Sitting down to plan a unit with your PLC can feel overwhelming and intimidating: there’s so much to cover, so many ideas (both good and not so good) out there, so many demands on our class time, and we may not be much more familiar with the text than our students will be. We’re with you, and we’re here to help! This week we’re sharing the process we’ve developed for that first PLC meeting when we sit down to figure out what on earth we’re going to do.
1. Do we know the primary text?
This is usually the easiest step (after all, most of us have a pacing guide to follow or we’re limited by our school’s resources), but it’s an important one, and issues occasionally arise. If you know what you’re teaching and you’re comfortable with it, great! But sometimes you preview a text and realize it won’t work for your students, your school, your timing, the cultural climate . . . the list goes on. Or maybe you realize you need or want some supplemental articles to dialogue with the ideas in the text. Until you’ve settled on the content, there’s not much planning you can do.
2. Do we have any ideas before going in?
Rarely is our “first planning sesh” our PLC’s actual first discussion about the unit or first time we’ve thought about it. We may have brainstormed some ideas at lunch, scribbled down a few random thoughts on sticky notes, or texted each other a couple of ideas (a PLC group chat is helpful for sharing ideas, last-minute reminders, and I’m-feeling-your-pain GIFs).
We may have a particular type of essay we’re expected to teach on our pacing guide. We always start by hashing those ideas out: Will they work? Do some of them go together? What problems do we foresee? What other ideas are popping up?
We, like many English teachers, started our careers believing we had to cover everything there was to say about a text and include every fun idea we could think of to engage students. This approach quickly becomes overwhelming, both for us and for our students.
3. What do we want our angle and final product to be?
We, like many English teachers, started our careers believing we had to cover everything there was to say about a text and include every fun idea we could think of to engage students. This approach quickly becomes overwhelming, both for us and for our students. Our best units are the ones where we have begun with an end in mind: we know what our final product will be, which gives us an angle to approach the text from.
While this often comes from our PLC brainstorming discussion, we also spend some time Googling: What are other teachers doing with the text? What materials are already out there? What seem to be key themes to focus on? Once we’ve firmed up our destination, we’re ready to figure out how we want to get there.
4. How are we going to introduce the unit?
Once we know the final product, we like to decide what students need to know or do before they begin reading. In some cases, this is just getting them interested in the text or topic and starting to think in the direction we want them to go. Other times, there is background information they need to be familiar with or a skill they need to learn. We then try to make these introductory lessons and activities as student-friendly and accessible as possible. They’re low-stakes, nontraditional, and even silly, but they help set students up for success.
5. What do we want to be the routine?
Human beings (which, though hard to believe some days, students are) like an element of predictability, so they want to know, “What am I going to be expected to do on a regular basis?” However we plan to break up the text (act, article, chapter, section, group of poems), we like to follow a clear routine.
This generally includes some sort of introduction, a reading activity, an analysis activity, and preparation for the final product. In each part, we take it back to our angle and final product: our reading of the text and the activities and questions we select are determined by both what students need to notice or understand by the end and what we need to cover in our “due diligence” as English teachers.
6. How long will it take to get there, and how long do we want to take it to get there?
Our final “big picture” piece to discuss in this PLC meeting is timing. What time do we have available to devote to this unit? Does that match the time we need for all our ideas? Often, we’ve come up with more ideas than we have time for, and this is a process of making decisions about what to prioritize, what to cut, and what students may need to complete outside of class. It also helps us determine how we will need to set up the individual assignments for students.
Then it’s time to divide and conquer, getting down to the business of writing the materials we plan to use. We rarely need a formal PLC meeting after this, but there is lots of informal communication as we work to execute our plans (hence that helpful PLC group chat, or Slack channel if you’re super-fancy).
If you’d like to hear us discuss how we went through this process for teaching Romeo and Juliet, check out our podcast episode, “The Unit Plan Dilemma,” and related YouTube video. Consider sharing this list with your Professional Learning Community and have your own super successful planning session. If you’re brand new to a PLC, feeling like you can’t quite jump in and guide the meeting, or you’re just trying to get your footing, this blog post can help.
