SERVE Assessment Instructional Quality

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Instructional Quality

SERVE > Topic Areas > Assessment > Accountability for Instructional Quality > Selecting A Focus > Unit Quality

Unit Quality

Creating a high quality instructional unit is a process in which teachers select, organize, order, evaluate and revise both what they teach and how they teach a topic. A unit plan must be supportive of the yearly plan and must give direction to weekly and daily lesson plans. As part of this process, teachers must learn to explore the connections between the learning objectives/outcomes, the content, and the evaluation of individual lessons with those of the unit and the course as a whole.

To guide teachers' reflections on the quality of their units of study, SERVE has created a rubric that incorporates and defines key dimensions. These dimensions include:

Cognitive challenge

Does the unit engage students in substantive content and provide opportunities to apply highly complex thinking?

Alignment with curriculum

Does the unit reflect a consistently focused alignment among learning goals, standards, assessment strategies, grading criteria, and learning strategies?

Assessment processes

Does the unit exemplify a quality assessment environment?

Value beyond school

Does the unit help prepare students to apply and use knowledge beyond the school setting?

Student motivation

Does the design of the unit support opportunities that engage and motivate students to learn?

Instructional procedures

Does the unit show evidence that effective strategies and techniques are employed to meet the needs of all students?

SERVE's Quality Unit Rubric

Unit Reflection Framework (download a sample unit framework)

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