Episode 288: Summer Lesson Planning Series: Standards: Doctors Don't Wing it and Neither Should You

On this episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, we're discussing what we call the "North Star" of lesson planning: your ELA standards!

We're covering our most practical ways of utilizing your list of ELA standards to develop an outline of pacing for your scope and sequence. Once you have a "map" of standards to follow, then it becomes easier to pencil in units that effectively cover those standards! After you've matched units to the standards you've outlined on your scope and sequence, you'll find you are left with a roadmap of lessons for your entire school year!
We'll show you exactly how simple this process can be in this episode!

FREE RESOURCE: Curious about trying Batch Planning this summer? Simply click the link below to grab our 10 Tips to Get Started Batch Planning and take a look at how easy it can be to begin!

https://www.ebteacher.com/free-10-tips-for-Batch-Planning

Batch Planning is the ONE thing you can do now that will have the biggest impact on your entire school year!

BIG NEWS: The EB Teachers' ELA Portal will officially be open for enrollment this summer! If having access to ALL of the items below sounds helpful to you, then we invite you to take a quick moment to add your name to our priority list today! Are you ready for:

• Hundreds of ready-to-go ELA lessons
• A robust Core ELA Curriculum that includes reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary covering all of the ELA standards
• Innovative digital lesson planning software
• Hours of on-demand PD videos
• A community of thousands of supportive ELA teachers from around the world

Pretty incredible, right? Click the link below to add your name to the priority list today:

https://www.ebteacher.com/ebtc-priority-list

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

All right, you guys, welcome back to another episode. We are on episode two of talking all about batch planning for this kind of summer podcast series. I guess we can name it the EB batch planning summer podcast series.

Speaker 2: 0:17

I like it.

Speaker 1: 0:18

You like it? Okay, yeah, gold. So episode 287, we talked about just really like, making the case for why batch planning matters, but then we also covered the first stage of our EB batch planning framework, and that is your scope and sequence. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to that one first, because these are going to be sequential and build upon each other Doesn't mean you can't listen to this episode right now, but we suggest that you listen to them in order so that you get the most bang for your buck when it comes to batch planning. So we truly believe, like hands down, batch planning is not only the most effective way to plan your lessons, but it's guaranteed to deliver the best curriculum to your students while freeing up your nights and weekends. And we really, truly like at our believe this. We wrote a book about it. We hosted an event every single year. This is what our software is built upon. Is this concept of batch planning Like? It really is the catalyst for change for you as a teacher? So, like I said, last week we talked all about the first step of our EB batch planning framework and that is your scope and sequence. And today we're moving on to step two, and step two is all about the standards. So, no matter what your standards are, your common core state standards, or your TEKS, or your Florida best, or your school uses skills based, not standards whatever it is, it doesn't matter. There's a thing that you have to teach to help your students achieve this particular intended outcome, whatever that is.

Speaker 1: 1:52

That's the lens through which we want you to listen to this episode and all other episodes when we're talking about standards, and so if you're thinking about, you know, a podcast about standards, we're like, well, that's going to be boring. I really don't want to listen to this episode. We're going to shake things up a little bit. It's not going to be super, super dry, we promise.

Speaker 1: 2:11

And even if it was, I don't think it matters, because knowing your standards is absolutely essential If you want to deliver quality lessons.

Speaker 1: 2:23

The last thing you want to be doing is flying blind with no roadmap, and I will tell you right now. I truly believe that this is why so many of our teachers students have the highest test scores in their district, in their County, one of them in their state. I mean, it is off the charts the way that our teachers students score on these state tests and I know, like state testing isn't everything, we don't have to have that conversation but I believe it's because they are planning and teaching with intention, and that is with the standards as your North Star, and teaching without the standards and flying blind with no roadmap is something that I personally can relate to all too well. So there is no judgment coming from me ever with anything, because I was that like in my first year of teaching high school I don't even think I knew that standards were a thing, like not only did I not look at them, I didn't even know that there were standards.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Yeah, caitlin, I was just thinking that I I mean, I should have known, maybe, but like no, one handed me something and said this is what you're supposed to follow, I didn't know.

