Teaching English - Planning

Especially for Teachers - Teaching English

Planning

Essential elements of planning
Whole school planning
Selecting topics
Organising content
Planning frameworks
How to plan a unit
Links to units on this site
Continuity and Cumulative Literacy Learning
For more information

Teachers have become far more focused in their teaching and learning programs in recent years. Beliefs in constructivist views of learning, knowledge of Brian Cambourne's Conditions of Learning and requirements to report upon specific outcomes have encouraged teachers to become more intentional in their planning and more explicit in their teaching.

Much has been written about planning in recent years. Many units for students from kindergarten to year 12 have been developed, trialled and published. Most have focused upon integrating some of learning areas to provide meaningful connections for student learning. While integration is not the focus of this section, the methods developed for integrated units are useful for all teachers' planning.

Many frameworks have been developed to reflect the emphases of teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning. Some teachers prefer to use only one method of planning, while others modify proformas to suit particular purposes.

Essential elements of planning include:

engaging students
refining student's questions, ideas and teacher's intentions
extending students' ideas
reflecting on what we have learned

Robert Phillips and Richard Romaszko (1994) developed a Planning Guide which has been used widely throughout Tasmania. The circular model reflects the continuous spiral of life long learning:

Teaching & Learning Planning Guide diagram

They ask teachers to consider these questions when developing key ideas for units:

TEACHER'S EDUCATIONAL INTENTIONS	TEACHER'S PEDAGOGICAL INTENTIONS
What key ideas/concepts do I wish students to develop? What information do I need to help me clarify these key ideas? What skills / processes / techniques / procedures do I want students to develop / practise / consolidate? Which focus / unit topic will help me to provide a context meaningful to my students?	How will I introduce this area to students? How will I find out what their existing ideas are? Which ways of working together will I introduce? How can I cater for all learning styles? Have I incorporated a range of learning approaches? How will I form students into groups? (Adapted from the 1994 version.)

For further details see planning frameworks below.

Whole School Planning

Kath Murdoch and David Hornsby suggest that

while some of the best teaching arises from spontaneous moments or events in the classroom, these...are most effective within the context of a well-planned, long-term framework.

They outline purposes and principles for effective planning on pages 26 and 27 of Planning Curriculum Connections (1998). These are important considerations for all English teachers and coordinators:

Planning for individual classes is more effective when it is informed by a whole-school plan and a set of shared beliefs about teaching and learning.
Externally produced curriculum documents are useful to guide and inform planning, but ultimately planning must respond to the needs of the students within each school.
Effective planning is a shared enterprise involving teachers, students, parents and the community. � Whole school planning provides a sequential and balanced set of learning experiences for students and avoids unnecessary repetition.
Long term planning creates greater balance, richer learning opportunities, better use of resources and, Murdoch and Hornsby also suggest, sanity!
Team planning increases creativity, rigor and enrichment.
Collaborative planning provides support for new teachers or those with little experience of English teaching.
Planning takes time. Blocks of sustained time are needed for developing units collaboratively.
Planning is informed by and evaluated against the knowledge of individual students' interests, needs and learning preferences.
Educational purposes are revisited regularly. Ask: Why am I doing this?
The planning process is facilitated by the use of record keeping guides, proformas and checklists and the development of a framework of outcomes.
Teachers are able to plan for the systematic accumulation of resources because they know the areas that will be required in the future.

Selecting topics

The kinds of topics chosen depend upon the teaching situation. Teachers who work in primary or in middle school settings have greater flexibility in programming and have opportunities to integrate learning areas. Other teachers might find their options for units of work are restricted by the constraints of working with students for short periods of time or the requirements set by particular syllabuses.

Reasons for selecting topics

Topics develop from a wide range of sources and for a wide range of reasons such as:

Students and teacher negotiate to find a topic that interests most class members. A jigsaw cooperative learning strategy could be followed by a class meeting.
A teacher chooses a topic as a context in which to improve particular skills or aspects of learning processes.
A teacher decides to have students consider an issue which relates to a perceived concern or problem e.g. If a teacher observes a bullying problem within the class, he /she might set up a unit based on contemporary picture books which deal with the issue of relationships between peers.
The scope and sequence developed by the school might decide the major focuses for students in each year.

