Long term planning is the key to making sure we are on pace for our EOG test and that the entire year is aligned with our state standards. Long term planning will generally begin in the summer months and continue into the early teacher workdays at the beginning of the year because each element of this calendar is so crucial to content delivery. With this guide I can determine how the levels of rigor will increase as we get deeper into content, establish my personal big goal for my classes even before I meet my students, and adjust for any changes that may have happened to the standards over the summer.
As I create this plan, I am working to place content in a sequence that has a consistent flow and encourages students to make connections as they progress. Specific units will be received better if they are taught together or in a predetermined order. This calendar is not something that I design on my own, rather I work with my PLC and content facilitator to design the long term plan because our students will be learning the same content regardless of predetermined learning levels. Through the development of this plan I can give additional time to content that students in previous years may had had difficulty with and plan ahead to work slower through specific units.
We develop this pacing guide at the beginning of the year before school starts to help pace our instruction. This document is mapped around early release days, holiday breaks, and testing schedules in our grade level. As we create this document we will collaborate with other core content areas to make cross curricular learning much more cohesive. For example, during our pathogen unit we will try to align that with the westward expansion unit in Individuals in Societies so that they kids can see the connections. They will be learning about different diseases in science while playing the Oregon Trail in their Individuals in Societies classroom. During the Industrial Revolution in Individuals in Societies we will try to have our pacing guide discuss some of the adaptations that animals underwent because of that revolution. Pacing guides are the first step in planning for the school year and a quintessential element of backwards planning.
State standards drive my instructional planning because they detail every concept my students must show proficiency in to successfully complete 8th grade science. Through backwards planning I am able to create a detailed map of students progression through the standards and develop my desired end result for every unit. Backwards planning of the standards creates a student centered approach to planning with a definitive and measurable objective over the course of the unit.
This type of instructional strategy allows me to observe learners deepening their understanding as the unit progresses with time to revisit any areas that may have caused confusion. Knowing my desired results in the beginning of a unit allows me appropriate time to develop lessons with meaningful application built in for every learner.