Planning for Planning

It's true what Gretchen Rubin says about happiness: once one goal is reached, the happiness is short-lived because you then have a new unfulfilled goal with challenges in between where you are and where you want to be once again. So after the relief and joy of promised employment, my next challenge is to lesson plan for the year. I know the 6 core texts I will teach.  For my Honors 9 sections, I will teach To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Romeo & Juliet, and the Odyssey.  For College Prep 11, I will teach The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and one of the Arthur Miller plays either Crucible or Death of a Salesman. In addition to re-reading them all with critical annotations, I have to create unit-long daily activities. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed with how to begin creating my lesson plans. I needed a plan.

One principle hammered in us in my teacher ed program was to begin at the end, known as Backward Design (McTighe & Wiggins). The next step is to design activities and assessments with these pre-determined final objectives in mind. Simple... except I felt I did not know what my objectives for the classes were. I went to the Common Core Language Arts page (www.corestandards.org). Wasn't inspired. Hmm okay, stepping back, I realized that the end PRODUCT I wanted was a literary analysis paper and for students to be able to speak about these canonical texts confidently. So I had to read excellent literary analyses and make sure to teach how to write them memorably! Today I found contemporary Of Mice and Men book reviews (1930s-40s) that hit on all of the biggies in OMM succinctly and with specific references (score! Specificity is one of my teaching rules...).  I made sure to note mentions of themes, story elements, and tone/mood/diction in order to create graphic organizers that support getting students to appreciate Steinbeck's simple yet eloquent tragic storytelling about friendship/goodness in the midst of - not evil - but apathy/broken dreams/bitter adult reality.

A G.O. for Themes in Of Mice and Men

With Romeo and Juliet, I read a literary analysis rather than No Fear Shakespeare. A clear objective for R&J is simple comprehension of the language. But have they truly comprehended the book if they  don't know what overarching message Shakespeare is sending? That's why the unit has to scaffold understanding of an Essential Question, probably something like "What is the nature of love?" What I realized through reading the literary criticism is that Romeo & Juliet is structured in contradictions! There are so many things to point out - couplets, setting, voice, humor,  allusion - but I think I can hit much of it if I ask kids to find the contradictions (lust vs. love, love vs. violence, love vs. time).

Scaffold for personal connections in Romeo & Juliet

Whoo! It's great to know what the goal looks like and where it is. Now just gotta make the plays.