How to Plan Your Entire ELA Year in One Weekend

Back to school is approaching, and you’re walking in with…nothing. 😅 You have a boatload of content to cover, but you’re not entirely sure where you’ll start or what unit comes after the next. However, you don’t have weeks to commit to planning it all out. I’m giving you a crash course on curriculum planning in just one weekend. Yep, it’s possible to map your entire year in just three days, if you’re committed!

Friday: Pick Your Rhythm

When you’re curriculum planning, you’re looking at a lot of different ELA skills: reading, writing, grammar, listening, and vocabulary. Most teachers will map out a daily or weekly schedule where they block time for each of these skills. They might have 20 minutes dedicated to reading and 20 minutes dedicated to writing. On Fridays, they might spend the whole class period on vocabulary. This chunking method, in my opinion, doesn’t work that well.

I tried chunking my class period like this for years, but what I found was that there was never enough time to dig deep into each lesson. And I was constantly running behind or skipping lessons due to a lack of time.

Instead, the rhythm that worked best for my curriculum planning was alternating units. When you alternate units, you switch between a reading-focused unit and a writing-focused unit. For example, you might focus on Narrative Writing for three weeks. During this time, you lean into writing standards and skills. You sprinkle in other skills during warm-ups, book clubs, and independent practice. My students always had a grammar warm-up, and I used mentor texts to reinforce reading concepts (therefore, reading was a part of my writing unit).

This was way less stressful than trying to rush through a reading and writing mini-lesson in one class period. Or trying to divide my week into reading and writing days. Ultimately, it’s up to you how you want your year to flow, but alternating units has my vote.

Friday To-Do List –

• Decide how you’ll lay out your week
• Decide if you’ll use alternating units
• Create a tentative daily and/or weekly schedule (download mine for free)

Saturday: Gather Your Standards

Next, you’ll want to gather all your standards. I like to print out the standards, so I can check things off and write notes, but you can also paste them into a Google Doc. When curriculum planning, you want to map out your standards across your units.

That means you’ll first need to identify what units you’re teaching. What reading units and writing units do you need to cover this school year? For example, expository and research writing, poetry and fiction novels. Make a list of the units you’ll need to teach.

Next, you’ll begin to link your standards to your units. Ask yourself what standards will need to be covered in each unit. For example, a research unit would cover standards W.6.4 – W.6.9 in sixth grade. Because I use alternating units, it would also cover some reading and speaking/listening standards in that unit as well.

You can start by writing down what standards you need to cover per unit. Eventually, though, you’ll want to get more specific. How will you break down the unit, day by day, to cover all the material? How will you lay out the standards across the unit? 

As you connect standards to units, put a mark or tally on your standards sheet. When you’ve finished your curriculum planning, you can see which standards you covered, which still need to be woven in, and how often you’re addressing each standard.

Saturday To-Do List –

• Make a list of all the units you’ll be teaching
• Connect your standards to each unit
• If you have time, begin breaking down units by day

Sunday: Layout Your Units

Now, it’s the fun part of curriculum planning: putting together your year-at-a-glance. At this point, you know what units you’re teaching and what standards will be covered in each unit. Now, you want to lay out your units across the school year, so you know how much time you can dedicate to each one.

On Friday, you identified the rhythm that you wanted to use for your ELA curriculum. If you chose alternating units, you can now put that plan together. Luckily, it’s pretty easy. Decide what unit you’ll start with and simply switch between a reading and writing unit throughout the school year. For example, you might start with a nonfiction reading unit, then move to a literary analysis writing unit.

When you’re curriculum planning, you can also decide what mentor texts you’ll use for each unit, what grammar skills you want to cover, and so on. I have curriculum plans for 6th – 8th grade that you can grab for free. You’ll find the year-at-a-glance, plus a weekly breakdown.

When you’re mapping out your year, you might also consider school holidays and assessment days. It’s also not a bad idea to build in a few buffer days in case a unit takes longer than expected.

Sunday To-Do List –

• Map out your units across the school year
• Pay attention to holidays and testing days
• Build in buffer time

Get More Guidance on Alternating Your Units

Want a step-by-step breakdown of planning with alternating units? I’ll guide you through it in my workshop, The Curriculum Carousel. I’ll show you how to organize your year + your daily lessons, so you can cover every standard without feeling like you’re cramming it in. This workshop will also walk you through implementing independent reading to support your curriculum, without using up your valuable class time.