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I'm one of those people who likes to have a plan. If I'm going to be doing something, I like to know what to do, times, what will come next - I like to know and be prepared. Looking ahead to teaching, and even right now working on our curriculum maps and our lesson plans for the other classes we have, it makes me feel so much better knowing that I will have a guide to follow. The unit plans that we will be using to follow throughout our plans for the semester or year are going to be so crucial in ensuring that our students are actually retaining and understanding the material that we want them to be learning. In order for this to happen, my plans are going to have to contain ways for my students to be challenged in how they go about the learning process - it can't just be the same old method of lecture and notes that they have grown so accustomed to. One way that this can happen would be to have our students analyze and examine different sources in relation to the topic for the unit.
When referring back to "New Teacher's Companion: Chapter 7. Lesson Plans and Unit Plans: The Basis for Instruction", the author mentions asking the question, "can I prove that my students have learned?" I believe that if we were to implement these skills of analysis and examination into the history class, - promoting a sense of historical thinking- and then looked at a formal assessment that assesses the students' extended written response abilities, (as discussed in Classroom Assessment for Student Learning; Chapter 4) we would know that our students have learned. However, I believe that it takes more than just forcing these students to think critically, analyze documents, and examine primary sources. If a student isn't engaged and genuinely intrigued in the topic at hand, then they're not going to truly learn the material. This is where, for me, the key points of having an explicit unit plan comes in, because it allows us as the teachers to be creative and fun with our jobs - on a schedule.