Secondary ELA: Curriculum Planning Part 2: Why are You Teaching It?

Welcome back to my curriculum planning series! Part I covered key considerations for deciding what to teach and creating an overview template for major units. Now, let's dive into Part II, where we'll explore the why behind teaching choices—how to use WHAT you teach to meet the necessary standards.

Step 1: Locate Your Required Standards

Understanding the purpose behind your lessons is crucial for creating meaningful and engaging content. The first step is to familiarize yourself with the standards you need to cover.

I find it helpful to have a searchable digital copy of the standards, which I can color-code to track which ones I've covered. Additionally, I keep a printed copy where I make notes about how each standard was addressed in my lessons and any observations on student understanding or areas that need further reinforcement. This dual approach ensures that I stay organized and can easily adjust my teaching strategies to meet my students' needs.

Hopefully, your school provided you with a copy of your standards, but if not, you can usually find them on your state's Department of Education website or on your district’s website.

 

Step 2: Simplify the Standards

Sometimes, the standards teachers receive are just line-item listings that offer no guidance on how to effectively teach them.  This can make it challenging to design lessons that meet the required criteria while still being engaging and meaningful for students. To address this, it's helpful to break down each standard into specific learning objectives and identify key target areas to understand.

Several years ago, my school required that we create individual “unpacking guides” for our standards.  Each teacher had to go through each standard and outline key terms and skills and then determine several objectives for each standard.  As I began this process, I found it took an incredibly long time to unpack just standard 1! Not being one to totally recreate the wheel, I just knew this had to exist somewhere on the internet, and that's how I stumbled upon the valuable links I'm going to share with you.  I’m sure that many school districts and state department websites offer similar resources, so I recommend checking your district or state’s website for these tools specific to your school’s requirements.

Click here for the original source I used to “unpack” my standards. 

On this linked page, you will find various resources for ELA lesson planning, including templates and unpacked standards that detail the key terms students need to understand, essential concepts and skills, and questions students should be able to answer for each standard. Additionally, you'll find printable bookmarks for convenience, and my personal favorite—a standards continuum page for grades 6-12 that clearly displays the preceding and subsequent standards for each content strand. 

Recently, I came across a new resource that I like even better simply because it puts everything I want to reference in one place!

Check this resource! Please note that you have to select “Curriculum/Instructional Resources” for the grade level you want and then “Clear Learning Targets” to see the view I show in the image.  Also, not all resources here are available for teachers outside of the state.  I’m sure there are many other states that provide resources such as these, but as you can see, there are many phenomenal resources to help simplify the standards free and readily available with a simple search!

Step 3: Align Your Content with the Standards

 The next step is to figure out how to cover the standards using the content in your major units.   There are many ways to go about this, but here are my top 3 tips:

1.     Use the textbook as a starting point

The teacher's edition of your textbook often includes a pacing guide with covered standards, unit overviews, and detailed standards for various activities and questions.  Don’t feel tied to only the standards identified in the textbook.  You can definitely add to them, especially when incorporating supplementary resources.

2.     Search the Internet!

Seriously! Put in the name of your unit or short story plus your grade level and standards and watch what comes up.  Simply put in the name of your unit, literary work or essential question + the grade level + Common Core Standards. 

*Note: I’m including a list of places to find free resources at the end of this blog post.  Many of those free sites include both content and standards, so be sure to check those.

*Note 2: Some subscription sites also have textbook alignment to the standards.  For example, IXL has done the work of aligning standards to each unit for most major textbook companies in their “Skill Plans” section.   If your school provides access to one of these sites, it’s a great way to “fill in the blanks” for some of the harder-to-cover standards and/or for review and reinforcement.

3.  Use AI

AI can be a powerful tool for teachers in identifying the standards that align with their units. While this can be a HUGE timesaver and a great idea generator, be sure to carefully review and revise your content according to your needs.  My go-to is the OG – ChatGPT, but you can definitely choose the platform(s) of your choice.

 

First, you’ll need to identify your grade level and subject and the content you are teaching with something like this prompt: "You are a 9^th grade English teacher planning a unit on Romeo and Juliet. Provide a list of educational standards that align with this unit."  The more specific you are, the better the guidance you’ll receive.  You can ask it to give you learning targets, activities to meet the standards and assessments to measure student mastery.

 As you identify the standards, be sure to add them to your FREE unitplanning template which I shared in last week's blog post. 

Finally, numerous free resources are available to support your ELA curriculum planning, many of which include standards to cover with each text and unit. I'm sharing some of my favorites (some you may know, and some you may not) - See them HERE! 

Hopefully, these resources will help simplify the process of aligning your curriculum with standards and assist you in creating engaging and effective lesson plans for your students.

Stay tuned for next week’s final blog post in this series, where we will discuss how to create a flexible and adaptive pacing guide that can change with your students' needs and the demands of the school year.

Happy planning!

Missed Part 1 in the Series? See it HERE!

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