Unit of Instruction

The Unit of Instruction component of the NEE teacher evaluation is intended to provide factual evidence of a teacher's ability to turn written curriculum into taught curriculum. It is one part of the total picture of teacher effectiveness and provides the teacher with meaningful feedback for ongoing growth.

NEE reviewed research on the elements of effective instruction and the unit planning templates recommended by several highly regarded education sources. NEE identified those elements that are common across the templates and then created two documents for use with the Educator Effectiveness system; the NEE Unit of Instruction (UOI) Organizer and the NEE UOI Scoring Rubric.

The activity in this module describes each step in the UOI process. Open the activity below to explore the explanation of the teacher and administrator actions required in that step.

The NEE UOI Organizer is not intended to be a full unit plan template. It is a document that organizes the elements of an instructional unit into a format that is easier for an evaluator to score. Teachers may use any unit template to create their instructional units. The organizer asks the teacher to identify and pull out the elements that are to be scored from their units and place them in the appropriate text boxes on the organizer. The organizer is then shared with the evaluator to document the elements and be scored.

Schools should not attempt to use the NEE Data Tool as a storage site for district curriculum. The organizers are meant to assist the administrator in scoring a teacher's ability to translate standards and curriculum into instruction. The organizers are stored permanently in the Data Tool but the appendices may be cleared at the end of three-years. The UOI organizers cannot be shared among teachers and are not easily searched, sorted or printed. The NEE UOI Scoring Rubric provides teachers and administrators with objective rating descriptions to assist teachers in creating effective lessons and administrators in scoring them.

Review the activity below.

1. Unit of Instruction

Be sure to consult Help and Resources on the NEE Data Tool to access:

• NEE Data Tool - Unit of Instruction (instructions on completing and scoring a unit of instruction)

• Unit of Instruction Organizer (the doc version of the organizer)

• Unit of Instruction Organizer - Exemplar (a high scoring example)

• Unit of Instruction Scoring Rubric (a doc version of the scoring rubric)