Guidelines for Writing a Curriculum Unit

    The Institute attached great importance to the process for writing curriculum units, which includes a prospectus and two drafts before submission of a completed unit.   These steps for writing a unit provide you the opportunity to develop your ideas with regard to the comments of your seminar leaders and other school teachers, who are the main audience for whom you are writing.  Because of the importance of the writing process and the care with which the Institute schedule has been designed, it is imperative that Fellows meet all deadlines.  Units which have not been prepared in accordance with this process cannot be accepted.

    The prospectus, each draft, and completed unit should be submitted to your Seminar Leader according to the current schedule on the calendar of events.  Individual assistance with questions about these Guidelines is available by making an appointment with an Institute Coordinator for the seminar.

    Unit Topic, Prospectus, and Reading List:  Each Fellow, in consultation with the Seminar Leader and other seminar members, refines his or her topic and chooses basic readings for research.  An essay of two to four pages describes what the Fellow intends the final unit to contain.  This provides each seminar member with an overview of his or her colleagues' work.

    First Draft:  This is your first draft of the prose statement of the unit's objectives and strategies.   Whether developed as a unified essay or as separate sections, this draft should consist of paragraphs of sustained narrative, exposition or argument.  Remember that this is a draft of at least two-thirds of the final unit:  you should therefore aim to approximate 10-15 single spaced pages in length, even though your Seminar Leader may suggest that the draft be double-spaced for convenience in revising and editing.  The Seminar Leader will provide written comments on this draft.

    Second Draft:  This draft, submitted in print, includes a rewriting of the objectives and strategies of your unit, based upon comments of your Seminar Leader and other teachers, and a first writing of the examples of classroom activities and the annotated lists of resources.  At this point you should prepare the entire unit in a form as close as possible to that of the completed unit:  15-25 single-space pages, with full citation of bibliographical data for items in notes or bibliographies and full annotations for the bibliographies.   This will be the last occasion for editorial comments on format and accuracy in such maters.  You also should present a draft of the synopsis of your unit that will appear in the Guide.  The draft will be returned with the seminar leader's comments.

    Completed Unit:   This is the third rewriting and refinement of the prose section of the unit and the final version of the entire unit.  The completed unit must be submitted in print and on disk.  Fellows should consult the Mechanical Specifications for the appearance of the completed unit, including any illustration and use of an copyrighted material.

                Required Elements of a Curriculum Unit

The main audience for the curriculum units is teachers who have practical concerns about implementing the PTI units.  These concerns should be addressed in each section of the unit.  What follows is a list and description of the final narrative curriculum unit.

1.               An index that lists each section.
                Overview
                Rationale
                Objectives
                Strategies
                Classroom Activities
                Annotated Bibliography/Resources
                Appendices
                Standards

2.            Overview: A narrative description of the unit that is comparable to a synopsis or a guide entry.  This gives readers an idea of the whole unit curriculum to enable them to  have an idea if a unit suits their purposes, grade level, or subject area. 
3.            Rationale:   A narrative description of the curriculum writer's reasons for creating the curriculum. Here is where material concerning the content of the seminar could be introduced. It is comparable to a lecture or backg4roundcontent for the lesson. Include the skill base necessary for the students who will be receiving the  instruction, as well as the age or grade of the students who may benefit from the instruction.  Explain how the newly created curriculum will fit into the existing curriculum prescribed by the Pittsburgh Board of Education.
4.          Objectives:   A narrative description of what the unit seeks to achieve expressed in behavioral terms.   In addition state how the standards will be incorporated into the unit.  Do this briefly, but in narrative form.  A list of standards addressed in the unit will be placed in an appendix.
5.           Strategies: This is a narrative description of a variety of ways the curriculum writer will achieve the expressed objectives and assist students to reach the standards.
6.            Classroom Activities:  This is a narrative description of more detailed classroom activities that it will take to bring the unit to fruition.  There can be detailed examples of teaching   methods or two actual lesson plans in narrative form.  A day by day description of activities may be used.
7.           Annotated Bibliography/Resources:  There are three annotated lists of materials in this section.

