Introduction
Unit of instruction is an important tool in learning because it provides sequences of learning activities and expected outcomes from students. For teachers to develop a unit of instruction, they must understand specific needs of students and theme of interest. Different units of instruction have varied styles and design depending on the academic level of learners and experience of teachers, but have the same focus.
Marzano (2007) advises that a teacher should have a specified focus when designing a unit of instruction, which covers at least three focal areas, viz. “knowledge, issues, and students’ exploration” (p.177).
The focal areas enable teachers to design an effective unit of instruction that help students to understand the theme of interest. The theme for this unit of instruction is human sexuality among young children who are approaching adolescence. Therefore, this paper seeks to design a unit of instruction of human sexuality for children aged between 12 and 13 years.
Specific Needs of Learners
The unit of instruction for this instruction design deals with the theme of human sexuality among children between the ages of 12 and 13 years. The theme is relevant to the needs of children at these ages, as they start to explore matters related to their sexuality. The children are very curious because they have many unanswered questions.
However, they feel embarrassed to discuss these issues and thus teachers, parents, guardians, and other elders should provide a good environment for the children to open up and discuss these issues (Bolin & Whelehan, 2009). Through open discussion, children gain significant understanding of their sexuality. Hence, they will grow and develop into sexually, socially, psychologically, and emotionally mature adults.
Curiosity of the children is another need. Since children are curious about their sexuality, teachers should teach them efficiently to enhance their understanding on human sexuality. Social factors have considerable influence on the understanding of human sexuality. Thus, teachers should ensure that the learning environment is student-friendly by appreciating and recognizing the needs of the students.
Adolescent stage is very critical as it determines how students develop psychologically, emotionally, physically, and physiologically. At this stage, if teachers or adults do not provide essential information to the children, they can grow in isolation and acquire abnormal behaviors.
For example, as children develop emotionally, the instructors should help them to acquire emotional stability to prevent situations that could hurt emotional development of the children (Bolin & Whelehan, 2009). Constant monitoring of children when interacting with their peers is central in promoting development during adolescence so that they can gain self-esteem.
Human sexuality is a relevant topic to the children at the adolescence period because they need to understand the experiences of physiological and physical changes. For the children to accept these changes as a normal occurrence, they should have essential information. Students in the ages of 12 and 13 years undergo physical and physiological changes that they do not understand unless explained to them.
For instance, among girls, breasts begin to enlarge and hips broaden making them develop shyness and feel embarrassed. Moreover, they start to have menstrual periods and if they do not have enough information about menstruation, they will experience emotional and psychological perturbations. On the other hand, boys begin developing a deep voice and beards start to grow, thus making them develop shyness.
Both boys and girls also start to experience growth of hair in pubic parts, which disturbs them because they do not understand the changes. Therefore, teachers should teach the topic of human sexuality for students to understand the relevance of adolescence changes in their development into adulthood.
Children direly need to understand reproductive health because it enables them to understand reproductive health and manage their sexuality. During adolescence, children develop attraction to members of the opposite sex, which predisposes them to early sexual activities. Since they do not have essential information regarding their sexuality, they may indulge in irresponsible sexual behaviors and ruin their lives.
The irresponsible sexual behavior exposes children to teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Hence, teaching children to understand human sexuality enables them to manage their sexuality in a responsible manner and prevent unnecessary dire consequences.
The instructors should clarify to the children that adolescence changes are normal and they have the responsibility of controlling their sexual feelings (Bolin & Whelehan, 2009). Therefore, teachers should teach children on how to protect their sexuality and improve reproductive health.
Impact of the Needs on Curriculum Design
The unique needs of the children at the ages of 12 and 13 years have a great impact on the design of curriculum. Children at ages of 12 and 13 experience psychological, emotional, physiological, and social changes because they are transitioning into adulthood. Students at these ages require proper instruction so that they can comprehend their situation and respond appropriately (Bolin & Whelehan, 2009).
Usually, students rely on their own norms and traditions when trying to understand changes that take place in their bodies, which can be at times misleading. Therefore, to aid in demystifying misconceptions, an effective unit of instruction that considers the norms and traditions of these children is essential.
Moreover, the needs of this group of children impact development of curriculum as teachers should take into consideration their stage of development. Customization of the curriculum to suit the needs of the children enhances the teaching methods that teachers use to achieve the set objectives.
Use of teaching method, which incorporates story telling, provides moral lessons for children to learn well. In the process of learning moral lessons, children identify with heroes and heroines. Therefore, the concept of instruction containing a story engraves in the minds of learners, and thus satisfies the needs of the children.
The needs of the children have considerable impact on the use of communication and interaction during the learning process. Ideally, human sexuality is a sensitive issue among adolescents because they shy away from discussing it with their counterparts and adults. Children usually perceive matters of human sexuality as private matters that belong to the realm of adults (Bolin & Whelehan, 2009).
