Informational

Unit Plan Guidelines

Frameworks
for language
and literacy:

What does
learning look
like?
For your
writing
assignment
For student
reading of texts
For student
language
learning

Essential
Questions

Texts/
Language of
texts

What is the
argument of
the writer?
Where is it
coming from?
Who is the
target
audience?
What is the
target event or
policy?
What are the
rhetorical
strategies?
What
discourses is
the writer
constructing?

Frameworks for
reading/interpreting
your texts that you
want students to
construct

Stakeholders
Historical context
Personal context
Ethical context
Situational Context
Reason for argument

Vocabulary/
Concepts
students will
need to define

How will you
teach these
words?

Grammar
and Sentence
Structure


How will you
teach the
grammar?

What kinds of
argumentative
practice and
research?


Role Plays
Improvs
Literary
Postcards
Character
silhouettes
Tea parties
Films

What kinds of
stages of
writing and
writing help?

Introducing
writing
assignment

Audience

Samples of
writing

Revision

Conferencing

Feedback

Comments

Assessments
Portfolios

Performances

Presentations

Content

Grammar

Coherence

Rhetorical
choices

Argument

Rubrics

Progress

Evidence

Transitions

1. Learning Objectives: What will students learn about what informational writing is and what it entails?
a. Please draw from your in class notes and from your reading notes to put this into your own language.
b. What will students know long and short-term and be able to do in order to accomplish the informational writing
they will do with you?
i. Draw from your rubric categories and descriptions to define this as SWBAT (Students will be able to)
2. Essential Questions: What are your essential questions and how will they help students scaffold their understandings
of the research problem(s) they have chosen and the texts you have chosen?

3. Final Writing Assignment: Describe your final writing assignment in student-centered language (i.e., please write a
formal writing assignment).
4. Student Research Questions: What are the kinds of ethnographic and problem-in-the-world based questions you will
help students design?
5. Targeted Audiences: What audiences will you help them identify and target for their research and writing?
6. Data Collection and Source Identification: What research bases and data sources will you help students identify and
use?
7. Credible, Accurate, Sustainable Sources: How will you teach students how to locate and describe credible, sufficient,
and accurate data sources (Beach et al, 2012)?
8. Genres of Writing: What genres of writing will you help them locate and formulate for their intended purposes and
audiences?
9. Model Texts: What are the model texts you will work with?
a. Genres: What genres of informational writing will you choose to study?
b. Features: What features (organization, sequencing of information, data sources, topic sentences, claims,
rhetorical strategies, literary elements, narrative, argumentative, explanatory, informational, etc) of these texts
will you help students identify and analyze?
i. For example: What rhetorical strategies, narrative techniques, informational techniques, arguments,
discourses/ways of framing evidence to make claims will students need to be aware of in order to
understand each writers research questions, identification of problems in the world, sequencing of
information, purposes, connections to larger conversations, and targeted audiences?
c. Frameworks for reading/interpreting: What frameworks for reading/interpreting your model texts will
students need to understand in order to interpret the moves your model writers are making?
i. How can you help students identify some of the primary frameworks, background information, cultural
context, and larger conversations the writers they are researching are addressing?
d. Vocabulary: What specific academic, cultural, conversational vocabulary will students need help
deconstructing?
i. How will you help students access this vocabulary through charts, concept maps, word walls, framing
activities, etc. before, during, and after they read each text?
e. How will you support students in working back and forth between your choice of model texts and their data
sources/texts?

f. Reading/Research Strategies: What reading/research strategies (charts, diagrams, word walls, note taking
strategies, reading journal) will you provide students to help them come to class prepared at each stage and to
help you build on their research with them in class, and to help them follow what you are doing in class?
i. How will you support students in critiquing the implications for various audiences of the research
processes (data collection, analysis, and representation) of the model writers and writers they have
researched?
ii. What kind of conceptual mapping will you engage students in pursuing?
1. How will you help students extract information from the model texts and from their data
sources/texts?
2. How will you help students organize this information?
3. How will you help students map this information?
4. How will you help them critique this information, who or what is biased and how, credibility,
sustainability, and accuracy of data sources?
iii. Peer and Teacher Feedback: What kind of peer and teacher feedback will you put in place for students
to help them become stronger informational researchers, organizers of their research, critiquers of
informational writing?
10. Assessment: What assessment (maybe rubric) criteria for their writing will you help students construct?
a. How will you help them co-construct this criteria with you as you study model texts and the texts they research
and bring to class?
b. How will you help them self-assess as they go through each of the stages of their researching and writing
processes?
i. How will you help them keep track of and interrogate their research decisions (data collection, analysis,
and representation)?
ii. How will you help them articulate their research and representational decisions in light of various
possible audience responses?
c. Peer and Teacher Assessment: What kinds of peer and teacher feedback will help students develop
assessment criteria for themselves and one another?
11. Research/Writing Process: How will you help students build up to completing their writing assignment a logical step
at a time?

