Planning My First Unit of the Year

Planning is hard.  It takes a long time, but doing all the work up front keeps you from running around like a chicken with its head cut off later on.  And trust me, you do NOT want that!

I always start my planning by listing my units, typically on a piece of paper.  Then, I look at how long those units typically take.  For new teachers, you are going to have to guess on this one or ask a colleague.  Always leave a few days as leeway--you never know when you're going to have a snow day, an unexpected pep rally, or you may just take longer on a particular lesson one day.

Once you know how many days each unit is going to take, you can make a rough pacing guide.  I had been using a calendar and I would just write the dates on the piece of paper next to my list of units, but then I read Stephanie's post at Eat.Write.Teach and I loved how much prettier it looked!

I had to try it of course:

This is just a rough draft of my first semester in one of my classes, but now I know about how long everything should take.  Now that I know this, I need to break down each of my units.  I usually take this one unit at a time, as this part is the most time consuming.

First, I list all of the skills I plan to cover in the unit.  Based on this list, I can create my Big Idea and my essential questions.

Then I list all the activities I do in the unit (or plan to do).  For example, in my first unit, I plan to: teach the plot chart and the terms my students should know regarding short stories (characterization, setting, point of view...); read Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets, The Leap, The Bass The River and Sheila Mant, The Pedestrian; plot chart a movie and a short story; analyze point of view; use textual support to answer questions over the stories; use context clues to figure out unknown words and make inferences; analyze author's choice in terms of pov, words, character actions, etc.

Finally, and this is where my philosophy regarding grading kicks in, I put it all together and make sure I'm adequately giving my students a chance to practice and have plenty of formative feedback.  Here's what that sheet looks like:

Let me explain the method to this madness!  Using my pacing guide, I plug in all the classwork, homework, quizzes, and tests I plan to give for the unit into a calendar.  I just make a table in Word.  Then, I color code it.  Blue is classwork or homework; Green is a formative assessment; red is the test.

I add up the points and then I list how it would be entered in my gradebook.  Yes, you will notice that even though one activity is listed as a formative assessment, I enter it as a classwork grade and not a quiz.  This is a philosophy of mine: not all formative assessments are quizzes.  Sometimes I just need to know where a kid is at in a particular unit and I don't want to count it as a quiz in the gradebook.

I set up my gradebook with 20% of the grade going towards classwork (aka practice); 20% going toward quizzes (aka What do you know right now?); and 60% going toward tests (aka You should know this now).  For each unit, though, I will have more classwork than what is listed in this chart.  That's because I grade things like bell ringers, articles of the week, and other in-class writing and participation that doesn't necessarily fall into the skills I am teaching for the unit.

But back to the chart.  I then list the Big Idea and essential questions.  Then I list the learning targets I have for the unit.  Finally I list how I plan to get the students there.  It ensures I don't accidentally leave out a skill I *thought* I was teaching.

I've only done this for a few of my units, as I started this process late last year.  I want to wait to finish it as I have a student teacher this year and I want her to walk through the process with me as she will be helping me teach my classes.

I feel like this post was more rambling than helpful.  If you got through this whole thing and need me to explain anything, please ask!  It makes sense in my mind, but I'm not sure if it will make sense to anyone else.