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VIRTUAL LIBRARY OF CONCEPTUAL UNITS

Welcome to the Virtual Library of Conceptual Units. The Virtual Libray includes conceptual teaching units for middle and high school English/Language Arts classes. These units have been designed by preservice and practicing teachers at The University of Georgia. The units follow principles of curriculum and instruction developed by George Hillocks, Jr., (see, e.g., Dynamics of English Instruction, Grades 7-12, by Hillocks, McCabe, and McCampbell; Random House, 1971). The process for designing these units is described in Peter Smagorinsky's Teaching English through Principled Practice (Merrill/Prentice-Hall, 2002) and Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units(Heinemann, 2008; an online Instructor's Guide is available for this book as well).The units are designed to cover 4-6 weeks (assuming daily class periods of 45-55 minutes). Each is organized around a concept such as a theme (e.g., Coming of Age), genre (e.g., satire), strategy (e.g., understanding irony), literary period (e.g., Victorian Age), movement (e.g., Transcendantalism), region (e.g., Authors of Georgia), or author (e.g., the works of Emily Dickinson).

The units in this library contain the following elements:

In designing the units, the teachers are urged to prepare them as though they suddenly might take an extended leave from their teaching and leave instruction in the hands of a substitute. The units therefore need to be written in sufficient detail that someone else could come in and teach them.

The Virtual Library of Conceptual Units appears next. Each unit is available for downloading. To download, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. You are welcome to borrow from these units; we only ask that you respect each unit's authors and credit their work if you borrow it for your own teaching or unit design. Units listed in red have been identified as good models to follow. Most units are of high quality; those marked in red have been singled out because they model all aspects of unit design unusually well. All units in the Virtual Library, whether marked in red or not, are worth consideration for teaching.


UNIT OUTLINES

This link provides dozens of unit outlines, each providing a unit topic (e.g., The Family, Frontier Literature) and accompanying lists of literature, songs, films, and other appropriate texts. Each topic listing also suggests key concepts and problems to guide the instruction.

If you would like to recommend additional titles for this list, please send the title, author, and appropriate unit to smago@uga.edu. I'm also happy to receive whole new unit outlines, for which I'll list you as the contributor. Thanks!

7th Grade | 8th Grade | 9th Grade | 10th Grade | 11th Grade | 12th Grade | Florida State | Clemson |Other Universities | Oklahoma State


SEVENTH GRADE


EIGHTH GRADE


NINTH GRADE


TENTH GRADE


ELEVENTH GRADE


TWELFTH GRADE


The following units have been created by students at Florida State University under the guidance of Dr. Shelbie Witte, using the same principles as those created at UGA

2009

  • Search for Identity: Hamlet by Samar Al Slaiby and Brandi Doutherd
  • Friendship: Understanding and Cultivating It “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” by Amy Bradick
  • A Multi-Genre Look At The Social Change Of The 1960’s and 1970’s, Grade 12 by Samantha Buchweitz
  • Building Up and Breaking Down the Utopia in Dystopian Post Apocalyptic Texts by Thomas DeCeglie
  • A Generation Lost? Exploring the 1920’s through the Eyes of The Lost Generation by Marah Dolan
  • “Don’t Do Drugs” 9th grade by Katie D'Sousa
  • United We Stand: Celebrating Diversity in America by Jessica Egan
  • The Road Map to My Identity by Seth Federman
  • Symbols: Life without Words: Cultural Awareness and Self-Identity through the Evolution of Tattoos by Giannina Ferraro
  • Analyzing Adolescent Pressures & Choices through Young Adult Literature by Anna Harman
  • Adolescent Struggle With Authority While Searching For Identity By Carlin Huenke
  • Bullying: Students Actions and Potential Consequences by Taneshia Jones
  • Revolution—A Judgment of Justice by Victoria D. McDonald
  • Who's Cuckoo? A look into the stigma of mental illness in society by Lauren Niemeyer
  • The Battle of You: Struggling against Social and Family Expectations and creating an Identity, as seen through Text and Street Art by Mark Robbins-Penniman
  • Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a tooth by Aubrey Sallenbach
  • “Vociferous Voices from our Pitiless Past” A Unit on Protest Literature for 10th grade by Elizabeth Schaick
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Jessica Trehy
  • 2010 Spring

  • A Hero Lies in You by Kaitlyn Akos
  • “Peeling Away the Layers” A Unit on Social Boundaries For 9th grade by Katherine Barr
  • Memoirs of Migration: A Thematic Unit in American Literature by Daniel Beugnet
  • Can You Handle the Pressure? Peer Pressure & Today’s Youth by Kelly Campbell
  • A Child’s World by Kelly Cassidy
  • “Who am I, and why does it matter? A unit on life, death, and the meaning of it all. 12th grade honors. by Jenny Davis
  • Inner Beauty and Self-Image, Grade 9 by Christen Ellrich
  • Cool Runnings: “Peace be the Journey” by Katherine Freniere
  • Empowering Voices by Mallory Knabb
  • You Went through What? Struggles Students are Forced to Overcome by Erin Litvak
  • Through the Fire: Adversity by Annie Lockman
  • Going Against the Grain: "This is who I am. Nobody said you had to like it." by Nicole Lopez
  • The Faces of Evil – A Look into Adolescent Violence by Yahshae Mainer
  • “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”: A Conceptual Unit on Dealing with Loss for 10th grade by Anna Martinez
  • Act and React by Emily Oppel
  • Be the one Change You Wish to See, 9th Grade by Alison Pfeifer
  • For Better or Worse: Making the Most Out of Our Relationships by Michelle Quintero