a. How will you walk with them through the research processes (identifying a problem/research question;
identifying credible resources; identifying accurate ways of citing resources; providing sustainable information;
studying the genre of informational writing that best supports their own writing; studying the features of that
genre; putting those features into practice; applying their learning of the data sources, features, genres of other
peoples informational writing to their own research and writing, etc.)
b. How will you help them study one set of features of informational writing at a time?
c. How will you help them apply their study of these features to their own writing one step at a time?
d. How will you incorporate teacher and peer feedback at every stage?
12. Grammar Instruction: What specific grammatical instruction will help students better decode the messages of the
writers?
13. What specific grammatical instruction will help students write with more clarity?
14. What will be the culminating activity students will engage that will help them work with the language of model texts or
of their researched textual data and better understand the specific information writers are providing: the research
problem, questions, arguments, stakeholders, and the implications of each argument or rhetorical strategy for other
specific targeted audiences?

Unit Plan Sample Template

1. Please map out the infrastructure of your unit plan using the questions above. Sample very general template (draw
from this to create your own).
a. Day One:
i. Use model texts to introduce informational writing
ii. Introduce culminating writing assignment
iii. Introduce culminating activity that will prepare students for the writing assignment
iv. Pass out packet explaining the research/writing assignment, sample questions, and the research stages
v. Introduce reading/research/homework activities students will need to complete each night to be ready
for class
vi. Assign reading and reading strategies and/or writing for next day
b. Day Two:
i. Teach students how to identify and map the language of the model text(s) as it/they pertain to the
writers connotations and larger messages
1. Help students learn language/vocabulary of articles and/or broader concepts that will help
students construct background information they need for the research question/problem and
conversations and rhetorical approaches.
ii. What kind of in class chart/charting?
iii. Help students identify the research problem/question of the writers of the model texts
iv. Help students brainstorm their own research questions
v. Assign reading and reading and/or writing strategies for next dayask students to find one or two
model texts for the problem they want to pose/research
1. Read, map, and analyze the language of their own model texts/data sources in terms of
connotation, background cultural context, etc.
c. Day Three
i. Students share how they went about researching and mapping the words they didnt know
ii. Students share what questions these words and mapping raised for them
iii. Students map out a research agenda and set of strategies for their informational writing
iv. Co-construct knowledge of credible sources

v. Identify data bases and types of research sources students will need
vi. Homework: Set students up to begin this research and bring something from it to class
d. Day Four (maybe more days on this)
i. Students bring their first round of research data sources to class
ii. Students and teacher co-construct how to carefully document these sources, how to organize these
sources, and how to extract important information from these sources
iii. Students and teacher co-construct ways to chart and/or digitally map findings from the data sources
iv. Homework: Students continue their research and add it into their chart/digital mapping
e. Day Five
i. Students bring their data sources in an organized format to class
ii. Explore, collect informational writing/rhetorical strategies for introductions and thesis statements,
noting differences within and across genres of writing
iii. Explore, collect informational writing/rhetorical strategies for introductions and thesis statements of the
writers they have researched, noting the genres of writing provided
iv. What kind of in class notes, chart, rubric, etc.?
v. What kind of practice using these strategies in the service of warming up for their own introductions?
vi. Assign reading and reading and/or writing strategies for next day
1. Continue data collection, mapping, and documenting of introductory and thesis statement features
f. Day Six
i. Review introductions/thesis statements
ii. Students bring their data sources in an organized format to class
iii. Explore, collect informational writing/rhetorical strategies for the body paragraphs and topic sentences,
noting differences within and across genres of writing
iv. Explore, collect informational writing/rhetorical strategies for body paragraphs and topic sentences of
the writers they have researched, noting the genres of writing provided
v. What kind of in class notes, chart, rubric, etc.?
vi. What kind of interrogation of writers moves, types of evidence, rhetorical strategies, targeted audiences,
discourses?
vii. What kind of practice using these strategies in the service of warming up for their own body paragraphs
and topic sentences?

viii. What kind of peer/teacher support?

