Are you an ELA teacher looking to create dynamic and engaging learning experiences but not sure how to plan lessons for the year? You are in the right place, friend! In this step-by-step guide, I am going to share my secrets for planning curriculum. From setting your teacher goals for next year to incorporating interactive activities, I will walk you through my process for keeping students excited and motivated to learn. Whether you’re a seasoned ELA teacher or just starting out, this guide will help you design or rewrite a curriculum that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and active participation. Get ready to unleash your creativity and transform your classroom into a thriving community of learners. Keep reading to see my guide for how to plan engaging lessons for the entire school year.
Already starting to feel overwhelmed just by the thought of mapping out your curriculum and writing your yearly lesson plans? Let me help you get a jump start on your planning. Start off your year right with my Short Stories Unit Plan. This resource includes a unit schedule, a short story lesson plan for each day, graphic organizers that go with any short story, and a theme analysis prompt. Why not start the year off right? Now that you know your first unit is planned, let’s jump right in and create unforgettable educational experiences together!
Why Start Creating Your Teacher Plan Now?
Back to School Blues
I have a love-hate relationship with back to school season. Every year, I start by getting excited about the potential for new student relationships, fresh ideas, and seeing my teacher bestie. But there is so much in my brain that I constantly am rewriting my to-do list. I always think I will have time on our inservice days to get everything ready and planned. I never do… We all know how those days go for us.
I realized pretty quickly that I needed to do something different. Even though I would rather leave school at school and enjoy my summer. Just spending a little time mapping out my year saves me so much time in the long run.
Tackling Your Teacher Time Suck Early
You know what us teachers never have enough of? Time! As soon as the school year starts, we are immediately thrown into the mounds of paperwork, grading, and instruction that there is so little time left. By just putting in a little time before mid-August, we can really take on back to school season. Are You Ready?
ELA Teacher Guide to Year Long Lessons
Step #1: Identify the Standards and Learning Outcomes
Every ELA teacher knows that our standards drive instruction. Most states have adopted the Common Core standards with a more state-specific set of standards. Find the reading, writing, and speaking standards for your grade level/courses. I like to make a copy of all these standards and then categorize them by skills: literary analysis, nonfiction, speaking, etc. You can simply highlight and color code them or create lists.
For each category, list a skill or learning objective that you would like your students to be able to do by the end of the year. Some examples might be writing constructed responses that identify literary elements and analyze them. Or participating in a group discussion and sharing insights and evidence. Maybe it’s analyzing the characterization of a protagonist in a piece of literature. How about determining the credibility of sources in a nonfiction article? Once you have your list of standards and the skills based on those standards, you are ready for your next step.
Step #2: Choose Your Unit Topics and Themes
The next step is to think about the units that you want to teach and how you want to teach them. You can create thematic units where you integrate multiple skills and learning objectives together. Or you can do what I prefer and create skill-based units. My thought process for going this route is that I want to set an intentional purpose for my students and work on that specific skill. I find when we integrate too many skills in the same unit, we tend to lose focus.
Here are the current units that I teach:
- Literary Elements in a Short Story
- Novel Study Teaching Literary Analysis
- Poetry
- Rhetorical Analysis and Nonfiction
- Drama and Characterization
- Book Clubs
- Final Project
Refer back to your list of standards and learning objectives and start there. Plan with the end in mind by deciding on the learning objective you want your students to accomplish.
Step #3: Outline Your Lesson Topics
Now that you know the end result for each unit, you need to create a lesson outline for the unit. Start with that learning objective and create a final assessment that makes that goal. Remember that your final assessment should focus on that learning objective and not just be a cool project to do. You can do both but sometimes we get lost in the creativity that we forget about the skill.
Once you know where you want your students to head, go back to the beginning and decide how they will get there. Create a lesson outline where I put all the lessons, skills, activities, and assessments that you want the students to accomplish along the way. Refer back to your standards list and as you add in an activity that incorporates that standard, cross it off the list. We are not writing those lesson plans yet. Note: I never just teach a skill once, but build on it multiple times throughout a unit and across multiple units. However, I like crossing standards off my list to ensure that I hit as many standards as possible.
