Redkudu

I would think your AP teachers would encourage use of the same novels in
the regular courses, unless a large number of students take both courses--normal
and AP?

It's more a concern for materials, I think, although the Macbeth issue has always puzzled me. If too many students are using the books, the AP kids won't get them when they need them. Although, most of our AP kids will buy their own. This is an odd little quirk of our department I have yet to understand - their rabid refusal to allow certain works to be taught on-level.

• Do you use a lesson plan book?

No. Like you, I type up my own lesson plans. I use the Madeline Hunter 7 step model and modify as needed. I keep them in a binder as well. For absent students, I have a form I fill out and keep in a file cabinet. It´s about half a page of pink paper, and has check boxes of everything we might possibly do in class. I check off what they missed, attach any worksheets, write in page numbers if necessary, and file it under their class period. The students know to go to the file cabinet before they ever come to me. This is also useful if, later, parents or students want to know what´s happened to a student´s grade...I can pull out any and all make-up work that was not collected and illustrate.

• Do you have students keep a notebook or journal? If so, how do you check it?

Some years I have, last year I didn´t. I´m still considering it for this year since I, like you, was inspired by Dana´s post. (Which is here, for anyone reading along at home.) I do like having students able to refer back to things they've written.

• What materials do you expect students to bring to class?

Paper (notebook), pen or pencil, binder, any novel we're reading. I have a class set of dictionaries (oh sure, I can get those, but not textbooks!), and during the year I offer a few extra credit points for kids to bring in highlighters so we have a class set. This year I will add notecards and the smallest size post-it notes to their required supplies.

Continuing on with how I plan:

After I've drawn up my broad, year-long plan, I begin gathering what I call my "supplementals." These are any articles or readings I've run across throughout the year that I might want to use with a unit. I usually find these things online, so I keep them in a bookmarked folder on my computer.

Then I begin identifying my goals for one of the units, after looking at everything I have. I type these into a document in brainstorm fashion. For instance, with the Native American foklore and rhetoric, I began to see a lot of opportunities to teach tone, imagery, simile and irony. I checked all my resources to make sure I had very strong representations of each, and found I did. Therefore, I listed these as my core concepts.

Then I skip to the end, and begin brainstorming just what it is I want students to know/be able to do with these core concepts. For example, with tone (which is a difficult concept for students), I want them to be able to do three things, in order of how I will teach them: 1) if given a tone description (like "playful"), match it to the passage it describes, 2) pick out specific words which help create that tone (adverbs, verbs and adjectives), and 3) describe the tone of a passage using their own words.

I brainstorm what assessments I will use to determine whether students have learned the concept. I have two types of assessments. One is a skills test (2 per 6 weeks), which is brief, and usually only tests knowledge, comprehension, and application (as per Bloom's taxonomy). These assessments allow me to monitor how students are doing in certain areas. For instance, if 50% or more students fail a certain section of this test (say, #2 of the tone objectives above), I know that skill or concept requires review/reteaching. These tests are usually multiple choice, matching, identifying, short answer, fill in the blank, 20-30 questions. My second assessment is the exam. There is 1 of these per 6 weeks. On the exam, students must complete lengthier tasks of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (from Bloom's). On these exams, students will encounter a piece they have not read yet, but which contains all the concepts we've studied. This allows me to see whether they are able to transfer the skills they've learned to anything they may encounter.

Once I have the assessments prepared (keeping in mind my general ideas for what I want to teach), I am able to go and fill in the lessons with the required tasks and activities which will, hopefully, bring the kids up to the level of mastery I'm looking for on the assessments. If necessary, I modify the skills test and exam as I go along.

The final end-product plan I make is for whatever major piece of writing I'll require: persuasive essay, research paper, etc. I solidify this so that I can begin planning useful warm-ups or short writing tasks that the students can then use later in formulating their drafts.

So, basically, I begin at the end with 3 things: skills tests, exams, and writing component. Then I work backward from the "goal" to the individual steps needed to achieve it. I always think of this as working from the macro to the micro.

How do you go about organizing your units?