Long-term Planning

 LONG-TERM PLANNING OVERVIEW
​In my instructional planning sequence, I begin with long-term planning in order to establish a year-long curriculum trajectory. I backwards plan because I need to chart the direction and purpose of my lessons. I complete a first draft of my long-term plan before the start of the school year. This first draft allows me to  set up my classroom with year-long goals in mind. However, over the course of the year, I adjust and revise all layers of my planning based on my students' assessment data and survey feedback. In addition, I meet weekly with my co-teachers to re-align our long-term plans based on their observations and feedback.

My long-term plan chronologically classifies all the Common Core objectives I plan to teach over the course of the school year. In addition to daily objectives, essential prior understandings are noted and listed as separate objectives that will be spiraled into various aspects of my unit and lesson plans. By housing all daily objectives on one spreadsheet, I can better make inter-unit, interdisciplinary, and intercultural connections in my materials. In addition, I can see major themes in my long-term plan across units such as solving equations, graphing functions, and simplifying expressions.

Not only are my objectives aligned to Common Core State Standards, but also they are aligned to CCRS.  Both Common Core and CCRS encourage evidence-based, interdisciplinary, rigorous curriculum. However, their standards vary in wording and nuance. By understanding both sets of standards, I hope to engage my students in a variety of approaches to learning Algebra II. Through my quarterly assessment standards breakdown, I draw connections between Common Core and CCRS, and categorize matched standards on my long-term plan.

Please scroll down or click on the table of contents below to learn more about my quarterly assessments standards breakdown, long-term plan, and long-term calendar.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Quarterly Assessments Standards Breakdown
Long-term Plan
Long-term Calendar

Quarterly Assessments Standards Breakdown
As a Algebra II teacher of 84 10th and 11th grade students, one of my year-long goals is for my students to grow at least 3 points on the ACT exam over the course of the school year. For my students, one, if not the most important, part of their college applications is their ACT exam score. Therefore, students at my school, and throughout our charter school network, take quarterly practice ACT exams during the school year. The assessment data from these quarterly exams are used to evaluate both students and teachers. Therefore, my students and my own familiarity with CCRS is critical for our success.

I begin my long-term planning by taking the three ACT quarterly assessments that my students will take during the school year. Next, I analyze each assessment to see what are the necessary processes, knowledge, and skills to solve each problem. In addition, I note common misconceptions for each question. Then, I create specific standards of what students will be able to do, SWBAT, if they can correctly answer the question. Finally, I collaborate with my department head, who has also taken the three ACT quarterly assessments and conducted a standards breakdown. We compare our breakdowns, so that my objectives are even more robust.

Below is one of the standards breakdowns I created for a quarterly interim. From left to right, the columns represented are question number, CCRS, process for solving the question, knowledge needed, skills needed, possible misconceptions, and objective. The CCRS in the second column are categorized similarly to Common Core, as the categories are functions, geometry, algebraic functions, algebra, and statistics.

Long-term Plan
My long-term plan identifies objectives by unit, CCRS, quarterly ACT exam question number, and Pearson's Algebra II Common Core textbook subunit. Objectives are specific, measurable, and explicitly state how a student will meet the objective. The order of the objectives generally follows Pearson's guide for teaching Algebra II; however, the order has been customized based on feedback from the math department head. Since my long-term plan chronologically lists the objectives, I can create a unit plan pacing guide for the objectives by referring to the long-term plan.

I have collaborated with my math department head on my long-term plan. Last year, we drafted ten iterations of long-term plans over the course of the year. Revisions were necessary because we wanted feedback from co-teachers, school administrators, and students. By systematically adjusting long-term plans at each monthly meeting, we made the long-term plan more relevant to our students.

​Below is my long-term plan. From left to right, the columns are unit, objective, CCRS, quarter 1 ACT exam question, quarter 2 ACT exam question, quarter 3 ACT exam question, and textbook subunit. The long-term plan is color-coded so that I can quickly gauge how many objectives are covered per unit.

Long-term Calendar
My long-term calendar allows me to see when any particular objective will be taught. The long-term calendar lists the objectives in the order presented on the long-term plan, which makes it easy to cross-reference these two spreadsheets. All of my lesson materials are numbered, so the long-term calendar also corresponds to all electronic and paper files and grading for a particular lesson.

The long-term calendar only accounts for full school days. I have removed all holidays, testing days, and field trip days from the calendar. I have also bolded half days to remind myself of the shorter periods. 
Picture
Above is a snapshot of my long-term calendar for the quadratics unit.