They also perceive that human sexuality is a gender-based matter that girls and boys should discuss separately without sharing anything with their counterparts. In this view, students harbor negative impressions and attitudes that prevent them from sharing matters related to human sexuality.
The negative impressions and attitudes affect understanding of human sexuality among adolescents. Hence, the design of the curriculum should aim at improving communication skills and encouraging interaction among students to alleviate the negative impressions and attitudes that students harbor towards human sexuality.
Desired Results
Topic of the Lesson
Human sexuality is the topic of the lesson for children having ages of 12 and 13 years. The topic is interesting and exciting to children in this age group because they are entering into the adolescence period. Although children have many questions regarding their sexuality and adolescent changes they experience, they are very shy. Moreover, some parents or guardians may be unwilling to discuss human sexuality with them.
Since children at these ages are undergoing physical, emotional, psychological, and physical changes, the teacher should be aware of these changes and formulate a set of learning objectives for this topic. In a bid to teach children human sexuality, a set of learning objectives are essential to help teachers to deliver on human sexuality effectively.
Learning Objectives
For teachers to enhance understanding of human sexuality by children of 12 and 13 years of age, they must develop and outline learning objectives. The learning objectives do not only enable teachers to design their unit of instruction to suit the needs of students, but also help them to maintain focus in teaching (Blackburn, 2007).
Hence, identification of objectives and aligning the objectives to the available learning standards is imperative in the designing of an instructional unit. Moreover, teachers should outline the expected outcomes to prove that students have understood human sexuality. Hence, the following are objectives that teachers should strive to achieve after teaching students about human sexuality.
The first learning objective, which teachers should set in teaching human sexuality, is to ensure that students demonstrate understanding of the adolescent development and comprehend the changes that occur during adolescence. Adolescent students at ages of 12 and 13 do not have significant knowledge that can enable them to understand the role of adolescence in human development.
Understanding different changes such as enlargement of breast, expansion of hips, onset of menses, broadening of shoulders, growth of hair in pubic parts, and deepening of voice is critical in equipping students to undergo the process of adolescence smoothly, without undue anxiety.
Since adolescent students experience sexual attraction from their counterparts, they are prone to developing irresponsible sexual behaviors. Irresponsible sexual behaviors predispose students to teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
Hence, the second learning objective is to ensure that the adolescent students become aware of their psychological, emotional, and social changes so that they can control them with the view of preventing the occurrence of irresponsible sexual behaviors.
The third learning objective will provide students with understanding of human reproduction and reproductive health. Under this goal, teachers should make sure that students understand the role of sex in human reproduction and procreation.
This aspect will help students to understand sex as a key element in reproduction, and thus refrain from it because they are still immature. The third goal also expounds the issues of unwanted pregnancies and abortion by exploring ethical and legal aspects of the same.
As students do not understand the essence of sexual relationships, the fourth learning objective enables them to understand dating as an aspect of relationships. Students should learn how to assert their positions in relationships and object sexual advances that their counterparts make (Blackburn, 2007). Hence, students should not accept acts of intimidation that drive them to perform sexual activities against their conscience.
Adolescent students normally experience challenges in sharing their experiences with parents, teachers, and trusted adults. Emotional and psychological impacts of adolescence make students to shy away from sharing their experiences with responsible adults.
Hence, the fifth learning objective is to promote social skills for them to present their disturbing experiences. By the end of teaching, students should have essential social skills and confidence to confront challenges of adolescence by communicating with different people whom they trust.
Materials Needed
For students to gain significant knowledge about human sexuality, teachers require teaching materials such as a drawing board and charts, which provide visual aids in the form of diagrams and pictures.
Moreover, the teachers require a PowerPoint presentation as audio and visual aid so that students can observe diagrams clearly and view videos related to human sexuality. The instructional aids supplement teaching of human sexuality, as they are tools that help teachers and students during the process teaching and learning.
Length of Time
A period of one week is essential for children to understand human sexuality and achieve five objectives of learning. In every lesson, children will cover one objective; hence, within the period of one week, an instructor should ensure that students cover all learning objectives.
Resources
Resources of human sexuality emanates from the major book, Human Sexuality: Biological, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives, by Bolin and Whelehan (2009).
In the aspect of instructional design, the book entitled Understanding by Design, by Wiggins and McTighe (2005), provides design templates, viz. understanding by design and backward design, which forms the basis in the development of the instructional unit.
Assessment
Performance Tasks
Teachers must prepare well and employ different tools to enhance teaching of students to implement the unit of instruction. The ease of implementing a unit of instruction depends on the type of design. Some designs are more complex to implement than others are. Hence, teachers should align implementation strategies with unit goals of a particular instruction design.
