Teach Simplified

TEACH SIMPLIFIED
SESSION 1 Unpacking Common Core and Planning a Unit
(Getting Started) 

By: Edward Lewandowski

Session 1 Unpacking Common Core and Unit Planning (Getting Started)

The first place to get started is to simply start with a search engine like say... Google.
I will use 5th Grade Math as my example for you to work off of.
I know you may be thinking..."I am not teaching 5th grade math, what do I need to do this for?"

This example will show you how to get started with whatever grade and content you will be teaching.
Start by typing in pacing guide for 5th grade math

Once selected you will see of course see a long list of options to choose from.
Let's take the the third one I came to, www.madison-schools.com
In there you will find a pacing guide of all grade levels and they condensed it into meaningful information for the staff.
Mind you, your school or district might already have a preferred pacing guide but I honestly find all of them to have similar attributes so having one to start with is my biggest suggestion.

TIMELINE and PRIORITIZE

Don't let this document scare you.  Look at what is important!  TIMELINE is roughly the first 7-9 weeks of instruction for the grade level in this subject area.

What is most important here is to begin to lump, isolate or highlight what it is you would be doing and what should be most important to learn by priority.  Paying attention to the abbreviations, we have 5.G.3 being the first common core strand listed.
This simply means "5" is grade 5 skill, "G" is for Geometry and "3" just so happens to be the 3rd strand of the group from Common Core.

Great. Now that we have that out of the way, let's simplify this thing.  According to this pacing guide you would have 9 weeks.  I see 11 strands.  This needs to be condensed so it can make sense to you.  

In another pacing guide I use, this Unit is called: Number, Sense and Estimation.  It is 7 weeks long.

I therefore would eliminate the two Geography strands and put them in when you get more into Geometry.  So this brings us down to 9 strands left.  I see a 5.MD.1 in there.  I would take that one out and only feed this one to your very high level thinkers. Your students will be more prepared for this when they get to Measurement and Data later on.
If you read it and think about what is required they are really going to need quite a bit of prior knowledge and a whole lot of understanding of the other strands in this unit before you even tackle the other stuff like "multi-step" and "problem solving" within that strand. 

So congratulations we have narrowed this thing down to 7 strands all saying NBT. So a Numbers in Base Ten Unit it is!
NO!  DO NOT JUST PICK UP THE TEXT BOOK AND START TEACHING!!!
Find the content you need to teach, decide how long, then knowledge will build on itself during the year preparing them for more complex math.  Keep in mind whatever materials you have, they are just resources not guides. 

CREATING LEVELS OF MASTERY OVER THE UNIT
***I take this time to start thinking about levels of mastery they need to achieve and how I can chart their level understanding. 

So as I look over the rest of the strands, I see that NBT.6 and 7 involve the four pillars of math: add, subtract, multiply and divide.  I am now thinking, spend the bulk of those 7-9 weeks on those. Most bang for your buck so to speak!  Do not assume your students already have this base knowledge. Tracking their understanding is easy and can be done quickly in 2-5 math questions each day.

I would lump these two strands together and plan like you see below:

Unit 1 Set 1 Levels of Mastery
Blue Star Skill- I can say, read and write numbers with decimals into the thousandths.  They have talk the talk before they really get into the math.
Green Star Skill- I can add with decimals
Red Star Skill- I can subtract with decimals
Silver Star Skill- I can multiply with decimals
Gold Star Skill- I can divide and solve math questions using all four disciplines to solve real world problems.
(Let's say 4-5 weeks on this area)

Unit 1 Set 2 Levels of Mastery
The rest kind of fall into place after that...
Blue Star Skill (5.NBT.1 and 2)- Multiply with decimals in base ten (teaching exponents)
Green Star Skill- Compare and ordering NBT.3
Red Star Skill- Expanded Form NBT.3
Silver Star Skill- Rounding to any place value NBT.4
Gold Star Skill- Problem Solving and full content mastery
(2-3 weeks)

The rest can be retaught, reviewed, expanded on if you finish early or need more time.  

I go about each unit this way by thinking what is most important to understand, how can I put these together or separate and find their levels of mastery as we go.

This way of thinking does take a little time and creativity but you quickly turned a bunch of fancy jargon into a system of understanding and should begin thinking about how you want to teach it, how students will show their understanding and what materials you can begin to use to do it.
I had my best results a year or so ago with absolutely no curriculum other than a workbook.  I was very resourceful and prescriptive with what materials I used.  

What's up Next?
I am working on a Podcast to accompany this blog.  
Stay tuned and I will start to dive into how I would teach this unit in my day to day operations and how my unit plan is now a simple copy and paste for those ever-dreadful and antiquated lesson plans.

Go find a pacing guide for your subject area and start plotting your course...