Step #4: Map Out the Year
Pull out your school calendar to help determine how much time you want to spend on each unit. Fill in all the special events, schedule changes, and seasonal days first. While we have 180 days of instruction, we all know that not every day in our year is used for instruction. Better to plan for it now.
Grab your unit list and determine the order of the units. Think about what units build upon each other. For example, I start with short stories and literary elements because they build a good foundation for the novel study and literary analysis essay. You can also think about seasonally what units would work. Most teachers have poetry in either March or April because of the fun Poetry March Madness and National Poetry Month.
Once you have your unit order, look over your lesson outlines. First, count out the days you have created for each unit from this outline. Don’t try to worry about the calendar at first. Once you have each unit mapped out, now look at your calendar. Add each unit into the calendar as is and then make adjustments. Maybe your essay unit ends three days before a break. Could you extend your essay unit by two days so that you aren’t starting something new right before a break? Maybe you want to include some seasonal activities at Christmas time, and add those lessons in too.
You and I both know that this calendar will never be perfect but it really helps to give you an idea of what you want to cover in your course.
Step #5: Borrow What You Can, Design What You Want
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You are ready for my favorite part, the lesson design. You know the focus of each unit, the lessons and skills you want to cover, and the number of days you have. Before you start writing lesson plans, let me encourage you to think smart, not hard.
Curriculum writing takes a lot of time and effort and even the most seasoned teachers still don’t need to tackle an entire year’s worth of curriculum on their own. There are incredible units out there that can help you build your lessons without having to start from scratch. Fill in as many units and lessons as you can that are designed for you already. This allows you to focus on your favorites.
Once you have most of the lessons already in place, now you can pick your favorite topics and tackle one or two new areas. Maybe you want to rewrite your poetry unit or the final project needs some work. By having most of the lessons finished, you can have that creativity without too much pressure to recreate everything.
Looking for some awesome ready-to-go units to fill in? Check out my Short Stories Unit Plan or my Independent Novel Study Unit. Each resource gives you a day-by-day plan for the entire unit. In both the block schedule and year-long calendar format, you will see Common Core English standards, links to resources, and lesson overviews.
More Ideas How to Lesson Plan for Teachers
- How to Plan a Successful Socratic Seminar for High School Students
- How to Teach a Novel Unit that Engages High School Students
- Five Ways to Create Curriculum Flexibility To Help Engage Your High School Students
- Narrative Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide for Success in Middle School
- Curriculum Planning Series: Introduction To a Successful Integrated Curriculum (Part 1 of 3)
- How To Teach Setting In A Short Story
- How to Set Up a Writer’s Notebook for the School Year Effectively
- Teaching Poetry in High School ELA
Planning engaging lessons for the entire school year is worth the time now. By investing time and effort into lesson planning, you can create an impactful learning environment that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and active participation. I would love to see how you use this curriculum guide and what units and lessons you are creating. Tag me or send me a DM @theteacherrewrite on Instagram with your new curriculum ideas. You can always see what other great things I am working on this summer by checking out my blog.
If you want a head start on your next school year, check out my First Day Class Activities. In this resource, there are stations for you to get to know your students without doing all the talking. Each station includes easy-to-use directions, links to necessary paperwork, templates, printables, and examples of these activities on the first day of school. This resource comes in two versions: numbered station cards and unnumbered station cards which each include a color and a black and white version. You will be all set for the first day of class with just a few customized changes. Now that you know how to plan lessons for the year, let your creativity and passion for teaching shine through as you transform your classroom.
Ready to take your literary analysis writer’s workshop to the next level?
Teaching how to write a literary analysis essay can be tough. If you want to simplify the writing process for your students while making sure you don’t forget any steps, then this toolkit is made for you!
Click HERE to learn more!