Planning for Instruction
InTASC Standard 7: The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross- disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context.
When planning instruction, I find it vitally important that I create plans that help students meet rigorous learning goals by drawing upon content areas, district curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, proved pedagogy, as well as the knowledge of my students and the overall community context. Without meaningful planning, there is no clear guide that will drive students’ learning. Throughout the course of the year, I continuously work on adjusting and revising long-term plans, unit plans, and daily lesson plans to help support every student I teach.
Creating a long-term plan helps me logically sequence the standards I teach in a way that will help students reach classroom goals. When long-term planning before the start of the school year, I first review the district curriculum that is provided. From there, I group the standards into learning goals and units. After my learning goals are grouped into units, I calendar the units in accordance with my district and school calendar. My long-term plan acts as a master plan that helps me create my next instructional planning tool, unit plans.
The unit plans that I create are a more detailed version of my long-term plan. When starting a unit plan, I always begin with the end in mind by planning the summative assessment. Backwards planning helps me identify exactly how I need to plan each objective and logically sequence the unit. Unit plans help me solidify how I am going to teach the learning goals set forth by my long-term plan. They also serve the purpose of helping me correctly pace my timing so that I ensure there is enough time to meet all learning goals.
Lesson planning is the last instructional planning tool that I utilize in my practice. Similar to unit plans, creating lesson plans help me solidify exactly what I want students to know and how I am going to scaffold their learning.
Throughout my portfolio you will find evidence of how my long-term plan, unit plans, and lesson plans all work together to create a learning experience that helps every student in my classroom meet rigorous learning goals.
Click the images below to get more detailed information about how I plan for instruction for my 8th grade English Language Arts course.
Long-term Planning
When planning for instruction, the first step I take is ensuring that I have a logical long-term plan that is relevant to the needs of my students so that it will provide learning experiences that will help them master rigorous learning goals. Because I have a thoughtful long-term plan, I am able to prioritize the content standards that will help my students be successful in attaining our classroom goal. The long-term plan I created also acts as a vision that provides me with the guidance I need in order to align my units and daily lesson plans to the curriculum. It assures me that I am giving adequate time to the concepts and skills that I need to teach.
In addition to rooting my planning in content standards and district curriculum, my long-term plan details specifically what my students will know and be able to do by the end of the year. Having a comprehensive long-term plan with clear end goals provides me with the guidance I need when readjusting and revising plans based on the diverse needs of my students. In essence, it helps me make the most out of each instructional day. My day-to-day lessons are more meaningful because they are embedded in a plan that takes into account the entirety of the school year. Having a long-term plan gives me confidence that the instruction I deliver is helping my students meet the high academic standards I have in place.
Finally, long-term planning grants me time to ensure that I am providing students with the opportunity to learn in a way that is appropriate to them because when I am creating my long-term plan I am consistently thinking about what skills are going to need remediated and enhanced within each unit. This is crucial knowledge because it helps me select strategies, accommodations, resources, and materials that allow for differentiate instruction for my students.
Below you will see evidence of thoughtful long-term planning that takes into account content standard, district curriculum, and evidence of my knowledge of what skills and concepts learners potentially will need remediation in or extension in.
8th Grade English Language Arts Long-term Plan
Here is the long-term plan that I created for my 8th grade ELA classroom. This allowed me to better understand what skills and concepts should be spiraled into each unit. When creating this long-term plan, the first step I took was looking at district curriculum. The district I teach in prioritizes the state content standards into what is termed, “priority standards” and “focus standards”. Priority standards are the content standards that all students are expected to master before moving on to the next grade level. Focus standards are content standards that support students' learning of the priority standards. 8th grade English language arts has 14 priority standards and 17 focus standards. When creating my long-term plan, I understood that the state content standards are very broad when stating what students should know. Therefore, in my long-term plan, the priority standards each have learning goals associated with them that dictate precisely what students will be able to do at the end of each unit.
