A simple strategy for planning curriculum

Every year I seem to change around my curriculum a little bit. I teach generally the same things but I will shift topics and switch around activities to try to find the best order for my students. This year we have a new schedule that significantly impacted my classes. We went from students having World Language every day for 7th and 8th to every other day 6th - 8th. This change meant I had to redistribute my curriculum and make some cuts. I spent a couple of days in June working to re-order and re-write our Middle School curriculum so I want to share the strategy that I used.

This simple strategy can be used to plan out a unit, a grade level curriculum or an entire program.

#1 List out every topic individually

I started off by writing every topic on its own piece of paper. I had a couple of colors so I tried to color code. I used pink for culture, yellow for grammar points I wanted to weave in and I would have liked another color for projects and class novels.

#2 Sort the topics

I then pulled everything that was not essential to prepare them for level 2. I sorted the papers 3 piles “Must teach”, “would like to teach”, “can cut”. Unfortunately, many of the lessons and activities that I cut I really enjoy, but I can add them back in if we have time. I set the latter two piles aside.

I then created a chart on the table with the three grade level labels at the top and the Unit linguistic goals (Describing, Narrating and Informing) on the side. I sorted each paper in the essential into those goals and about which grade.

#3 Rearrange and balance

After laying out the topics with where I thought they would go I checked to make sure I was building on their acquisition each year and that there was a natural order to the topics. I also checked to make sure the curriculum was evened out and I wouldn’t be trying to do too much in one year. I then looked at the cultural topics and the projects. I didn’t want to have three projects in one year and then none the following. I also wanted to make sure students learned a little bit of culture each year throughout.

The great thing about this strategy was I was able to look at everything at once and I was easily able to move units around several times. I am a visual person so this was so much more helpful than trying to write out a list on the computer.