• Consider the complex text or texts students will experience and their key elements, figurative language, and literary devices. Make sure the map reflects these aspects of the literature since students can perhaps emulate what they notice and study from authors’ models.
• Additionally, you’ll want to include learning outcomes about the content of the complex text itself if you are teaching it concurrent with students writing their narratives. See table 1.7 (page 27) for an excerpt of a unit pertaining to Charles Dickens’s (1843) A Christmas Carol that focuses on key ideas of the text. The Knowledge column is omitted, but would contain factual and foundational information, such as political, economic, and social factors of the Victorian era, social status and acceptance, moral and ethical values, vocabulary associated with the text, relationships among characters, and so on.
• You might very well incorporate informational text in your unit, so account for this in your map. Even though students examine and produce narratives, there are opportunities for them to read informational text. For example, when they conduct research for a biography or historical fiction piece, they will delve into an array of informational text such as interviews, newspaper articles, or primary source documents.
Sequence and Language
The order of the line items on your map matters so be intentional in your placement of them.
• Organize the line items row by row in an explicit order to show the flow and sequence of how you will teach the unit. If you conduct interdisciplinary lessons, tables 1.5 and 1.6 can prove helpful. In these examples, students acquire and apply information—geography and global climate change, respectively—that they use in their narratives. They will undoubtedly complete assessments in the content areas but will further demonstrate their understanding by creating historical and science fiction narratives.
• Each unit question has a number to reflect a teaching sequence along with associated lesson-guiding questions that are even more specific—lesson 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3. Notice that the lesson-guiding questions, for example those in tables 1.2 (pages 11–17), 1.5 (page 25), 1.6, and 1.7, are situated from less complex to more sophisticated. Once you determine which lesson-guiding questions you will use, sequence and number them to show an order for teaching.
• You can add a final question to pertinent sections to frame learning experiences for students to apply skills they acquire to their own narratives, such as: How do I incorporate allusion into my own story? How can I write using a consistent point of view? What types of figurative language are appropriate for my narrative? Alternatively, consider replacing I with you.
• In table 1.2 (pages 11–17), I write some lesson-guiding questions in third-person point of view. In your unit plans, write them in first, second, third, or a combination. Additionally, choose to use either author or writer, as you wish.
• There are instances in which you may repeat essential understandings and unit-guiding questions throughout the unit. While reading a complex text with several settings, for example, students revisit the question, How do authors create descriptive settings? By critiquing each new setting passage that authors introduce, students gain deeper meaning and invent or revise their own settings to apply what they learn. For this kind of situation, insert similar rows in your unit map to reflect elements or devices that students re-examine.
Remember that your unit map is a work in progress. You are just beginning work on it, and as you read subsequent chapters, you will continue to add to it. At any point, you can always return to it and make changes. If you are collaborating with colleagues and create a Google Doc or a similar online tool for the map, invite anyone to edit it. You can even dedicate collaborative team time or department meeting sessions to discuss and work on this project.
Table 1.5: Interdisciplinary ELA and History Unit Map Excerpt—KUDs and Guiding Questions
* L = Lesson
Table 1.6: Interdisciplinary ELA and Science Unit Map Excerpt—KUDs and Guiding Questions
*L = Lesson
Table 1.7: English Language Arts Map for A Christmas Carol—KUDs and Guiding Questions
*L = Lesson
Summary
By using the backward-design approach as a guide, you have a clear path to planning a rigorous unit. Comprehensively reviewing the content you are to teach and intentionally planning effective learning experiences increase your own professionalism and teaching ability and impact student achievement.
When creating your narrative unit map, you can plan one from scratch using one of two templates. Alternatively, use the completed map available in this chapter and revise and augment it accordingly. Be sure to begin with standards and consider not only English language arts standards—writing, reading, speaking, listening, grammar, and conventions—but also English learner (EL) or English language development (ELD) standards and any subject-specific content-area standards that are part of the unit. Consider approaching your textbook and materials as useful resources that you intentionally access, augment, and revise, as needed, for explicit purposes to address learning outcomes. Of course, be mindful to operate within the dictates of your school or district so you do not deviate from its expectations.
When building your map, first think about how you want to organize the unit to determine the teaching sequence. Will students have an accumulation of notes and paragraph sketches that they produce all throughout the unit to use when they write their first drafts? If so, incorporate lesson-guiding questions at strategic points for students to work on these pieces. For example, end each appropriate collection of lesson-guiding questions with these kinds of queries: How can I use methods of characterization to develop my protagonist and antagonist? Or, What plot structure can I use for my narrative? Another factor to keep in mind is how you will use existing resources, such as the textbook, in the unit. Also ask students to keep a notebook as a reference tool throughout the whole unit and beyond to support and extend their learning.
Moving forward, you will have the opportunity to use what you developed about learning outcomes to guide the culminating writing task and criteria for success. In the next chapter, I present information and examples for you to write this performance task, and the checklist and rubric that accompany it, for instruction and assessment. You will also have a chance to consider preassessment options and plan an appropriate one to implement.
CHAPTER
2
Formulating a Pre- and Culminating Assessment and Establishing Criteria for Success
At this point, you likely read chapter 1, “Building a Narrative Unit Map,” and began or finished identifying what students should know, understand, and be able to do (KUDs) and established guiding questions for a narrative unit. As you continue reading this book, feel free to revise what you have recorded on your map from the