After I have crafted the learning goals for each priority standard, I group the priority standards and learning goals into units. My district has a sequencing framework we can follow, however, we are not required to follow the exact sequence they provide. I only made minor adjustments to my long-term plan compared to my districts long-term plan. In our fall semester, my district focused on a few standards that are not heavily tested by the state of Texas. For example, it focused on persuasive standards that are not found on our state test for 8th graders. Because it is important to me that I consider the context of the community I teach in, I want to ensure that I am adequately aligning my long-term plan to support students in achieving their greatest potential on mandated testing. Therefore, I switched the persuasive unit to later in our school year.
When sequencing my learning goals into units, I first ensure that the learning goals are connected in a way that will make sense to students. My long-term plan was designed in a manner that allows the skills that we are focusing on to carry across genres. Students will be able to see that the skills and strategies that we use are not taught in isolation and do not apply to only one genre. Students will be able to consistently use and build upon the fundamental strategies that are needed in order to become an independent, critical thinker. This scaffolding is also fundamental when helping my students reach mastery of the learning goals.
After I sequence the learning goals into units, I create Essential Questions that will guide my students learning throughout the unit. Each Essential Question focuses on the overarching concepts and skills we are working on mastering throughout the unit. Once Essential Questions are created, I reflect on what content knowledge and skills will be spiraled into each unit. Because the units are designed in a way that shows students how to apply skills across genres, I spiral in learning goals throughout the year to continue to reinforce important knowledge and skills. In addition to spiraling in knowledge and skills, my long-term plan focuses on what will need to be remediated and extended for some students. This allows me to better understand how I can support the diverse learning needs of all learners in my classroom.
Long-term Plan Pacing Calendar
This is the calendar that I use to transfer my long-term plan to my school calendar. This allows to see the "big picture" perspective of the school year. It specifically lets me see days that will not be used for instruction due to testing, field trips, and holidays. In addition, it lets me visually see how long I am spending on each topic and what content standards I am giving the most priority to.
To the left you will see how an example of how I had to adjust my long-term plan based on changing circumstances. The dark gray boxes from August 21st – September 8th represent days that I had to revise my long-term due to a natural disaster. The adjustments had minimal impact on my pacing. I did not cut out any standards, however I did combine the content standard related to theme into Unit 1. This meant that it did not get a separate unit, like originally planned.
Unit Planning
After creating a robust long-term plan, the next step I take in planning for instruction is creating unit plans that expand on my long-term plan by detailing exactly how I will teach and help my students reach the course learning goals. My unit plans serve as an additional road map that help me stay aligned to the content standards and curriculum. When designing my unit plans, I find it crucially important that I begin by reviewing the learning goals set forth by my long-term plan. After I review the learning goals, I create a vision for what I want students to get out of the unit. From there, I backwards plan by creating the summative assessment I will be using to measure students proficiency levels towards the content standards. Designing the summative assessment before I begin planning how students will be taught the learning goals gives me a clear vision of the end goal.
Each unit serves the purpose of allowing students to receive scaffold information that will help them reach the learning goals set for them. Keeping this in mind, I create lesson objectives that are logically sequenced in a way that will help students understand the fundamental knowledge needed to get to the higher level thinking required at the end of the unit. This involves looking at my long-term plan to ensure that I am spiraling in the proper content students need in order to progress towards the learning goals, in addition to providing remediation and extension when needed.
In order to meet the diverse learning needs of all of my students, I need to ensure that I am drawing upon their knowledge of ELA, as well as cross-disciplinary skills, when I am creating unit plans. For this to happen, I need to be in communication with teachers of other disciplines to brainstorm how I can incorporate their content standards into my units. Collegial, cross-disciplinary planning allows me to help my students connect their learning with the “big-picture” ideas that may seem meaningless to them otherwise.
When planning units, I strive to take into account the various learning styles and interests of my students. The materials I select and the topics of each unit are relevant to what is happening in the world outside the classroom. I find value in reading about and discussing issues that are meaningful and important to students.
8th Grade English Language Arts Unit Plan—Power Imbalances in the United States
Because this unit plan is an extension of my long-term plan, I started creating it by thoroughly reviewing the long-term plan I created at the beginning of the year. I looked specifically at the learning goals I created, the Essential Questions associated with the learning goals, and content I needed to spiral in. Taking time to reflect on the Essential Questions, learning goals, and content that needed to be spiraled into the unit helped me select appropriate teaching strategies and take into consideration the background knowledge my students are already coming in with.