Practical considerations for selecting topics

Additional factors impact upon the decision-making process. These include:

links to other units across the scope and sequence of the school program
the availability of resources
the accessibility of planned events such as excursions, field trips, visiting speakers
local or world events e.g. the Olympics, local environmental issues
(See Murdoch and Hornsby)

Organising content of the English learning program

There are several ways of organising the content of English programs. Most teachers incorporate a variety of approaches according to the ages, abilities, needs and interests of their students. They plan:

for the development of skills and language processes across all of the language modes
for students to engage in the key learning processes
ongoing learning activities
particular learning sequences or units of work

The development of skills and language processes

Teachers plan for the explicit teaching of skills and strategies for reading and viewing, listening and speaking, and writing, including spelling. While the contexts for these activities are embedded within units, a sequential developmental program is planned for.

Key learning processes

Another aspect of the planning process is the extent to which each of the learning processes is included in each teaching and learning segment. Students become active, responsible learners able to interact with others as they develop increasing competence in the processes of:

Ongoing learning activities

As students progress through our educational system, they are encouraged to become life-long learners. Aspects of English (often integrated into specific units) address individual needs and develop the autonomy that students need to become successful language users.

These involve opportunities for students to engage in:

an individual reading program
a personal writing program
strategies for spelling and language use
activities that develop confidence in speaking and listening
reflective thinking
activities that develop skills in organising and managing work, study and time
activities that develop research skills
the selection and use of appropriate technology
cooperative learning activities

(Adapted from the TASSAB 11B English syllabus)

Units

The planning for contexts in which students learn might be based primarily on the selection of particular texts or aspects of language. Or, they might be based upon a significant issue or aspect of life experience that teachers and students consider is both appropriate and important to explore.

The possibilities are many and varied. Contexts should be selected because of their connections with the needs, interests and learning preferences of the group of students for whom they are designed. They should also link to the school's scope and sequence of English teaching.

In planning a year's course, teachers create a balance from all of the areas of experience:

The kinds of experience that students draw on in using language include their experience of literature, mass media and every day texts as well as their own life experience
(From the TASSAB 10 EN417/416/415 B English syllabuses (1998)

Ideas for units are located elsewhere on this site:

Planning frameworks

All of the recent planning models incorporate the essential elements of engaging, refining, extending and reflecting on learning. Much has been written about the benefits of organising learning into integrated units and similar benefits might be gained by organising English units of work in a structured, sequenced manner.

Pigdon and Woolley in their book, The Big Picture (1992), developed a planning model which is particularly suited to English units because it has a shared experience as its central learning activity. Shared spoken written or visual texts also form the basis of many English units. It has become apparent after trialling the model, that several sections that were presented as separate ones in the original concept work best if they are embedded within other sections.

THE BIG PICTURE
(1992)
THE FOCUS
LEARNING INTENTIONS
TUNING IN
SHARED EXPERIENCE
SORTING THE SHARED EXPERIENCE
RELATED EXPERIENCES
SORTING THE RELATED EXPERIENCES
VALUES CLARIFICATION
REFLECTION & ACTION
RECORD KEEPING & EVALUATION

Julie Hamston and Kath Murdoch (1996) developed an inquiry approach to learning. Teaching and learning are viewed as a joint venture where teachers and students engage in shared investigations.

INTEGRATING SOCIALLY
(1996)
TUNING IN
PREPARING TO FIND OUT
FINDING OUT
SORTING OUT
GOING FURTHER
MAKING CONNECTIONS
TAKING ACTION

Julia Atkins' work on the nature of learning and understanding learning styles in Learning by Design (1996) produced a planning proforma similar to Bob Phillips' Planning Guide.

Rational, fact, information, theory based view. Clarifying, establishing theories, procedures, rules...	Conceptual, 'big picture, metaphorical view. 'What if...?', design, connect, explore...
Structured, ordered, detailed, safekeeping view. Planning, gathering information, 'doing', applying, following rules, practising...	Interpersonal, emotional, 'people' view. Sharing, discussing, experiencing, expressing...

The TASSAB Creative Writing syllabuses published a framework to support the planning of units.

CREATIVE WRITING 9/10 EN261/260 B
(1996)
ORGANISING IDEA
TEXT TYPES AND FORMATS
LANGUAGE PROCESSES
TEACHING POINTS
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
REFLECTION

Kath Murdoch's recent work (1998) includes a section entitled Making Conclusions. This seems a logical and helpful addition.

CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS
(1998)
Explains strategies for
TUNING IN
FINDING OUT
SORTING OUT
GOING FURTHER
MAKING CONCLUSIONS
TAKING ACTION
SHARING, DISCUSSION & REFLECTION

The choice of framework is a personal one. Teachers use and adapt the elements to suit the particular content and type of unit, the purpose and the situation. Nevertheless, each section mentioned in the diagram shown below should be considered by teachers of all classes across all sectors.

Some of the elements are best embedded within other sections of work rather than presented in isolation to students. Activities that ask students to clarify their attitudes and values, for instance, often occur during the Tuning In or Sorting Out sections.

ELEMENTS OF PLANNING

THE FOCUS
This should be rich in context and add to the students' understandings.

LEARNING INTENTIONS
Use generalised statements of the learning outcomes the students might gain from the work.

ENGAGING or TUNING IN
Activities aimed at finding out what students know already, capturing their interest, and generating students' own questions, predictions and statements.

REFINING or FINDING OUT
Activities which allow students to access experiences and resources that will provide them with new information.

SHARED EXPERIENCE
A planned activity in which the whole class participates.

SORTING OUT
Provide opportunities for students to interpret and develop their understandings. Cater for individual choice, different learning outcomes, and varied ways of student response. Review and modify students' predictions, statements and questions.

EXTENDING or RELATED EXPERIENCES
Students negotiate individual, group or class areas of interest to challenge and extend the knowledge base.

MAKING CONCLUSIONS
Assist students to make conclusions and generalisations about the topic. Assess and demonstrate students' progress towards the planned understandings, skills and values throughout the unit.

VALUES CLARIFICATION
Look at ideas from different perspectives to clarify students' own attitudes and values. Accept that meanings are different for different people. Provide opportunities for people's feelings to be recognised, articulated, recorded and valued.

REFLECTING
Students devise ways to monitor and evaluate the success of their learning.

TAKING ACTION
Students consider what could be done about the situations they have encountered during the learning process

RECORD KEEPING
Use the statements generated throughout the unit as part of this. Students keep concrete records of their achievements.

EVALUATION
Students and teacher reflect upon the learning outcomes. Plan future learning.

When teachers use a framework for planning, they find that units become explicit and intentional and students' work is focused upon known learning outcomes. Planning prevents teachers from presenting a thematic approach to students. While themes might include interesting, imaginative activities, the conceptual framework is often contrived and superficially based on apparent rather than real similarities. (Jenni Connor DECCD 1996.)

How to plan a unit

This chart has been designed to unpack the ideas behind each planning element and at the same time show teachers some of the possible strategies that might be used. It draws upon the works of Hamston and Murdoch (1996), Murdoch (1998), Murdoch and Hornsby (1998) and Pigdon and Woolley. (1992).

It might assist teachers to explore ways of developing units which share the intentions, processes and outcomes with students and help them to gain ownership over their own learning.

