Teachers sometime invite me to meet with them to discuss various issues that we face. Today I was invited to have coffee with two teachers. One of the teachers is changing grade levels and is at a loss as to where to start planning for her ELA block. On the kitchen table there is the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) Guidebook, Learnzillion (LDOE Guidebook 2.0) on the laptop, standards, teacher-pay-teacher products, and coffee.
We spent time talking about what lay in front of us, but the question remained how do we start planning? Honestly, there are more resources than teachers have time to use or sometimes even view. After lots of discussion we came up with this process:
Examine the assessments, determine what learning MUST take place. Label each item with a standards.
Write the target standards on a sticky note.
Put the sticky note in a place that remains visible throughout the unit or module. It is critical that the teacher and students know what learning (target standards) must take place.
Use the following questions to plan.
- What do you want your students to learn?
Examine the Learnzillion lesson to determine if the target standard is being addressed. If it is not addressed, check the LDOE Guidebook. This is the place to look for explicit instruction (the one thing you want your students to learn).
This is a starting point for your instructional sequence for teaching the target standards.
- How will you know they learned it?
Within the lesson plans underline opportunities for students to show their learning of the target standards. Look at activities that follow the explicit instruction, writing prompts, and discussion questions. This is called informal assessments and should guide instruction.
- What will you do if they already know it?
There are teaching opportunities and activities for small groups and independent learning in the LDOE Guidebook. Select opportunities for students that already know the skill or task to extend their academic reach. Data from #2 will let you know who has or has not mastered a standard. If there are no opportunities within the Guidebook, consult a list of Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs or a Depth of Knowledge chart and create an opportunity to use the skill or task at a more advanced level. Remember- hard and more does not equal rigor. Also, assigning the student(s) as a peer tutor is a cop out.
- What are you going to do for the students who don’t get it?
By the fourth week of school you know the students that will need additional support. Look carefully at the standard, task, or skill and ask yourself what is it that a student must be able to do to master what is asked. Think about prerequisites. Provide the student with the learning that is needed to be successful. This is the perfect time for small group, teacher-led instruction.
Once instruction is completed, reflect on the lesson and student work to determine if learning took place. This process should focus on learning rather than covering the material.
Grab this FREE poster to remind yourself of the questions that you should be asking during the planning process:
