. This detailed marking is then addressed in the following lesson’s Feedback Group.

Feedback Group
The Feedback Group references the last lesson’s Marking Group. It links to the lesson’s PowerPoint, where three options are provided to give feedback to the group of learners. These feedback options are proposed questions and prompts to support, extend or consolidate learning. Obviously, feedback changes depending on the ability of the learner, ranging from supported verbal feedback to independent written responses. Teachers will have to change these options to personalise the feedback, depending on their marking and learners.

The three feedback options in the PowerPoint should be allocated to pairs of learners to take into account the time constraints in a lesson. The time when the feedback actual feedback occurs is flexible, depending on the preference of the teacher. This could be at the start of a lesson, where a short whole-class evaluation of yesterday lesson takes place and the questions are allocated to pairs of learners from the ability group. They can then respond orally, or in their books. Another option is to feedback during group activities, as the Feedback Group is also that lesson’s Assessment Group (see below). There is also the option of feeding back during Guided Reading. The teacher should choose an option or combination of options that suits their class. There should be a routine and a responsibility on the learners in the group to read any comment and respond in writing, if needed, and notify the teacher that they have done this.

Assessment Group
During group activities, the teacher works with one group on a rota basis.  There is a presumption that the teacher has no support in the class, so activities are aimed to be structured, modelled and independent to allow the teacher to work with an Assessment Group.

In this group, the teachers aim should be clear in supporting the learners to extend their learning in the short or long term. This is mentioned in the Assessment Group box on each plan. Teachers will need to amend this depending on their learners. There may also be the opportunity to assess, and this is also mentioned where suitable. Again, this depends on the teacher’s preferences and how the lesson is progressing.

In every lesson, learning styles are considered in order to provide for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning. Each lesson has a main focus but specific opportunities are also considered in lessons (see VAK section in plans). The following icons are used:

	= Visual
	= Auditory
	= Kinaesthetic

Colour, pictures, drama, actions and oral activities are integrated into each lesson.

Animations are used throughout the unit to draw learners into the themes and contexts, and make their learning come alive. They are created from a first person point of view to allow children’s imaginations to take over and for them to take ownership of the learning through visual and auditory connections.

Mars – The Red Planet

The first animation (Scene 01) in the unit shows a space shuttle’s take off on a mission to Mars. All animations are from an astronaut’s point of view.  Scene 02 then displays the journey to Mars as an animated diagram followed by the shuttle’s arrival to orbit Mars.  You see the sun rise from behind Mars to show the planet in all its glory.  Scene 03 allows the learners to imagine and discuss the terrain on Mars as you descend from a Mars Lander for the first time.

The animations then enter the world of Science Fiction, as in Scene 04 you explore Mars at night and investigate the patches that exist on its surface. You notice some rocks, and on further investigation realise that one of the rocks is an alien skull (the idea being that it is one of the Grey Alien’s skulls written about in the class text).  As you examine the skull, there is a sudden movement from a dune and an alien life form (the Tripod alien written about in the class text) emerges from the sand.  You immediately retreat back to your Mars Lander.

The fictional subtext is that the Tripod aliens exterminate all life-forms on planets to harvest their natural resources. They are responsible for the marks on the planet’s surface and the disappearance of the Grey Aliens on this planet and also the changing atmosphere on the planet as they have collected all the oxygen.

Scene 05 takes us back to the shuttle as we fly back home. The journey is interrupted by a transmission light flashing.  This leads us to Scene 06, where we see the origin of the transmission which is a Grey Planet.  Scene 07 takes on the Grey Planet’s surface, where we investigate finding a huge crater.  In an attempt to look closer to see something at the bottom of the crater, we slip and slide down its side, falling through a hole at its bottom.  In the dark cavern, we see an alien life-form, similar to the Grey Alien, but with shining streaks on its skin.  Before we can make contact, lasers fill the air and we realise we are in the middle of a fight.  Suddenly the lasers stop, and we see a Tripod Alien as the other combatant in the fight.  The alien with the shining skin is defeated.

The fictional subtext continues, with the Tripod alien on this planet attempting to exterminate the Shining Alien. They have travelled to this planet and are looking to harvest the chemical the makes the alien’s skin glow.

In Scene 08 we turn to see a corridor and move quickly away from alien life form. There seems to be a shining light which gets brighter as we move down the corridor.  When we reach its end, we are confronted by a shining cavern with a huge tree in its centre.  The tree has some sort of huge leaves.  We move closer and realise that the leaves are cocoons with the alien enclosed.  We now realise the source of the chemical that the Tripod’s desire.

In order to look for help Scene 9 sees us back in the space shuttle returning to communicate with Earth. Our journey is interrupted by an alarm light, and suddenly we see a black hole form in space, which we are sucked into.  We find ourselves orbiting a colourful planet.  Suddenly, there is an explosion.

