CORTNIE BELSER'S MSED PORTFOLIO
Long-Term Planning
To effectively plan for instruction, the long-term plan serves as a synthesizing overview of the vision, goals, and standards that will be addressed throughout the academic year to meet students' rigorous learning goals.
Introduction
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A long-term plan is the initial component of the year-long backwards planning process. Since a long-term plan overviews each unit's standards and learning outcomes throughout the year, teachers are able to identify which standards are addressed consistently across units and which units require focused attention on mastery of other standard skills. In order to meet the rigorous learning goals of each student, a long-term plan offers a comprehensive review of connections across units and call for students and identifies the pre-requisite content and skills students should enter the course with.
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Since the district provides the ELA curriculum, my long-term planning is not strongly teacher driven, but rather allows me to identify how I will spiral learning objectives and scaffold standard skills so that students meet learning goals throughout and across units. Even though I do not generate the learning outcomes and Common Core standards addressed in each unit, through the long-term plan, I am able to foresee how the unit's core text connects to formative assessment, content knowledge, and the Essential Questions students will address. As I transfer relevant details from the curriculum into my long-term plan, I begin considering the potential gaps in content and skills that I must remediate for students. Thus, at the beginning of each unit, I am able to administer a diagnostic assessment to evaluate the prior knowledge and critical thinking students have before, during, and after a unit. For me, the long-term plan serves as a resource reference to mapping the trajectory of each unit.
Grade 8 Long-Term Plan ​
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This long-term plan is aligned to the district's LDC curriculum. Each unit's core text, standards, Essential Questions, and summative assessments are already provided to each ELA instructor. I utilize the curriculum for long-term planning to synthesize the core learning outcomes for students across the year. Rather than building upon each unit towards a broader Essential Question or culminating course task, each unit functions as a standalone unit. However, the long-term plan highlights the connection across content standards and skills to be addressed through spiraling and remediation instruction. As I plan for instruction, the long-term plan ensures learners deepen an understanding of content and cross-disciplinary skills through the instructional strategies used to spiral standard and content skills throughout the unit.
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Since the district offers a comprehensive curriculum that includes a multitude of instructional strategies on how to spiral standard skills, I have not had to adapt much of this resource for my long-term plan. Instead of organizing when and where I will address specific Maryland state standards, the long-term plan breaks down the academic expectations of the course. For me, the long-term planning process focuses on communicating to students and families a narrative of the class vision and goals that reflect the learning outcomes of the course.
This Grade 8 long-term plan serves as a sample of the first step in how I translate curriculum into instruction. Since ELA is a year-long course, the units are separated by quarter and core text. As a class goal is to cultivate not only strong critical readers, and writers, but also speakers, listeners, and thinkers, the long-term plan includes the standard skills aligned across all CCSS domains. Additionally, the red boxes throughout this sample plan highlight Unit 2's learning objective, Essential Questions, and remedial enrichment planning. As the only unit that addresses standards mastery in reading informational text, the long-term plan allows me to backwards plan how I prioritize standards and skills in specific units. Since I only have this unit to focus strongly on deepening students' understanding and analysis of informational texts, this unit is pivotal to plan meticulously to ensure standards are being addressed and mastered. After I transfer curriculum into a long-term plan, I build in my own planning structures through the unit and lesson planning to address how to meet individual students' rigorous learning goals through spiraling, remediation, and differentiation.
Long-Term Plan Calendar ​
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As a strategy to personalize the long-term plan, I constructed a long-term calendar aligned to the district school calendar. Through this planning strategy, I am able to actualize the number of intended instructional time for each unit in relation to the professional development, testing, or holidays that needed to be accounted for. From this calendar, I am able to identify strategic dates to introduce new material or reteach a lesson or skill. Additionally, the long-term calendar serves as a synthesis of the timeline of the course. I utilize a color-coded system to easily identify the weeks and grouping of instructional time that is allotted on a weekly to monthly basis. With the entire long-term plan calendarized, I am able to proceed to the next steps of the planning process with confidence and effective time management.
As I illustrate all instructional responsibilities, including professional development and district-wide testing cycles, my long-term plan calendar offers an additional layer as I plan for instruction. This calendar is printed and accessible in my lesson plan binder in my classroom. As a visual snapshot, the long-term plan calendar supports my planning for instruction as I am able to best pace instructional lessons and activities through this organizational anchor, which allows me to enter each unit with confidence in my backwards planning process.