In my time as a teacher, the bane of most teacher’s existence is lesson planning. It’s the Sunday evening chore that they’d rather not have.
To alleviate that stress, I’ve developed a three-part process to lesson planning: Mapping A Unit(Before), Lesson Design, Not Lesson Planning(During), and Lesson Review(After).
Today, I’m focusing on the Before.
Three Steps To Mapping A Unit
1. Identify Skills/Standards: The first step to mapping a unit is to know the skills or standards that need to be taught. That could be Order of Operations(Math), Life Cycle(Science), Government(Social Studies), Info Text(Reading), Parts of Speech(Grammar), Opinion(Writing). Understanding the requisite standards, will lead to the next step.
2. Rigor-Level: Once the standard is identified, determine the rigor for level for that it on the DOK or Bloom’s Taxonomy chart(whatever your school/state utilizes).
3. Days Needed: Rigor level of standards will determine the days needed. Some concepts may require one day to master…others may take ten days to master.
Sample Unit: Fiction
To help illustrate what mapping a unit looks like, I’ll share one of my sample units.
Knowledge: Retelling(1 or 2 Days): It wouldn’t hurt(depending on grade-level) to review retelling with students before jumping into a Fiction Unit.
Comprehension: Plot(5 days+2): Before students can master higher-level fictional concepts, they must master the Elements of Plot. It’ll take at least five days for them to become proficient and possibly master the concept. For my method, I increase the rigor by the day as a natural scaffold.
Day 1: Introduce Elements of Plot
Day 2: Summarize The Plot
Day 3: Make, Revise and Confirm Predictions
Day 4: Analyze Plot
Day 5: Elements of Plot Quiz/Synthesize The Problem
Day 6: Re-Teach Plot and/or Scene Tableau
Day 7: Re-Teach Plot and/or Scene Tableau
Application: Characters (5-8 Days): If students comprehend a story, they can properly analyze characters, which encompasses many sub-skills.
Day 1: Introduce Character Traits(With a list of terms)
Day 2: Character Traits With Evidence
Day 3: Character Feelings
Day 4: Analyze Character Change
Day 5: Compare/Contrast Characters
Day 6: Analyze Character Relationships
Day 7: Analyze Conflicts Amongst Characters
Day 8: Characters Quiz
You can reduce days if you’re a primary level teacher.
Application/Analyze: Inference(5 Days): Once students can interpret Character Feelings, the cognitive load to infer will decrease. Throughout the five days of explicit teaching of inference, gradually build the rigor.
Day 1: Basic Inference
Day 2: Cause and Effect
Day 3: Drawing Conclusions
Day 4: Most Likely
Day 5: Inference Quiz and Detective Game(Synthesize)
Analyze: Theme/Analyze (5 Days): Mastering all the aforementioned skills make it easier to determine the lesson learned or message in a text.
Day 1: Identify The Theme of a Text
Day 2: Theme With Evidence
Day 3 and 4: Apply and Infer The Theme(I typically use the same passage/book for this level of rigor)
Day 5: Theme Quiz or…
Evaluate/Synthesize: Fiction (2-3 Days): At this stage, I like to model how to analyze a fictional text with all skills incorporated.
Day 1 or 6: Analyze/Evaluate Fiction
Day 2 or 7: Evaluate Fiction
Day 3 or 8: Fiction Quiz(Evaluate) and Realistic Fiction Book(Synthesize)
Conclusion: Lesson planning is a laborious task but can be made easier if you map the unit and know the end goal.
Next Week: Lesson Design, Not Lesson Plan(During)
Be Phenomenal, Mr. Short
The Phenomenal Student 