ix. Assign reading and reading and/or writing strategies for next day
1. Continue data collection, mapping, and documenting of body paragraph features
g. Day Seven
i. Review body paragraphs and topic sentences
ii. Students bring their data sources in an organized format to class
iii. Explore, collect informational writing/rhetorical strategies for conclusions, noting differences within and
across genres of writing
iv. Explore, collect informational writing/rhetorical strategies for conclusions of the writers they have
researched, noting the genres of writing provided
v. What kind of in class notes, chart, rubric, etc.?
vi. What kind of interrogation of writers moves, types of evidence, rhetorical strategies, targeted audiences,
discourses?
vii. What kind of practice using these strategies in the service of warming up for their own conclusions?
viii. What kind of peer/teacher support?
ix. Assign reading and reading and/or writing strategies for next day
1. Continue data collection, mapping, and documenting of conclusion features
h. Day Eight
i. Review conclusions
ii. Teach a grammatical concept or two (types of phrasesremember to review nouns, verbs, adjectives to
get there), and explore how one or more model text writers uses this grammatical concept in his/her
writing, to explore different stances, to take up a position, to switch positions, to target an audience, to
build transitions between sentences, to introduce relationships between concepts, to build a logical
progression of ideas, etc.
iii. Engage students in researching how their writers draw on one or more of these types of phrases and
what it does for their writing/their framing of their research/their message
iv. What kind of in class chart?
v. Assign grammatical exercises and coding activities to document how writers draw on phrases for
intentional purposes in their writing

i. Day Nine:
i. Review their research data sources in light of phrases and what they learned about their authors uses of
phrases
ii. Teach another grammatical concept or two (types of clauses), and explore how one or more model text
writers uses this grammatical concept in his/her writing, to explore different stances, to take up a
position, to switch positions, to target an audience, to build transitions between sentences, to introduce
relationships between concepts, to build a logical progression of ideas, etc.
iii. Engage students in researching how their writers draw on one or more of these types of clauses and what
it does for their writing/their framing of their research/their message
iv. What kind of in class chart?
v. Assign grammatical exercises and coding/charting activities to document how writers draw on clauses
for intentional purposes in their writing
j. Day Ten
i. Review their findings regarding clauses and their writers uses of clauses
ii. Teach another two other grammatical concepts through sentence combining and punctuation (parallel
structure, dangling modifiers)
iii. Examine how writers in the model texts apply these principles
iv. Practice forming strong sentence structure
v. What kind of in class chart?
vi. Assign grammatical exercises and coding/charting activities to document how writers draw on parallel
structure, clear modifiers, and punctuation for intentional purposes in their writing
k. Day Eleven
i. Review how other writers draw on parallel structure and clear modifiers and punctuation
ii. Explain the design of culminating activity
iii. Prepare for culminating activity by defining with students outlining/charting procedure for outlining
their thesis statements, topic sentences, and body paragraphs and the genres of writing and rhetorical
techniques they will include.
iv. What kind of in class chart?
v. Assign reading and reading and/or writing strategies for next day.

l. Day Ten:
i. Engaging in the culminating activity
ii. What kind of in class chart?
iii. What kind of in class rubric/assessment to help students self assess and collectively assess knowledge
constructed?
iv. What kind of in class reflection and revision by students on the information they have organized and
interrogated with the help of their peers?
v. What kind of new language, rhetorical strategies, implications of claims/evidence/warrants for different
stakeholders will they reflect upon as they re-vise their outline?
vi. Assigning revision of outline
m. Day Eleven
i. Work in class with student revised outlines
ii. Group and individual assessment of thesis statements, topic sentences, and organization of information
within body paragraphs
iii. Revising thesis statements, topic sentences, organization of evidence/information with peer and teacher
help
iv. Homework: Drafting of introductions, thesis statements
n. Day Twelve
i. Work with student drafts, drawing on co-constructed criteria for introductions and thesis statements
ii. What kinds of peer editing?
iii. What kinds of conferencing?
iv. What kinds of performing?
v. What kinds of assessing of each stage and final product?
vi. Homework: Draft body paragraphs
o. Day Thirteen
i. Work with student drafts, drawing on co-constructed criteria for body paragraphs
ii. What kinds of peer editing?
iii. What kinds of conferencing?
iv. What kinds of performing?
v. What kinds of assessing of each stage and final product?

vi. Homework: Draft conclusions

p. Day Fourteen
i. What kind of final presentation of research to class?
ii. What kind of conferencing?
iii. What kind of peer assessment?
iv. What kind of writer assessment?
v. What kind of teacher assessment?

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