Speaker 1: 3:27

And that's crazy to me because I got when I my first year teaching I'm in a master's program at one of the top educational you know whatever. Uh, what's what I'm looking for? Programs for teachers in the country and I didn't even know that standards were a thing. Like we were spending so much time talking about English language learners, students, special education students. We weren't really talking about like planning. It was just. It's very interesting to me. Whatever. There's no judgment, it doesn't matter. I just want you guys to know I'm going to take that a step further to like.

Speaker 2: 4:02

even in most schools I'd be willing to bet principals aren't always saying okay, these are the standards we follow. Let's talk about it in a practical way. I think one year in my 15 years of teaching did a principal say here's your standards and that's how we developed the standards checklist and everything. I had four or five different principals and no one was going over that with us.

Speaker 1: 4:22

No one was like hey, but for the record we all use the common core standards for. Ela.

Speaker 3: 4:27

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 4:28

So thank you Chris. As you say that that definitely didn't happen at two. There's too much else going on, right You're dealing with.

Speaker 1: 4:37

I don't know all the things at school Totally. It was more about like the oh gosh, what were they even called? It was like we had like five words that the school expectations. Yes, the student learning expectations, those were the things and it like, okay, oh, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 4:56

Like that's a whole tangent.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Because I could go down the rabbit hole of like, okay, well, what about core values From, like, an actual institution perspective of building culture at the school? And then we could also talk about well, like, how was that actually helpful for teachers to understand the subject matter?

Speaker 2: 5:14

We were only doing it because we were getting accredited, like all the things. Let's be honest, yeah, that is the system.

Speaker 1: 5:23

That is the system and that is something that we do not have control over. But what we talked about on the first episode of this series was that the thing that you do have control over is batch planning. Is this are the things that we're going over right now? So back to my point is that I didn't look at the standards because I didn't even know that they were a thing. Like it wasn't that I was lazy, it was that, like, I was so overwhelmed with trying to teach this massive American literature curriculum.

Speaker 1: 5:53

I'm 22 years old, I'm teaching 17 year, 16 and 17 year olds. I look like a freshman. I don't even look like a student. I look like a freshman at this high school, right, and I was like, okay, the next thing in the book is Anne Bradstreet. Okay, the next thing is Emily Dickinson. I guess that's what we're doing, you know, and, like, I loved it. I loved teaching so many of those texts. It was really fun, but I didn't know why I was teaching them. Like, do my students really care about Emily Dickinson and Anne Bradstreet? Maybe some of them, maybe like 0.01% of them, right, and I think about too, okay, even in those first years.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yeah, I didn't have the standards, but my whole like teaching belief was my goal is to make great humans. My goal is to build great humans who care about people, who are critical thinkers, who ask questions. But I didn't have like a way in which I was doing that other than just through, like having elevated conversations through literature, if that makes sense, like so there were no standards. I didn't know like, oh my gosh, we're teaching Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson so that my students could determine the theme of a text or a poem and analyze its development throughout the course of the poem. Like that, that language, that jargon wasn't even a thing in my life at that time.