The final scene (Scene 10) sees us looking at a purple surface through a cracked visor. We have crash landed.  We look around at an alien plant.  Our hands are covered with some sort of a purple substance.  We sniff the substance and it smells sweet.

The storyline ends with the astronaut crash landed on a sweet planet where the vegetation tastes of sweet flavours i.e. strawberry, lime, cocoa etc.

Modelling
Clear modelling of what learners have to do to gain successmin their learning is a vital part of teaching, and support for this is included in plans and presentations in the unit. This modelling, allows groups to be independent and a teacher to focus on an assessment group.

Shared Writing
Shared writing is a process that should also allow learners to understand the process of writing, and the creative decisions that are made as we write. Examples of writing are provided to support teachers in their shared writing (these examples are colour coded to reflect text, sentence and word features). However, it is still vital that the teacher still writes with the class, explains his or her thinking as they write, and also include the learners in the process, stopping regularly for learners to think of the next sentence or try and improve their writing. In this way a sense of ownership of class writing is built, and learners are prepared for the challenges of independent writing. Shared writing should also involve clear references to class writing plans, the original unit text, previous learning and also StS maps. This models the need for clear and detailed planning, and how vital that a plan is in the writing process. Obviously, shared writing also promotes the generation of ideas that can be shared and included in the learners’ own writing.

Shared Reading
Shared readingis an opportunity to model spelling and comprehension strategies, and like shared writing breeds independence and confidence.

Talk Time
Talk Time is included/suggested in every lesson to break introductions up into chunks, allow learners to take part, give opportunities for different learning styles and allow the teacher to take feedback of his/her teaching. Organization of talk time is suggested i.e. pairs/groups/question and answer, but this is only a suggestion. Extensions are considered to allow for different abilities.

Questioning is another important factor, and should be used to support or extend discussions in talk time or at any suitable point. Fairness in questioning could be focused on ability or random e.g. through the use of lollypop sticks to draw names.

There are many self/peer assessment systems used in the classroom. Our units use the common ‘traffic light’ approach for regular lesson by lesson self-assessment, and the common ‘stars and a wish’ approach for set definite applied self or peer assessment.  These approaches can be changed depending on the class/school.

Traffic Lights
Traffic lights are regularly featured at the end of each lesson. There should be a routine where learners self-assess their work by colour to reflect their success, colouring a circle or mini-traffic light.  Depending on the learner, and routine, a comment can accompany this.  Traffic lights are again featured at the start of a lesson to feature as a reminder to learners to make sure they assessed their learning yesterday.

Stars and a Wish
The ‘stars and a wish’ approach usually involves written comments specifying three/two positive (stars) comments about a learner’s work and one improvement (a wish). These are structured within the unit, with examples and sentence starters provided. Of course, teachers can use self/peer assessment as desired through the unit, depending on their class/teaching.

Learning Objectives (LO)
Learning objectives in units are related to Blooms Taxonomy, in terms of their use of action/performance verbs. They aim to be obtainable and measurable and focus on knowledge/skill acquisition or reinforcement of learning. Also included in each objective is the context of the learning, but this is not taken through to the objectives that are written on the learner’s activities.  Learning objectives are subjective and can be personalised depending on the teacher.

Steps to Success (StS)
Steps to Success (success criteria) are suggested in each lesson, but should be derived in consultation with learners to help them identify what they need to do to gain success towards the lesson objective. These steps should have been made obvious through the introduction of the lesson, so that learners can identify them easily. To support different learning styles, memmory re-call and formative assessment they should be repeated by learners before being set off to start their activities.

Again, as with the learning objective, the steps that have been suggested can be changed dynamically in a lesson if there is an agreement between teacher and learner in the necessary steps to gain success.  Steps to success should be referred to in self and peer assessment.

StS Map
A checklist of text features is used in the shared writing process to remind and exemplify fitting the features into writing. We call this checklist a Steps to Success Map (StS Map).  It works alongside the revision of previous learning objectives which are then applied to the current writing, with examples added to the class StS map. Teachers can use this as an aid to learners’ memory, or ask learners to write examples on their own plans in preparation for independent writing.  This aids learners in considering what is expected in a piece of writing.

The unit is an on-line resource that uses worksheets to support learning. They benefit the unit in the following ways:

• With the organization of a lesson meaning that a teacher is focused on an assessment group, it is important that other groups in the class are independent. Worksheets breed confidence and give a framework to support independence.
• Differentiation is also part of every lesson, and to cater for a wide range in abilities worksheets are utilised.
• Worksheets allow flexibility in a lesson, and to re-organize a lesson on the fly, changing an independent activity to a supported one depending on teacher assessment or unforeseen circumstances.

Although worksheets are provided, it is vital that learners get used to writing for a lengthy period, so as much as possible worksheets should be used as frames to allow learners to write in their exercise books.