        * An annotated bibliography for teachers. This is in the form of a Works Cited or Reference list. Any form from a style manual will be acceptable.  Seminar Leaders provide a list of resources. Following the style presented on their list should be acceptable.  Each resource must have an explanation of the reference as part of the entry.  NOTE:  Writer's Inc.  has good examples of a research paper with both Modern Language Association and American Psychological Association styles. Each includes how to cite a database or an Internet resource.  Today the preferred   term in "Works Cited" because of the citations of databases and Internet sites. The term "Bibliography" is still used to convey the idea that works were read as well as cited as the basis for the research.  Another very complete manual is entitled Keys for Writers:   A Brief Handbook, Second Edition, by Ann Raines.  It was published in Boston by Houghton Mifflin in 1999.
               * An annotated reading list for students.
               *   An annotated list of materials for classroom use.
8.            Appendix-Content Standards: A list of content standards addressed in the unit plan. Letters and numbers should be accompanied by the verbal description. There may be additional Appendices as deemed necessary by each curriculum writer.

    Use of Copyrighted Materials

   If you want to include in your curriculum unit excerpts (i.e., passages exceeding a few lines) for copyrighted material, you should first obtain permission from the copyrighted owner.   If use of such material is not granted  free of charge, you must also obtain advance approval from the Institute for paying fees.  Copyrighted material must be properly credited in a footnote.  The Institute cannot accept units which contain copyrighted material for which you have not obtained prior authorization.  Because of the delays you may encounter in obtaining permission from copyright owners, you should seek such permission well in advance of completing your unit.  We suggest you write for such permissions while preparing your first draft.  For further information, please consult the detailed instructions and forms provided for obtaining copyright permissions.

    The Completed Unit

   Final units must be printed in a form according to the Mechanical specifications and submitted by the due date indicated on the calendar of events to your seminar leader; they cannot be accepted in the Institute office.  The printed unit must be accompanied by the cover sheet and proposed indexing form.  Within two weeks, seminar leaders will review and forward this material to the director, indicating whether each Fellow has participated fully in the seminar and the writing process.  Your abstract, unit and guide entry on disk and your written evaluation and request for classroom materials you are asking the Institute to order should be submitted directly to the Institute office by July 6.

    Upon successful completion of the seminar and the unit - and after the Institute has received your disk and evaluation - Fellows who are in good standing will be mailed a stipend and may renew their University identification and library cards for the remainder of the year - until the next Institute begins.  (Individuals who do not fulfill all Institute requirements for full participation, cease being Fellows, receive no stipend, and must return their Chatham and Carnegie Mellon identification.)

    Fellows may also petition for certification of their course of study.  Any Fellow who intends to seek for Institute studies to be recognized for credit in a degree program is advised to consult, in advance, with the dean of the institution where he or she is enrolled.

    Electronic Version of Curriculum Units and Guide

    To increase access to, and the use of, the curricular resources developed by the Fellows, the Institute places all of the curriculum units, Guides, and Index on the Institute web site.  Pittsburgh Public School teachers (and the public in general) may consult these and other Institute resources on-line.  By July 6 you must therefore provide a 3 1/2" diskette containing an electronic version of the final unit and of the unit synopsis (abstract) that will be published in the Guide.  These documents should be prepared in the manner described below.  Preparing an electronic version of your unit and synopsis is in addition to - and does not replace- the submission of a unit printed on paper.            

    Disk Specifications.   In order to make the electronic version of your curriculum unit as easy to use as possible, please format it in the following manner:

    1)    If you are working in any version of Microsoft Word except Word 2000 (or Word 98 on a Macintosh), do nothing; we will be able to read your documents.

   2)    If you are working in Microsoft Word 2000 or Word 98 for Macintosh, please save your documents as Word 97 file (you can do this by selecting "Save As" from the File menu and then using the "Select a Type" option in the dialog box).

  3)    If you are not working in Microsoft Word, please try to save your documents as a Microsoft Word file, and specifically Word 97 file if possible; if this option is not available to you on the software you are using, please save your documents as Rich Text Format (RTF) files (you can do either of these things by selecting "Save As" from the file menu and then using the "Select a Type" option in the dialog box).

   A Special Note to Macintosh Users:  Please try to use disks formatted to be read by a PC; Macs made in the last few years (Performas, Power Macs, iMacs, etc.) can read PC disks, but PCs cannot read Mac Disks.

   If you require any assistance in formatting your unit for the Institute, please tell your coordinator or contact the Institute directly and we will be happy to assist you.

   Document Specifications.  The unit on disk, like the printed unit, should follow the mechanical Specification for Final Curriculum Units. The unit and synopsis should be saved separately as individual files.  Name the files in a manner that will make it easy to distinguish them, i.e. "unit" and "synopsis."  Save the entire unit as one file.  An abstract should be saved as a separate document on the disk.             

 

 

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