Week 5 Term 2 - English Department: Designing our unit plans (May 18 - May 22)

As we move through Term 2 and Term 3, our main goal is straightforward: we're going to focus on creating, sharing, and collaborating on our Units of Learning. Why is this so important for us? Simply put, it helps us all get on the same page. When we work together to build these unit plans, we ensure long-term consistency for our students. It lets us share our best practices—what's working well in your classroom can help mine! This collaboration establishes a really strong foundation for all our future planning, making sure our curriculum is robust and effective across all year levels.

To show you what this looks like in action, here is an example of a unit plan I've created and shared with the English Department. This is the template we all use for our Unit Plans.

First part of the Unit plan (template)

Second part of the Unit Plan (template)

The unit plan is a detailed framework that maps out a course of study over several weeks, such as the 7-Week Short Text Study for Year 9 English. It outlines the specific Knowledge students need to learn and the Practices they will master.

The unit plan is a clear and explicit roadmap for instruction. It shifts the focus from simply preparing for an assessment to building a complete body of teaching and learning. It helps you deliberately sequence and time the exposure of important concepts so that students will acquire knowledge, engage in deep learning, and successfully transfer that knowledge into their long-term memory.How to Follow the Unit Plan. 

Follow the Weekly Focus: Use the table to guide your lesson's main focus, the knowledge required, and the practice goals for that week (e.g., Week 5 focuses on Character and/or Theme Analysis).

Use Explicit Teaching Practices: Implement the recommended methods for instruction:Direct Instruction on key vocabulary and literary concepts (e.g., Akonga, Metaphor).

Think-aloud processes to demonstrate how to analyze relationships, such as between context and setting. Model how a text’s historical and cultural context influences its meaning.

Factor in Time: Ensure students have spaced interactions with the new content over time, which is essential for deep and transfer learning.

Use Assessments: Administer the planned Formative assessments (like weekly quizzes) and the final Summative Assessment (e.g., the Common Assessment Task/Creative Writing)

*In my next post I will share a unit plan that I have created for one of our short texts that we are doing this term, Hone Tuwhare's poem 'Rain'.