Planning Your First Units

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Why it works

In the thick of a first year, new teachers often plan the way survival demands: one lesson at a time, tonight for tomorrow, each day its own scramble. It gets them through, but it has a hidden cost, because teaching planned only day to day tends to become a string of disconnected activities that do not add up to coherent learning. Students experience a sequence of things that happen rather than a journey toward understanding, review and assessment are tacked on rather than built in, and the teacher has no map, so they cannot pace, cannot see what is essential versus incidental, and discover too late that they are behind or that a key idea was never properly developed. Learning to plan at the unit level, a stretch of related lessons that together teach something whole, is one of the highest-leverage planning skills a new teacher can build, and it is very learnable. The core idea is to plan the unit before the daily lessons, from its end backward: first name where the unit is headed and what students should understand and be able to do by the finish (the few essential things, not everything the chapter touches); then decide how students will show they got there (the assessment or product, planned up front rather than improvised at the end); and only then sketch the sequence of lessons that will move students from where they start to that end. With that map in hand, daily planning becomes faster and better, because each lesson has a clear job in a larger arc, the teacher can pace across the whole unit rather than guessing, review and practice are distributed deliberately, and nothing essential gets skipped. For a new teacher, unit planning also reduces stress: the nightly scramble eases because the big decisions are already made, and the sense of being lost in the day-to-day lifts when there is a map. A few practical supports help: starting from the standards or curriculum the unit must address, leaning on existing unit plans and colleagues rather than building from scratch, keeping the essential learning to a manageable few, and treating the plan as a flexible guide to adjust, not a rigid script. The workshop helps new teachers take a real upcoming unit and plan it as a coherent whole, end first, so their teaching stops being a string of days and starts being a journey that adds up.

The research: New-teacher induction practice; backward design and unit planning.

The run-of-show

Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.

The core activity: plan a real unit as a coherent whole

The heart of the session is taking an upcoming unit and planning it end first, so the daily lessons add up.

Plan the unit before the daily lessons, from its end backward, so the days form a journey rather than a string of activities.
Name where the unit is headed: the few essential things students must understand and be able to do, not everything the chapter touches.
Decide how students will show they got there, planning the assessment or product up front rather than improvising it at the end.
Sketch the lesson sequence that moves students to that end, leaning on existing unit plans and colleagues, and treat the plan as a flexible guide.

Plan the unit, not just tomorrowDay-to-day planning survives the year but scatters the learning. Plan the unit end-first, naming the few essentials and the evidence, and daily planning gets faster and the days finally add up to something whole.

Facilitator notes

Day-to-day planning is survival, not a plan; name the cost so new teachers see why the unit level matters.
Keep the essentials to a manageable few; a unit aimed at everything develops nothing.
Lean on existing unit plans and colleagues; new teachers need not build units from scratch, and should not try to.

A map reduces the nightly scrambleUnit planning eases stress, because the big decisions are made once, and daily planning becomes placing each lesson in a clear arc rather than inventing from nothing each night.

Adapt it

Elementary: plan a unit around a few essential understandings and a clear end product students build toward.
Secondary: plan from the standards and the end assessment, then sequence lessons across the unit to reach it.
Any setting: start from existing unit plans and a colleague's map rather than building from scratch.

Participant handout

One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.

K12 Academics · Professional Learning

Planning Your First Units: end first, then the days

Plan the unit before the lessons: name where it is headed and its few essentials, decide the evidence, then sketch the lesson sequence.

My upcoming unit and where it is headed:
The few essential things students must learn:
How students will show they got there (assessment or product):
The lesson sequence that moves students to that end:
Existing plans and colleagues I will lean on:

Make it stick

Unit planning makes the days add up. Close by setting the follow-up:

Name a check-in: did planning the unit make daily planning faster and the days more coherent?
Bring one unit you planned end-first and how it taught.
Keep planning at the unit level; the nightly scramble is the sign you have slipped back to day-to-day.

Common questions

I can barely plan tomorrow. How can I plan a whole unit?

It feels like more work and is actually less over the stretch of the unit, which is the key reassurance for a new teacher. Day-to-day planning means reinventing from scratch every night with no map, which is both stressful and slow; planning the unit once, naming its end, its few essentials, and the evidence, makes the big decisions a single time, after which each daily lesson is a matter of placing it in a clear arc rather than inventing it whole. You also do not have to build the unit from nothing: lean heavily on existing unit plans, your curriculum, and colleagues, adapting rather than creating. The upfront investment of planning the unit pays itself back many times over in faster, calmer daily planning and in teaching that actually adds up.

How is unit planning different from just listing the lessons I'll teach?

A list of lessons is a sequence of activities; a unit plan is organized around where the learning is headed and works backward from there. The crucial difference is order and purpose: unit planning starts by naming the few essential things students must understand and be able to do by the end, and how they will show it, and only then sketches the lessons that will get them there, so every lesson has a clear job in a larger arc. A mere list of lessons can march through content without any of it adding up, with assessment tacked on and no way to tell what is essential. Unit planning gives the stretch of teaching a destination and a map, which is exactly what turns disconnected days into coherent, cumulative learning.

What if I have to follow a pacing guide or set curriculum?

That makes unit planning easier, not unnecessary, because the guide or curriculum gives you the end and the content, and your planning work is to turn that into coherent teaching. Even with a set curriculum, you still decide what the few essential understandings are, how students will show they reached them, and how the lessons build toward that end, and doing this deliberately is what prevents the all-too-common experience of following a pacing guide day by day while the learning still fails to cohere. Start from what the curriculum requires, lean on any unit plans it provides, and then do the thinking that makes the unit hold together for your students, rather than treating the guide as a substitute for planning the arc of learning yourself.