From there, I worked to create a vision for this unit that would help students see the relevancy of their learning. I wanted students to see how understanding the main idea and supporting details in a text, and then the author’s purpose, will help them analyze and critique what is happening in the world around them. From there, I created a Big Question that focused on the idea of power imbalances within the United States. Specifically looking at why they exist and what would happen if and when different points of view are represented in power. This Big Question corresponds with an 8th grade Social Studies content standard that asks students to understand the importance of different points of view help by people in power. In addition, the articles that I selected correspond with an additional Social Students content standard that calls for students to understand the importance of having effective people in power in a constitutional republic. I selected this specific content standard and these specific resources after having a conversation with the 8th grade Social Studies teacher about what they were currently working on. By the end of the unit, students will be able to recognize that the power structures put into place by the founding documents of the United States call for basic rights and representation, regardless of your status. For example, immigration status, gender, or class status.
After developing a vision for my unit, I created the summative assessments that would measure my students’ progress towards the learning goals. I wanted this to be a project based assessment that would require students to demonstrate their knowledge by creating a presentation. I designed a rubric that incorporated the specifics of each learning goal detailed in both my long-term and unit plan. This assessment allows students to apply their content knowledge in a purposeful and meaningful way.
After having a clear end in mind for unit, I converted my learning goals to lesson objectives. Having a clear objective for every lesson helps me understand precisely what I want students to take away from each instructional day. It is important that each objective is measurable so that I am able to formatively monitor the progress of students. In addition, mapping out my lesson objectives helps me ensure that I am adequately planning to teach every learning goal of the unit. Because I want to support every learner in reaching rigorous learning goals, I scaffold the objectives in a logical way that aids students understanding. I started with lower-level thinking, but quickly move to higher-level thinking. Effectively sequencing the objectives of the unit helps my students attain success in regards to the learning goals.
Following the above steps help me ensure that I am creating a unit that is relevant and meaningful to students. Effectively planning for instruction requires me to take into account my students' content and background knowledge and cross-disciplinary skills. It also requires me to take into account what materials and resources will be of high interest to my students.
I start with the content knowledge that students will need in order to achieve the higher level skills within the unit. For example, unit 2 begins with students identifying main idea and important versus less important details in a nonfiction text. They can then take this knowledge and incorporate it into their understanding of author’s purpose and why authors selected to use specific pieces of evidence.
Here is an example of the performance assessment handout given to students. The purpose of this handout was to help students understand the assessment. In addition, this document specifically outlines how students will be graded upon completion of their project.
Performance Assessment:
In order to measure my students’ knowledge at the end of the unit, I designed a performance assessment that will allow them to display their content knowledge in a creative way. Students were first asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the learning goals by evaluating information and designing a Google Slide presentation that articulates the main idea of the article, the author’s purpose, and the evidence they used to achieve their purpose. After reading multiple texts all centered around the idea of power, students selected the article they were most interested in. Allowing students to select the article they will be creating a presentation about makes the learning experience more relevant and engaging. Then, students were asked to come up with an original answer to the Big Question of the unit. The Big Question students were responding to was, "Why are some people more powerful than others? Is it important to have different points of view represented by people in power?" This performance assessment was designed with the idea of allowing students to solve a real-world problem using their content knowledge, personal experiences, and cross-disciplinary knowledge. It was my hope that students would demonstrate their content knowledge in addition to unique and original ideas.
This performance assessment was assessed using a rubric I created. Students were given the rubric before they began the project so they knew precisely what needed to be included in the project. This rubric guided my students and me while students were working on the project by providing the baseline for all feedback that was given.
This performance assessment allowed students to demonstrate their knowledge using ELA content knowledge and cross-disciplinary skills. In addition, it engaged learners in a way that allowed them to apply their content knowledge in a meaningful, relevant way.
