Big Picture, Small Pieces: Mastering Curriculum Planning One Unit at a Time

Well, if you are crazy like me, you pre-emptively load your planning at the beginning of the year…the earlier the better. Now…welcome the new teacher that (poor thing) doesn’t have a lot of time to “get ready” for the year.

This post is meant to help you prepare the WHOLE year as easily as possible so you can focus on other things.

In the last post, we discussed how to interpret the curriculum looking for the BIG themes or units. This time we are going to use the curriculum to outline the smaller lessons and progression within each theme. It aims to support new teachers with unit planning and the big themes throughout the year. This post is meant to help you build a GIANT year plan that supports your teaching over the course of the year as well as be useful for the day-to-day of teaching. I hope you find it helpful…Let’s GO.

If I could, I would have started planning in the womb just to keep up.

Because we ALL know, once your year starts you are running to keep up with the kids and all the expectations thrown at us.

Reality Check…New Teacher

I have been teaching for 14 years at this point and NOT ONCE did I feel like “I’ve got this” and all caught up. Instead in our profession we aim to ensure the kids are happy and learning, we are talking to parents about anything note-worthy, and we are achieving the to-do list of your district.

So…Let’s carry on with our discussion…

We have been discussing how to develop your year plan with a full, wide spectrum of activities, assessment and lessons but we haven’t yet made it there. If you need to review or look at the first post click HERE.

So far we have talked about necessity to pull out the BIG ROCKS from the curriculum. I don’t know what it is like where you live but in Alberta, it is not always easy to understand what the overarching goal is for a student’s learning just by reading the curriculum. Instead you need to sift through and LOOK for the SIGNIFICANT aspects of learning that a student needs to understand.

To download your FREE version of the year plan click HERE.

Now, we are moving onto the NEXT step in planning the year.

Referring to the year plan you created with the previous post, you should currently have the BIG ROCKS at least for one subject, thus far. The big themes that will outline the curriculum and your year. With that in mind, we are going to focus our attention on just ONE ROCK today.

ONE ROCK or “Unit” at a time

Again, dig into to the curriculum, this time ONLY focusing on that one rock or topic. You are looking for interconnections between material, a logical progression of skills and ideas for activities/field trips/experiences, etc. Think about how this material would BEST be presented to students. This is what outlines the lessons and activities within your “unit” or BIG ROCK.

Now that you have your skills and their progression throughout the unit/theme feel free to start building out your year plan more detailed. Within each section of your year plan split the box into as many rows as you have skills…keeping in mind you might teach 1-2 skills/lessons per week depending on the subject.

Now your year plan might look like this…

Keep going with this approach until all the themes or “units” are completed. This is the most TIME-CONSUMING part of your planning but what SAVES the most BRAIN CAPACITY during the course of the year. Having the lessons, activities and assessment already outlined is what will make you feel at ease during the year.

“Having the lessons, activities and assessment already outlined is what will make you feel at ease during the year.”

I hope you found this post helpful. Make sure to check out the rest of the planning series. Part 1 (5 Basic Steps: Curriculum Mapping and Year Plans) and watch for Part 3 all about batch prepping your resources once you have your plan in place.

And of course, reach out if you have questions or need support tiffany@creatingbridges.ca.