    2010 Fall
    Prose, Politics, Persuasion, and Propaganda: A Look at Society Through Literature by Jacob E. Asbell
    Identity: Who Am I? by Katie Baker
    Irish Literature and Culture by Samuel Berkowitz
    Bridging Shakespeare with the Big Lebowski: A Unit Based on Two Gentlemen of Lebowski by Adam Bertocci
    I always feel like, somebody’s watching me…Teaching 1984 and the power of government by Sarah Brown
    Planning for the Future by Haley Byfield
    What is Love; Baby, Don’t Hurt Me by Tabitha Campbell
    Find Out What You Believe in, and Stand Up For It! by Chloe Kendall
    Exploring Urban Adolescent Community Issues by Allison Kibbey
    What Makes a Hero: Exploring Traits of a Hero & the Plot of Their Story: A Unit on Story Elements and Characterization by Colae Logueby
    Stepford Wives and Macho Men: An Exploration of Contemporary Gender Representations by Kimberly Mayer
    The Effects of Love: Thinking with your heart vs. Thinking with your head by Kathleen McPadden
    Miscommunication: Then and Now: A Pride and Prejudice Inspired Unit by Hayley Miller
    Walk a Mile in my Shoes by Laramie Ohms
    Perception is Everything: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Miriam Phillips
    Traveling in the World's Footsteps by Katie Rybakova

    2011 Fall

    Modernizing the Epic: Making the classics applicable to students and their lives by Stephanie Barker
    Stereotypes, Labels, and Identity by Elizabeth Blackburn
    Love and Death Within Gothic Short Stories and Poetry by Cameron Cinkus
    Fairies and Folk: A Unit Exploring Fairytales and Folklore From the Modern Perspective by Christina DiBella
    Fear, and Conquering Fear: Using writing to channel emotions productively by Daniel Do
    Our “Civilized” Society: A 4-Week Unit Plan Designed for the Study of The Scarlet Letter by Misty Lynn Foster
    Writing the American Dream by Tamara Francis
    The Power of Choice: How do our decisions affect our lives and the lives of others? by Erin Grysko
    Dealing with life: Understanding inner conflict by Rebekah Hurd
    Their Eyes were watching Harlem by Kaitlin Donahue
    “Life Inside The Music Box”: Understanding Various Mental Abnormalities by Charise Kollar
    Frenemies: Relationships in Othello by Gia Maxwell
    Defining Happily Ever After: Traditional, Realistic, and Personal by Sarah Mazza
    If we won’t, who will? A unit about social responsibility by Juan Cruz Mendizabal
    Setting Goals and Making Choices Based on Definitions of Personal Success by Iris Moore
    Macbeth Unit by Sean Noga
    Embracing Differences in America by Lenet Rivas
    Bullying: Awareness, Prevention, and the Media by Sidney Rutledge
    Journey through Time with Literature: Past. Present. Future. by Nikki Smith
    Why Blend In: Accepting Individual Differences within Self and Others by Stacy Ward
    Dare to be Different by Ashley Wiseman


    The following units have been created by students at Clemson University under the guidance of Dr. Bea Bailey, using the same principles as those created at UGA. Unfortunately, we cannot credit the authors of the units because doing so would violate an agreement stipulated by Clemson's Institutional Review Board.

    Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Difficulties of Friendship and Love: During the Renaissance and Today
    Elie Wiesel's Night: Out of the Darkness: A Study of Literature from the Darkest Moments in Human History and Mankind's Effort to Emerge into the Light
    Walking Across Egypt By Clyde Edgerton: Exploring the Social Limitations of Age and Youth
    Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Modernizing the Renaissance: Feuds, Love, and Sorrow in Romeo and Juliet and the 2011 Classroom


    The following units have been provided by professors from universities that use Teaching English by Design.

    Monsters under Our Beds by John Kelly, University of Cincinnati
    Creating False Identities: Breaking Down the Myths of Childhood by Amy Lou Brouner, Elizabeth Madani, & Nishi Patel, Georgia State University
    From Sandy to Sudan: Childhood in Crisis: A Unit on Global Literature and Engagement by Lindsay J. Wrinn , Fairfield University
    ‘The Individual and the Cultural Environment’ Conceptual Unit Featuring The Awakening by Jenna Kober


    The following units have been created by students at Oklahoma State University under the guidance of Dr. Shelbie Witte, using the same principles as those created at UGA

    Literary Perspectives of Growing Up: Coming of Age Tales by Michael Potts (OSU 2016)
    The Hero Inside, an Examination of the Epic Hero by David Anthony Gibbons (OSU 2016)
    There Are Two Worlds: The Division of Identity by Emily Stephens (OSU 2016)
    The Risks and Rewards of Science by Heather Ross (OSU 2016)
    The Color of Identity in African American Literature by Hannah Hunter (OSU 2016)
    What Do Values Have To Do With It?  by Mickala Gorrell (OSU 2016)
    Identifying "The Other" in Literature and Society by Kathryn McKinney (OSU 2016)
    Follow the Leader by Mackenzie Stephan (OSU 2016)
    I am Not a Robot: Stigmas and Stereotypes Regarding Mental Illness in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar by Samantha Wood (OSU 2016)
    Walking in Someone Else's Shoes by Alexandria Akins (OSU 2016)
    Man vs. Wild: Morality in the Wilderness by Lauren Nelson (OSU 2016)
    The Road Paved By Choice by Chloe Andrews (OSU 2016)
    Symbolism and Implicating Literacy Devices by Ben Titus (OSU 2016)
    Wilderness Adventure by Kaley Semrad (OSU 2016)
    "Nothing Gold Can Stay": Dealing With Trauma and Innocence Lost by Johannah (Hannah) Koehnen Eley (OSU 2016)