Lesson Planning
When planning lessons, I follow the pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading lesson structure. This structure allows me to explicitly tell students what they will learn and why it is important and lead students through guided practice. This is a time for me to check for understanding and clear up any misunderstandings. From there, students are able to independently or cooperatively practice the skill we are focusing on. Finally, this structure allows me to explicitly close the lesson cycle and stress connections to the Big Question we are focusing on.
8th Grade English Language Arts Lesson
Because I understand the importance of providing texts that are relevant to learners, the topic of this lesson, which is the pay gap between men and women, was selected based off of feedback collected from students during a gallery walk that was completed at the beginning of the unit. Students were asked to write down their experience and knowledge about various power imbalances in the United States, and a majority of students showed interest and knowledge around women receiving less money in work place.
The groupings from these lessons were based off of the MAP assessment that students completed at the beginning of the school year (for more information about MAP assessment, please see my Assessment section). From this diagnostic data, students were placed into homogeneous groups based off of skill level. Two groups, the lower skill level and medium skill level, worked with the special education teacher or myself. The higher skill level group worked cooperatively with their peers to complete the learning activity.
The lesson plan to the right details how understand the strengths and needs of individual learners. I respond to to their needs by planning instruction that is differentiated for individuals and groups of learners.
When I am planning, I find it helpful to clearly lay out the key points in the format of "What?", "How?", and, "Why?". The "What?" helps me explicitly understand what I am teaching to students. The "How?" helps me understand the thought process I go through when using the skill we are focusing on. For example, this lesson focuses on finding the main idea and important details in a nonfiction text, therefore the "How?" bullet points dictate what questions a fluent reader goes through as they are determining the main idea. Finally, the "Why?" helps me understand how I am going to make this content most relevant to my students. When planning a lesson, I always ask myself why is it important to understand this content and how can I most effectively articulate that to students. For example, in this lesson, I wanted to articulate to students that different details help the reader understand the overall main idea of a text. To be a strong reader, you need to be able to distinguish the important from the less important details in order to derive the main idea.
Additionally, when lesson planning, I find it effective to include exemplar responses. Doing this helps me know specifically what I am looking for when I am questioning students. It also helps me think through possible misunderstandings students may have.


Here are examples of the completed Gallery Walk papers that students completed.
Student Work Samples
As seen from the lesson plan above, students were reading a nonfiction article about the pay gap between men and women and determining the main idea of each subsection. Students were then determining if specific details, or pieces of evidence within the article, were important pieces of information that supported the main idea or simply interesting information that was not needed to support the main idea. Below you will see evidence of differentiated instruction that utilized the background content knowledge of my students. These differentiated learning activities helped students progress to the unit learning goals.
Here is an example of the differentiated work that students in the higher skill level group were working to complete. This group first watched a video, took notes, and then worked through the content. I had this group take notes so that they could demonstrate their understanding of the content before moving onto their learning activity. After students were done taking notes, I checked in with them. You will see that this student wrote you understand the main idea by "looking closely for important details". The question I asked while checking in is noted in pen on the side. Although this student was not incorrect, I wanted to make sure they understood how to determine whether or not a detail was important. After this conversation, the student completed the learning activity.
This is an example of student work that reached mastery on the objective of the day. This student was able to identify the main idea of section one and two, as well as distinguish important from interesting details.
Here is an example of the differentiated work that students in the medium and lower skill level group were working to complete. These two groups did not take notes because the groups were small enough for me to formatievly assess their understanding of the content through questioning. Before students worked independently, we worked through one section of the article together. This helped them clearly see the key points of the day in action because they first tried it independently, and then they checked their answers with mine. This served as a time to clear up any misunderstandings.
This is an example of student work that did not reach mastery on the objective of the day. This student was able to identify the main idea of section one with help of the teacher. In addition, this student was able to identify the main idea of subsection two. However, this student was unable to distinguish important from interesting details.
Lesson Reflection
When planning this lesson, I wanted to ensure that I was providing students with relevant ways to demonstrate their understanding of the content knowledge they needed to understand in order to meet the unit’s learning goals. Through differentiated activities, students were able to practice the skill of identifying main idea and determining whether or not details included in the text were important or interesting pieces of evidence.