Speaker 1: 7:12

And then you know, I go two years of graduate school, I finally get a class that's about standards and about why we teach what we teach. And I'm like, oh my God, there are these things. This is amazing, right, it's just so interesting. Like just the system and the way in which I don't believe really sets teachers up to be successful in the United States. And what was cool is once I and I even remember writing the standards on the board like once I knew that these were a thing and I told my kids I'm like, look, this is why we're doing like.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I didn't just pull this out of thin air, right? I actually probably said something different to my high school students. I didn't just pull this out of my you know what right and just like throw this on the board. This is why we're doing what we're doing. This is a state mandated thing, but not only that it's also going to help you with this when you become, you know, a lawyer or whatever it ends up, being an entrepreneur, whatever you end up doing in life, you know like these are the things that are going to help you achieve those outcomes, even though they seem unrelated. It's all about teaching you to think differently and to think critically and to look at texts in a different way. Um, so it was cool because when I told them, like this is why we're doing what we're doing, they were like okay, we get it. Thanks, mrs Mitchell or Ms Pence at the time, right, and their efforts skyrocketed because there was a why behind why we were doing what we were doing.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I love that and I'm going to bring it back to like the teacher perspective now, because I mentioned, you know, I did have one principal, chris, who did give us the standards, and once I had those, like it was this big black binder on my desk that I could look through. It made planning so much easier, and I think this was probably my seventh year in the classroom, so before that I was like Caitlin, I was like, okay, what's the next thing in the textbook? Now, granted, I consider myself a very creative person, so it wasn't just like we're going to read and answer questions. I'd come up with my own lessons, but I was still following what was in there and it was kind of dull to begin with. And once I had the standards, it was kind of like oh, I have permission to create whatever I want as long as it follows these guidelines. And it was so freeing. And I really think that's when I started to like come into my own as a teacher and be a lot stronger. And I think you'll do the same. You'll probably realize this as well, that you'll realize you've probably been teaching content that doesn't even cover or connect to any of the standards for your grade level, like I'm willing to bet there's a few things you do each year and you're like not really sure why I do those. I just always have done them. And if you start to like question like, oh, is it standards aligned? Maybe it isn't, and sometimes that's okay, right. Like sometimes we have a project we love, we're going to keep it, I get that. But when you truly look at the standards, it really has the potential to free up so much stress, so much anxiety about fitting everything into your year, let alone if you have like a 42-minute class period. Because, like I said once, you rely on the standards. It's completely freeing.

Speaker 2: 10:11

When you make the standards your compass or your North Star, like we always say, they become the why behind everything you'll teach, you share them with your students, like Caitlin did. Even if it's a pain, right to write those objectives or daily standards on the board, it's worth it. It's showing your students this is what we're working toward, this is why we're doing what we're doing. And then they'll start to self-assess like, yep, I'm getting it or, nope, I cannot do that thing yet, right. And so the first thing you want to do is actually look at your standards like literally print them out, go to your state's website, whatever it is and read through your grade level standards, start to learn them and understand what they mean. And what's really interesting to do is, you know, look at the grade level before you, the grade level after you as well, and you're going to start to see just tiny little nuances. And maybe even you're like, oh, I don't actually have to have them find, you know, I don't know four pieces of evidence, I just have to focus on two. Oh well, that's going to make things a whole lot easier for my students. So it's really helpful. And you'll start to then realize so it's really helpful. And you'll start to then realize, oh, this particular standard, I could use that with this novel. I'm going to put that in my scope and sequence, or this one, I haven't touched on it ever. Maybe I should try to work it into a lesson. And actually, that's what.

Speaker 2: 11:25

When we sat down our curriculum team, we all got together in charleston, I don't know, back in february. We had our standards, common core printed in front of us. We had our EB activities and we were always cross-checking Like are we making sure that all our standards are represented in everything that we do? And I will say. There was one. I don't even remember what it was now it was like an obscure one, and we were like we really need to make sure that we're hitting this.

Speaker 2: 11:50

And it happens even to the best of us, right? That's our job to know the standards and sometimes we can overlook them. So to go back to your standards, to really become familiar with them, is a game changer, right? That's when the creativity, like I said, is going to spark, and then you go back to your scope and sequence, like we talked about in last week's episode, and you jot down those standards. These are the ones I want to include. This is the one that I'm maybe struggling with. I'm going to write it down, so I know to bring it back to later, but it's just bringing that intention to your planning.

Speaker 3: 12:23

Yeah, and one of the best things about using the standards as your guide is that you're going to have a clear purpose for teaching and then your students are also having a clear purpose for learning. So I have to share this anecdote because it's hilarious With having a clear purpose for learning. So I have to share this anecdote because it's hilarious With my eighth graders last year at some point in the school year, like I didn't always use that that term standards with them. Like I would always say, like this is what we're learning today, whatever. But at one point we were learning verbals and I said, okay, we've got a few more standards to cover for these verbals.

Speaker 3: 12:50

And one of the girls who is, you know, smartest can be, she goes what's the standards thing, ms Wyant? And I said, oh well, you know because I worked at a private school. I said the diocese outlines specific skills and content that you're supposed to learn in every class, in every grade level. They were just fascinated by this and they're like where can we find these, ms Wyant? I said, well, they're on the website. They started looking at them and then analyzing if they were learning what they're supposed to be learning in other classes and I was like I just opened a can of worms, no, but it's so interesting because no one's ever told them like they probably think teachers are just winging it Like, oh, they just kind of pick what they want to teach each year.

