Evolving towards unit contracts

For a teacher who is first implementing unit contracts in her classroom, the scale of this task may be daunting.  It is a serious undertaking, which can take several years to accomplish. A practical approach is to spend a year or more working with protocontracts, as described above, and minicontracts, as described in the previous chapter.  Having experience with these forms leads quite naturally towards the development of unit contracts; when you are ready, these smaller, simpler forms can be absorbed into the creation of a unit contract.

Single versus continuous contracts

The first time a teacher introduces unit contracts, she may want to limit their use to several contracts scattered throughout the year.  In this way, the form of the contract can be tried out, and there is time to assess how well it has worked before creating another. Paying attention to student responses to these initial contracts is essential.  Time should be given to serious discussions on how the contract form can be improved for the next iteration.

Even after a teacher is comfortable with the scope of unit contracts, their use may be most appropriate for a subset of the units covered in a year, rather than continuous use over the entire year.  Depending on the discipline and the topics being covered, some units may call for more differentiated learning and will be the best candidates for unit contracts. For those aspects of the course where a full unit contract may not be appropriate, minicontracts can, of course, still be used for any circumstances where differentiation is called for.

There are, however, distinct benefits to organizing a course into a coherent set of continuous unit contracts.  Most of the benefits described above will only be realized through such an approach. Once this powerful tool is experienced, both teachers and students are likely to want to use it consistently.