As part of my student teaching experience, I designed this PreAP curriculum-aligned unit to teach to tenth-grade students in a suburban high school. Below, I provide the teaching context, daily lesson plans, instructional materials, and assessment plans for the unit. In the context section, I explain how my school’s context, student population, and curriculum expectations factored into my lesson planning process. At the end of each lesson plan, I include a chart that displays the differentiated supports I created for students with special learning needs, which I outlined in the teaching context. The Assessments tab demonstrates how I plan summative and formative assessments in a continuum to promote student mastery. To view a detailed description of how I planned, evaluated, and adjusted this unit’s assessments, visit the assessment page.
School Type: High School
School location: Suburb
Curricula Requirements: The High School English Department at my student teaching site outlines a curriculum for general English, honors English, and Pre-Advanced Placement or Advanced Placement English courses before the school year begins. The department’s objective for the Pre-Advanced Placement curriculum is to help their students acquire the knowledge and exercise the cognitive skills of students who score well on Advanced Placement exams and succeed in college-level courses. My cooperating teacher requires me to design daily lesson plans that align with the focus skills and topics of the College Board’s Moves in Argument and Persuasion in Literature units, which are part of the Pre-AP English 2 course. To ensure my lesson plans meet these focus skills and topics, my cooperating teacher has asked me to follow a calendar that dictates the primary texts, content topics, and pacing of the learning activities I will teach. My cooperating teacher allows me to design the instructional strategies I will use to guide students through the learning activities and present the topic and texts.
About the Course: The year-long course for which I designed this unit is called Pre-Advanced Placement English 10. I teach four sections of this course, each containing between nineteen and twenty-four students. The class runs for 59 minutes on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and 44 minutes on Wednesdays.
How Ability Groups Impact the Course: At each grade level, students at my teaching site may register to take a general, honors, or Pre-AP/AP English course. The Pre-AP English courses are open to all students, but Pre-AP instructors will advise students who struggle to complete the course content to move to the honors or general English courses at the beginning of the year. The school has not flagged any of the students in my class with a limited English proficiency designation. Most of the students who enrolled in the course received an A or B letter grade in Honors English 9 or Pre-AP English 9.
Textbooks & Instructional Programs: The English department designs the curriculum around The Language of Literature, Grade 10 by McDougal Littell (published 2008 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company), Everything’s an Argument by Andrea Lunsford (Bedford Sixth Edition published 2012), and The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne (published 1969 by Berkely)
Learning Resources: The classroom contains two whiteboards and one electronic SMART Board®. I can display the classroom’s computer monitor on a pull-down projector screen. The school provides every student with an iPad and charger. Students may also use the thirty Chromebooks that my cooperating teacher keeps in a cart in the classroom. Students can access course resources and communicate with their peers and teachers through the Schoology learning management software. The students’ grade book, attendance information, and learning needs live on the Infinite Campus learning management software. Often, students will submit their written assignments to the Turnitin.com platform.
Specialized Learning Needs in Instructional Segment:
Students with IEP/504 Plans
Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (IEP) | 1 Student | The student must be seated near the point of instruction for regular classroom activities and may take quizzes and tests in the resource room. The teacher should break projects into manageable steps and extend homework deadlines for the student at least two days past their regular due dates. The student must have access to digital versions of any books or textbooks. The student may type any written work or assignments. |
Vision impairment and concussion issues (504) | 1 Student | The student may take all classes on a pass/fail grading basis. The student receives completed copies of all class notes. The teacher should extend the student’s deadlines for assignments past their regular due date. |
ADHD, Dyslexia, OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome, Disorder of Written Expression (504) | 1 Student | The teacher must not force the student to read text out loud. The teacher should provide the student with extra time to complete assignments and give them completed copies of all notes. All larger projects should be broken into smaller segments for the student. |
Students with Other Learning Needs
Students with high anxiety | 3 students | Upon request, the students will have additional time to complete independent assignments. The instructor will provide the students with a copy of any large-group discussion questions one day before instruction. For group assignments, the teacher will pair the student with the friend they sit next to for attendance. |
Instructional Materials
Guiding Presentation
Original Instruction Plans-… by AshleyMattei on Scribd
Four Corners Activity Worksheet
The Atlantic Essay Four Cor… by AshleyMattei on Scribd
Click on the links to visit each assessment’s page.
Each assessment page contains a description, objective, and analysis of assessment data.
1. Pretest- Rhetoric Challange
2. Formative- Social Worker’s Report
3. Formative- Governor’s Budget Fiasco
4. Summative- The Atlantic Essay Assignment