Speaker 3: 13:30

So, teachers, share your standards with your students because they I think they like it that is so funny, Megan.

Speaker 3: 13:37

It was a riot, I loved it, so anyway.

Speaker 3: 13:40

So use those standards as your North star. But then once you do this, you're going to realize that you don't have to teach it all. And, kind of to Jessica's point, you might find that you've been teaching something that doesn't even include a standard that you need to cover right. So it's good to always reflect back on these and you know, if that's the case, trim that excess, get rid of it, and that's going to free up time in your schedule to do something that's actually in your standards. And so when you're intentional with making sure you're hitting all your standards in your curriculum, you will naturally start to notice that where your students are struggling. That then allows you to kind of spiral review some of that content, some of those skills better. You can start rinsing and repeating lessons so students are really achieving mastery on those standards, and that's going to help, you know, ensure that you're also checking those standards off your list when you're using rinsing and repeating activities in your classroom, yeah, and so one thing that I want to add with like where to put these standards?

Speaker 1: 14:35

like so, if you're looking at them and you know you're like, okay, I get it what you're saying, like what does this actually look like in practice? When you're looking at your scope and sequence, you want to have like a little section to put your standards that are being covered within like that timeframe that you're planning for. Pick like three or four anchor standards that are your main standards that you're hitting, and then you're probably going to have substandards within those as well that you just like happen to pick up on some speaking and listening things because of the way in which you're, you know, structuring your lessons or whatever it might be. So, like in our app, in our EB teachers ELA portal, like that's where that aspect of you know we've attached all of the skills to every single unit. Well, when you pull the unit into the software, it auto-populates those skills for you, so you already know like which ones you're hitting. Same thing with our EV teacher planner is the scope and sequence section of the planner. Every month has a little section on the bottom right-hand side, not little, I mean, it's pretty substantial section on the bottom right-hand side that has a place for you to list all of those anchor standards that you're covering. So it's like within each month or within each section that you're planning for. You want to and wherever you're planning it whether it's on a piece of paper that you've printed out like a calendar from the, from online somewhere, or you have an actual teacher planner or whatever it might be you want to make sure that when you have that you know unit for the outsiders I keep going back to that as an example but you have that unit, you have a section within where you're planning that you can write down the standards that you are covering within that unit.

Speaker 1: 16:10

And what's cool is, if you get to a point where, like you're even, you know, more elevated or you want to take this to the next level, is you can have your standards all printed out and as you write them into your scope and sequence, you can put a check mark next to it every time you hit it so you can even see oh my God, I teach reading for literature 8.5, like a thousand times and I never even cover language 2A or whatever the heck it is Right. And so you're just making sure, like am I really actually planning with intention? And nine times out of 10, most of us aren't, and that's okay because we've never been taught how to do it. But now you have a framework, now you have something to actually really go off of in order to be able to effectively do that. This and that's our EB batch planning framework. So next week we're going to be focusing on like our framework within the framework.

Speaker 1: 17:00

So we have our EB batch planning framework, but then we also have like a lesson planning framework within the batch planning framework. Then that lesson planning framework focuses on what we call the into through and beyond, and this is an incredible lesson planning framework that just makes the actual planning of like units themselves so much easier. So we're going from like 30,000 foot view to like bringing it down into like what's actually starting to happen in my classroom on a daily basis. And that's where this into through and beyond kind of approach framework what have you stems from.

Speaker 1: 17:31

So next week on the podcast we're going to be talking about into lessons, and if you've heard this before, doesn't matter, listen again, because just like we rinse and repeat with our students and we spiral review with our students, we need to spiral review, as well as teachers, so that the concepts like really just start to become second nature in our vernacular, in the way in which we teach, in the way in which we plan, et cetera. So we will see you guys next week. On the podcast, we are talking all about setting the stage, crafting, engaging into lessons, and that is the next part of our EB batch planning framework. So thanks so much you guys for joining us today talking all about the standards. Hopefully it wasn't too boring. Thanks everyone. See you next week guys.