While planning for instruction I strive to use my personal, research-based pedagogy to incorporate multiple content areas and cross-curricular activities to effectively teach in the community and school in which I work and to allow all of my students to express their individuality and specific interests while mastering content through rigorous learning targets. A detailed planning process is the backbone of my classroom that allows me to effectively spiral standards and learning to successfully assist my students on their journey to content mastery. 

 

The first step in an effective planning process is to fully unpack the standards for a given class and construct and well-thought out and flexible long-term plan. I complete this phase of the planning process the summer before every school year. I take this time to reflect on what went well the previous school year and what aspects of my previous plans can be improved upon. I also view end-of-year feedback provided by my students to continually work to tailor my curriculum to the school and community in which I work. I view long-term planning as a collaborative process. Teaching at a Linked Learning school, each core content class in my small learning community (SLC) shares a common theme, which changes every semester. All teachers must work together to run this theme through each of our courses. A long-term plan acts as map that shows where we are going and how we are going to get there on each of our student’s journey to content mastery. 

 

After completing my long-term plan, I move on to the unit-planning portion of the planning process. I determine which of the Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core Standards for literacy and English Language Development standards will be covered during a unit. Then I can draft both essential and guiding questions, determine a list of desired student understandings and then break these goals down further into learning targets in student-centered language—ensuring that each step is aligned to the overall Vision and Big Goal for my course. Once all of these goals have been constructed, I create the end of unit summative assessment and performance task. Returning to the metaphor from above, if education is viewed as a journey from a student’s prior knowledge they enter the classroom with to the achievement of content mastery, it is not possible to reach the end of this journey if we do not first know where that end point is. Backwards planning, and creating the end of unit assessments first, allows me to more effectively spiral standards and learning throughout a unit and make a logical progression that builds on prior knowledge as we move through the unit. 

 

Finally, I create lesson plans for each day during the unit and align these to my school’s calendar. While drafting lesson plans, I continue to backwards plan by creating the end of lesson assessment and various formative assessments first. I then work to think of activities that will make the content come alive for students and allow them to achieve the stated learning targets by the end of each lesson.  During this phase of planning, I continue to think of ways I can incorporate student interest as well as cross-curricular activities to increase my students’ literacy levels and foundational math skills. Once I have completed each lesson plan, I look at the holistic picture of each unit, semester and year to make sure all activities and assessments are properly differentiated and scaffolded to accommodate all types of learners in my classroom. 

 

Please click through each of the links below to see how I implement the three phases of planning in my high school chemistry classroom. Throughout each of these three sections you will see evidence of how I backwards plan, reflect on my practice, and think about the interests of my students as well as the community context in which I teach to design an authentic and culturally responsive curriculum. I strive to make my classroom an environment that utilizes multiple content areas to make the skills learned in school applicable in the real world, outside of my classroom walls.