ELEMENTS OF PLANNING
THE FOCUS
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Why is this worthwhile learning for this class? Have I chosen a topic which provides rich concepts for students learning? Has this focus been taught to these students before? Is the focus one which is part of a future syllabus? Have I considered the interests, needs and abilities of my students? Are there sufficient resources available?	Our goal is to take students beyond their current understandings of the world. Sometimes it is necessary to choose a focus that is not chosen by the students. Students can't express interest in things they don't know about. Once the unit has begun, students' questions can refine planning.	A teaching strategy describes teaching procedures, learning experiences and activities for students. The term strategy also suggests a thoughtful, planned process designed to achieve a desired, meaningful outcome. (Murdoch 1998) Teachers have used the negotiation process to provide the focus for units in English.
LEARNING INTENTIONS
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Which concepts/ideas /issues do I intend students to explore? Which skills/processes do I intend students to develop? � Which learning outcomes will I focus on? Have I negotiated the learning intentions with the students? Have I made the intentions clear to the students?	Share learning intentions with students. Write them on class charts so that students know what work is required. Use student friendly language rather than educational terms or jargon. Keep the learning intentions manageable. If the context is a rich one, there is a temptation to include many issues, techniques or skills. Focus on a narrow area of specific outcomes rather than broad general ones.	Combinations of: individual brainstorm jigsaw class meeting consensus 1-3-6
ENGAGING or TUNING IN
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
How can I match my curriculum intentions with the students' capabilities? What do students know already and how will I find out? What do they want to know about this topic?	This section allows students to share their personal experience about the topic. It can reveal individual and group misconceptions, attitudes. beliefs and values that might be different from the ideas held by the teacher or other groups within the class. It can be used to develop a class list of shared understandings about the topic which will develop as the unit progresses	The teacher's role is to stimulate, observe, listen, analyse and record. To reveal students understandings use writing, mind maps, value lines, bundling,* discussion groups, finish the sentence,* graffiti sheets, think-pair-share Have students generate their own questions through brainstorming, paired interviews, post a question* Have students visualise, predict, make statements and observations * See Murdoch's Classroom Connections for further details.
REFINING or FINDING OUT
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
How can I give students opportunities to access information in a range of ways and from a range of sources? How can I challenge students' prior knowledge, beliefs and values? Which activities will students undertake as individuals, small groups or as a whole class?	Students are taught to apply specific skills to gather and record data. The selection and management of the texts and resources provide the keys to increasing students' understandings. This section leads into the shared experience section	Activities include: invite an expert engage with a CD ROM have an excursion conduct an experiment watch a play, film, video, TV conduct a survey write letters read newspapers, magazines read picture books, novels, poems view paintings, photos, drawings access the Internet
SHARED EXPERIENCE
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Which texts shall I use as sources for our shared experiences What strategies and processes am I going to use in conjunction with the shared text? Have I considered the relationship between text and task: - Match a familiar text with a new or difficult task. - Match a familiar task with a new or difficult text.	Shared experiences: build a sense of classroom community. provide new information which might answer some of the students' earlier questions. provide common reference points for the discussion and understanding of ideas, issues, processes and skills. provide opportunities for the interaction between individuals that is often critical to interpreting and processing information. help students make sense of further activities and experiences that have been planned for them. give students opportunities to construct concepts and understandings that we, as adults, take for granted	See Finding Out for a list of activities. The teacher's role is to challenge and extend student understandings Ask key questions Have students observe particular processes, structures and features or sequences of events Demonstrate, model and explain to link new experiences with previous predictions and questions.
SORTING THE SHARED EXPERIENCE
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
In which order am I going to do things? What do I have to explicitly teach them to do and what can they do independently? Which activities will we do as a class focus and which ones will students choose to do? In what ways will I allow for a range of different activities, groups and outcomes? In what ways can I provide opportunities for students to explore attitudes, values and feelings? Do I involve specialist teachers - art, music, technology - to work with small groups or the class as a whole?	Plan activities that allow students to: talk and think about the shared experience interpret and organise the information they have gathered explore some of the feelings, values and attitudes associated with the topic represent and test their developing understandings. Consider which ways of sorting information are appropriate for the unit and the students in the class. Cater for difference using: a range of grouping strategies to suit various tasks a variety of ways for students to express their ideas different choices of activities different outcomes for students See also Values Clarification section	Provide ways for students to sort information through - expressing ideas visually in art and construction work. - drama, role play, movement and dance. - mathematical processing of information, which involves estimating, hypothesising, justifying, describing and explaining. Patterns and relationships are shown using graphs, tables or diagrams. - written language including reports, explanations, arguments, recipes descriptions, instructions, diaries recounts, directions, manuals, reviews, stories, charts, poems, letters, scripts, banners, etc, etc. The list of possibilities is huge. � Set up learning centres
RELATED EXPERIENCES
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
In what directions might I extend the unit to build upon our shared understandings? What opportunities will I provide for students to take an individual, pair or small group focus on the topic and explore it further?	Review initial questions, predictions and understandings For some students this section provides opportunities to revisit texts and experiences which have not been sufficiently understood	The use of individual or small group contracts Learning centres Jigsaws Concept maps
