VIRTUAL LIBRARY OF INSTRUCTIONAL UNITS
by knannWelcome 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).