During teaching, teachers should use teaching aids as tools of teaching so that students can learn to draw and label various parts of reproductive organs. Teaching aids enable students to understand human sexuality and grasp how reproduction occurs (Price, Dake, Kirchofer, & Telljohann, 2003). Additionally, teachers should use group discussions so that students can share their adolescence experiences.
Group discussions enable students to enhance self-esteem as they socialize with others, thus making them overcome shyness and dispel fears associated with human sexuality. Use of stories is also another teaching strategy that teachers can use in teaching human sexuality. Through stories, students can derive moral lessons, which are relevant to their experiences and can learn how to adapt to changes of adolescence.
Performance Criteria
Performance criteria depict the expected learning outcomes. The learning objectives have their respective learning outcomes for teachers to determine if they have achieved their objectives in teaching students human sexuality.
- Teachers will administer questions under the theme of human sexuality to assess if students have understood the process of adolescence development and comprehend the changes that occur during this period. The tests should reflect on differences between changes that boys and girls experience during adolescence as well as outline various changes that occur.
- In the assessment of the ability to control sexual urges, teachers will examine how students behave. Good learning outcomes should occur when students express change in behaviors by exhibiting responsible behavior that respects their sexuality.
- Attitudes towards sexual activities will demonstrate how students understand the essence of sexuality in human reproduction and reproductive health. If students exhibit respectful attitude towards sex, it means that they appreciate sexuality as having noble function of reproduction, if otherwise; it implies that there is poor outcome in learning.
- In a bid to assess if students have gained an understanding of sexual relationships, the nature of relationships that they have at school will illustrate their orientation. The nature of boy-girl relationships that students have will show whether they are indulging in sexual activities or practicing abstinence.
- Since adolescent students are very shy and unable to share their feelings with others, examination of their social skills during group discussions would indicate the extent of their shyness. Moreover, the extent to which students interact with their teachers and parents also shows their ability to communicate and share their private issues with others without having any reservations.
Learning Plan
The learning objectives have their respective learning outcomes for teachers to determine if they have achieved their objectives in teaching students on human sexuality. Hence, students will learn human sexuality based on the following five objectives:
- Students will learn about adolescent development processes and comprehend the changes that occur during this time.
- The students will need to understand the nature of their sexual urges and control them.
- The students will learn about the essence of sexuality in human reproduction and reproductive health.
- The students should understand aspects of dating and relationships.
- The students will learn how to interact and communicate with various people regarding their issues of sexuality.
Justification for the Design
After implementing the instructional design, there is a need to assess the extent of implementation using a rubric. Assessment rubric provides a view of evaluating whether a teacher has achieved set goals and objectives, thus justifying the design. According to Wiggins & McTighe (2005), understanding by design and backward design provide good templates needed in the formulation of assessment rubric.
In the unit instruction, general criteria and oral assessment are two major criteria that form the basis of the rubric. General criteria assess construction of knowledge and discovery process, while oral criteria assess content of ideas, organization, and use of language.
The rubric provides a valuable assessment of the implementation of the unit of instruction (Allam, Bailey, Carter, Vanasse, Laroche, & Chapman, 2010). Hence, teachers will use the rubric in assessing whether the unit of instruction that teachers used in teaching human sexuality made a significant change in the learning process and understanding of students.
Conclusion
A unit of instruction is important as it provides goals and outlines outcomes in teaching. This study designed a unit of instruction by focusing on the theme of human sexuality among the children between the ages of 12 and 13 years. The theme is very interesting and exciting to children in this age group because they are entering into adolescence.
Children at this age experience significant changes that affect their social, psychological, physiological, and physical development, and thus require essential information for them to understand their developmental changes.
Usually, students shy away and avoid discussing issues of sexuality and development, but the study dispels such fears so that they can seek information from their parents, teachers, and trusted adults. Hence, this unit of instruction sought to align learning goals and outcomes with a view of promoting human sexual among students who are undergoing adolescence.
References
Allam, C., Bailey, D., Carter, C., Vanasse, T., Laroche, R., & Chapman, S. (2010). Using Rubrics to Assess Learning Through Service Maine. London, UK : Oxford University Press.
Blackburn, B. (2007). Classroom instructions from A to Z : How to Promote Student Learning. New Jersey, NJ: Eye on Education.
Bolin, A., & Whelehan, P. (2009). Human Sexuality: Biological, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Marzano, R. (2007). The art and science of teaching: A comprehensive framework for Effective instruction. New York, NY: ASCD Publisher.
Price, J. H., Dake, J. A., Kirchofer, G., & Telljohann, S. K. (2003). Elementary school teachers’ techniques of responding to student questions regarding sexuality issues. The Journal of School Health, 73(1), 9-14.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.