SORTING OUT RELATED EXPERIENCES As for sorting the shared experience.
MAKING CONCLUSIONS
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
How will I know what they have learnt? How will they know what they have learnt? Have they gone beyond the activities to think about what they now understand? Which strategies can I find for them to transfer their new knowledge into another context?	Refocus on the big ideas that have underpinned the unit. Revisit the predictions, questions and generalisations that have developed during the unit Help students to establish connections, and identify patterns and relationships.	Making board games to teach others something about the topic. * Bloom's box* Concept maps* Consensus 1-3-6 Effects wheels* Value lines PMI Venn diagrams Word grid * See Murdoch (1998) for further details.
VALUES CLARIFICATION
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Have I made time for us all to talk about our feelings and those of others? Have I made sure that everyone's feelings are valued? Have I made time for students to consider the ideas from other perspectives? Have I provided opportunities for students to reflect, reconsider and perhaps change their opinions?	See also Sorting Out and Reflection. Students consider the social and cultural implications of issues. Opportunities are provided for students to view ideas from positions other than their own. E.g. multicultural, gender, global, Aboriginal perspectives Students clarify their own attitudes and values through exposure to and discussion of a range of beliefs held by different people.. See also CRITICAL LITERACY	Group and class discussion of issues Value lines Value corners - Academic controversy Six thinking hats Role play Whose View is that? Deconstructing and reconstructing texts
REFLECTION
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Am I providing opportunities for students to realise and recognise their learning progress along the way? Have I included a variety of ways for self assessment? Have the students reached their individual learning goals?	See also Values Clarification and Making Conclusions. Revisit the learning intentions and students' predictions, questions and statements. Students are helped to synthesise the cognitive and social aspects of their learning. Ask: What have I learned? How do I feel about what I have learned? How have my ideas changed? Why have my ideas changed? Where do I go from here? What did I learn from working with others? What did I learn about working with others?	Group and class discussions Class diary* Learning journals ( may be structured in a variety of ways. To maintain student interest vary approaches: Graphic organisers Concept maps Charts Photo journals
TAKING ACTION
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Are there possibilities for action built into this topic? Will students form strong opinions about the topic? Do you think they will want to take some action? Is it appropriate for them to take some kind of action - as individuals, as small groups, as a class? Will they see a real outcome from their action?	This section develops links between home, school and the wider community and encourages students to consider ways in which they can make a difference. Ask: What are we concerned about? Why are we concerned? What do we think needs to be done? What jobs need to be done and who will do them? What resources will we need? Who do we talk to? Do we need permission? What difficulties might arise? What can we do to prevent these? How will we know whether our action has been effective?	Writing letters to newspapers and people with the power to make change Create an advertising campaign around the school* Exhibit work to inform others in the school or local community Develop an action plan to implement and maintain changes* Make a personal pledge* Work with the student representative council to raise and discuss changes
RECORD KEEPING
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Which items will be useful for students' records of development? Which records will the students organise and keep for themselves? Which records will I need to keep track of? What is compulsory and what is negotiable?	Students collect concrete records of their learning. These act as reference points for later questions, comparisons or for synthesising ideas.	Records include individual, class and group files & lists charts, tables & graphs mind & concept maps statements of generalisation summaries & answers to questions writing samples & portfolios tape recordings photo journals & videos
EVALUATION
Questions to ask while planning	Comments	Strategies to use with students
Did I cater for a range of thinking or learning styles? Did my questions encourage a range of responses? Did everyone have opportunities to experience success? Did my resources provide sufficient clarification of issues and values? Did my resources demonstrate sufficient diversity, points of view and perspectives? Did I make the purposes of the activities clear to the students? Did I allow time for student talk? Did I encourage risk taking and exploration of ideas? Did I provide time for student reflection and self assessment?	Evaluation is an ongoing and integral part of the planning process. Evaluation of teaching strategies and use of resources. Invite colleagues, students, parents to assist in this process. Evaluation of the students' development according to specific learning outcomes: Profile outcomes TLOs & KINOs TASSAB criteria School criteria & check lists Capabilities Social skills Evaluation informs future planning. It enables teachers to: reconsider aspects of the unit decide upon appropriate feedback for students choose future contexts, learning processes, skill development and social outcomes.	Methods selected will depend upon the purposes of the activities, the nature and content of the shared understandings. They include: observation & anecdotal notes files of student work student self & peer assessment journals products & performances check lists & conferences

Examples of teaching units

Tasmanian teachers have adapted the planning elements and frameworks to create units to suit the available time, resources and the abilities, needs and interests of their students. It is interesting to note that most teachers modify published units and even ones they have written previously to cater for the composition of their current classes. Below are links to some of the units that can be found on this site:

Charisma or Conformity?
- a study of the film Dead Poet's Society designed with grade 10 students in mind.

Continuity and Cumulative Literacy Learning

For more information

For details of reference texts cited, look in Book and Software Information.

		The url for this page is http://wwwfp.education.tas.gov.au/english/planning.htm Authorised by: Executive Director (Curriculum Standards and Support) Produced by: Department of Education, Tasmania, School Education Division Queries: eCentre.Help@education.tas.gov.au Modified: 11/09/2007 � and disclaimer For other Tasmanian Government information, please visit the Service Tasmania website.