These “units” span the entire Science 8 and Science 10 courses for BC (more examples of other unit plans). They were created by Karen Greig who is sharing them under a Creative Commons Licence. Feel free to use but be sure to credit Karen.
Students have found them to be very useful. They use them to see what we are going to learn, refer to them during the learning and use them for filtering what they know from what they don’t know when preparing for an exam. They also act as organizers for their notebooks. This will be helpful when they begin preparing for their year end exam.
The “owning my learning” theme is also working well. The students seem to feel more responsible for their learning in general. I see them checking off the B and A columns on the sheets, being honest with themselves about what they feel they know and what they need to work on. They appear to like seeing in print all of the ideas that they have learned. Rather than being intimidated, they appear to be proud.
An unforeseen advantage has been that the learning intentions sheets have helped with students who are away from school for extended periods of time. They can see what work we are covering in their absence and try to keep up.
I have taken out the references to the textbook and have been referring to the learning by the title I have given each section, not by the chapter number. Students have realized on their own where they can find supporting information in the textbook without me having to use specific page references all of the time or give assigned reading.
I am happy with the way in which this is unfolding and am glad that I attended the workshop last February. I feel this project has helped my students see where I wish to take them in their learning and to feel ownership in their journey.
Karen Greig
Renovating My Classroom 
Hi Jacob,
I really like the premise of the Learning Intention here. Student accountability for their learning, identifying and carrying out goal setting, self-evaluation of their academic goals and success and many other applications.
I could absolutely see this as something that is integrated on a class blog or webpage where parents could log in with their child and access (and complete) these learning intentions together – thereby giving them insights into the learning that is happening and where the “next steps” for learning lie.
What if we added these learning intention “checks” to student reports in the column next to our grades and comments? Sure would improve accountability and provide a perfect conferencing opportunity on where they are.
Thanks again for sharing a great strategy and resource!
Neil:
Thanks for the feedback. Checked out your blog and site — great stuff.
Check this out to see the value I place on Learning Intentions.
https://renomyclass.com/unit-plans/my-unit-plans/
Useful for the learner, the teacher, the resource teachers, and the parents.
Jacob
Neil:
You have got me thinking about how I could combine the work I have done around learning intentions for units of study and how students could design their own learning for the unit (all three parts of UDL).
FYI: Here’s the process I use to generate higher level learning intentions
https://renomyclass.com/2012/05/04/intro-to-the-whys-hows-of-formative-assessment/
Here’s a leading thinker in DI (thought I suspect you have heard of him already) sharing the kind of “progress recording” (aka mark book) that you are thinking of.
So pleased to have made the connection with you.
Jacob
Hi Jacob. Great to connect with you on Twitter! I really like the look of the student progress report (focus on self-evaluation). A perfect conversation starter for goal setting and parent updates on how their child is doing (and perceives they are doing).
Great to share ideas with you. I will absolutely be looking to implement some of these strategies and have already passed on your blog info to a colleague who teaches science on our intermediate rotary. Very exciting stuff.