During the pre-reading portion of the lesson, I wanted to ensure that all students had a basic understanding of the key points of the day. By analyzing the details in a picture, students had their first chance to practice the skill of the day. Most students did not have trouble identifying the important details in the picture that helped the photographer achieve the meaning behind the picture. This time in the lesson cycle also served as a time for students to create a personal connection to the material of the day.
Students moved into differentiated activities during the during-reading portion of the lesson. Throughout this time, students were either guided through the article in a more structured way with a teacher, or they guided their own learning by watching a teacher selected video and taking Cornell notes. One adjustment I would make to this portion of the lesson is providing differentiated articles for the high level students. I believe the article that was given to the lower and medium skill level groups was not rigorous enough for the higher skill level students.
The post-reading section allowed students to reflect on their learning and relate the overall content of the day to the Big Question of the unit. I believe this time was crucial to students creating a “big-picture” in their mind about the overall topic of the unit. Creating a Mind Map of what we discussed was a effective instructional strategy to use for the goal of helping students create the “big-picture” in their mind.
After reviewing the formative data, I understood that my higher skill level students had enough time to reinforce their skill of identifying main idea and determining important versus less important ideas. However, my lower and medium skill leveled groups needed additional reinforcement of this skill. Due to this formative data, I readjusted my lesson objectives to reflect the needs of my students. Going into week two of the unit, students revisited main idea and details used to support the main idea by completing a text mapping activity. When selecting this activity I anticipated it would allow students to practice the same concept by completing a different learning activity. Students place an article on a large sheet of butcher paper and first look at what the title, subtitles, and pictures are conveying to them. Then, students look at the main idea of each subsection. Finally, they put all the main ideas of each subsection together to understand the main idea of the entire text. I anticipated this activity would be more successful because it allowed students to see the “big picture” of the text in a visual way. It will help them piece together all the components of the text.
Conclusion
Effectively planning for instruction means that I have to create logical long-term plans, unit plans, and lesson plans. All three of these planning documents work together to help every student in my classroom meet rigorous learning goals. Thoughtful planning for instruction ensures that I have a clear end goal for my students and a way to help them achieve the end goal. My portfolio demonstrates that while I am planning for instruction I work diligently to ensure that I am drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and sound pedagogy.
Here is an example of a student who was successfully able to demonstrate their knowledge of all of the learning goals. In addition, this student was able to connect their knowledge to personal experiences and other content areas. Their interest in the topic is reflected in the connections they were able to make throughout their project.
When planning for assessments, it is important to take into consideration what type of materials and resources students will need to achieve success. Here is an example of the accommodations students received on the assessment. Students receiving accommodations were still able to self-select their own topic, however, the reading Lexile level of the article was lower. In addition, these students had a reduced number of supporting details and pieces of evidence they needed to provide that supported the author’s purpose.


Unit Reflection
Here is the completed rubric for the student who was successfully able to complete the performance task by meeting all of the components in an in-depth way.
Here is the completed rubric for the student who received support, but they were still unable to demonstrate complete mastery of the learning goals. However, this student did a thoughtful job extending their knowledge.
While planning this unit, I wanted to ensure that I was staying true to the vision I created that set the purpose of students understanding the concept of finding the main idea, supporting details, and analyzing the author’s purpose in a nonfiction text. The lessons I planned and the activities that students participated in to demonstrate their knowledge shows my efficacy in staying true to backwards planning. The resources that I selected to help students achieve the learning goals helped students see the relevance in their learning. Many of the topics that we discussed focused on issues and ideas that students felt passionate about. Because the unit focused on a cross-disciplinary plan with Social Studies content standards, the texts focused on power dynamics within the United States. However, one change that I would make is ensuring that all students feel engaged in the topics. I need to ensure that I am giving all students the chance to demonstrate their knowledge with a topic that is interesting to them. So in the future, I will provide additional articles that do not solely focus on power.
In addition to helping all students see the relevancy in the materials that I select, in the future I would provide time for students to present their performance assessments. I believe students would have had an increased sense of urgency surrounding the performance task if they knew they were going to present to their peers. I also believe this would have increased student engagement.