Pacing Guides

Years ago, I was involved in a curriculum alignment project at Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in which we created vertically aligned pacing guides for Reading, English, and Writing College Readiness Standards. This was before our shift to Common Core, and while the ACT was still Illinois' standardized test of choice.

More recently, as the Lead Teacher for Chicago Academy High School's English department, I led the team in the creation of a pacing guide for Writing using the College Board's scope and sequence. That work is ongoing!

Backwards Mapping & Project-Based Learning

The video on the left is a walkthrough I made for one of my grad school classes of a unit I planned in 2017. It is an example of my team's unit planning, which aims to create project-based social justice units which are tech-integrated, student-centered, and collaborative in nature.

Based on our pacing guides, my grade level team and I backwards map to determine what essential questions, content, and project would best support student learning around our standards. We plan by quarter, which usually consists of two related units connected by our essential question. 

Because we are responsible for four content standards, Reading, English, Writing, and Speaking & Listening, I use color coding (as evidenced in the document on the left) to trace our progress over the course of the quarterly units.

Weekly Plans

Each week, I meet with my grade level team to discuss student progress, and plan the next week's activities. We also split the materials-creation (my responsibilities are highlighted!).

This particular weekly plan comes from our unit on human relationships using the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Our standards focus included composing logical arguments (hence the logical fallacy Do Now), and tracing a theme across multiple texts.