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Unit & Lesson Planning Guide

A guide for teachers to maximize learning outcomes

So you need to create a unit plan...

Before you dive into activity planning, start with what you want students to learn, and work backwards from there.

Backward design is student-centered and starts with the end objective in mind (Davies, 2024). It is the most effective way to build impactful units and lessons because:

It puts the learning goal front and center - what do you want students to know and be able to do?
First, start by defining specific learning objectives (aligned to standards) and what success for students will look like.
Next, design assessments based on those objectives - what type of assessment(s) will demonstrate that students have learned what you wanted them to learn? Which formative assessments will lead up to the summative?
Determine how many lessons this will unit consist of, and how will each lesson move students toward mastery?
Then, design individual lessons within the unit with activities and materials that will help students learn and practice the skills needed to succeed in the assessment(s).

Unit Planning: Beyond the single lesson...

Each lesson that you plan should be created with the big picture in mind. Consider where each lesson lives in the context of learning segments (units) and the curriculum as a whole.

Unit Planning: A single unit should be comprised of 3-5 sequential lessons, each of which can be taught in a single class period.
Unit Cohesion: A single unit should focus on the same (or related) objectives so that lessons within a unit can work together to support targeted learning.
Learning Objectives: What will students already know or need to know before this unit? How does this fit into the sequencing of skills that students should master at your grade-level, factoring in the grades before and after it?
Standards: Have you taught this standard yet? How will you meet this standard by building off of what students already know and by determining what the next level of learning growth around this standard is?

Each lesson should build off of what was taught in previous lessons, scaffolding skills and moving students toward mastery.

5 simple tips for lesson planning...

If you get bogged down or off track, keep coming back to these simple principles:

Keep it simple - one lesson plan should only seek to teach one or a few related objectives. Don't spread your goals too thin or too broad! (Remember: a single lesson plan is meant to be taught in a single class period.)
Keep it aligned - make sure the objectives are clearly aligned with the standards you need to teach.
Keep it measurable - make sure that the learning objectives can be and are measured by your assessments.
Keep it aligned (again) - make sure that the activities you include direct support students in learning the skills they will be assessed on.
Keep it engaging - make sure every student has equitable access to lesson materials, differentiated means of processing and demonstrating their knowledge, and social-emotional supports that are built into your lesson plans and classroom management strategies.

Theoretical support for lesson planning...

Here are some helpful theories to support effective lesson sequencing:

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): Watch the video above for a quick overview on Lev Vygotsky's influential theory of learning and development (687moo, 2014).

Gradual Release Method: Using the "Gradual Release Method" promotes scaffolded lessons with activities sequenced in the following way: "I Do" - teacher-led instruction; "We Do" - guided group practice; "They Do" - partnered or small group work, then "You Do" - independent practice (TeachThought Staff, 2024).

Cognitivism: Lessons should facilitate transfer of knowledge from students’ funds of knowledge, mapping what they already know onto new schema (new frameworks or contexts for applying previous learning). According to Ertmer and Newby (2013), “When a learner understands how to apply knowledge in different contexts, then transfer has occurred” (p. 52). Connecting concepts across various contexts and across the curriculum enhances relevancy and deeper learning.

Spiraled Curriculum: In Bruner’s (1977) spiral curriculum model, the same concepts are taught in a series of lessons that repeat a similar learning cycle with gradual increases in complexity. When students apply the same concepts, vocabulary, or skills from previous lessons in new contexts, connections are made, higher levels of thinking are achieved, and more lasting learning occurs.

Supporting Metacognition: Design lessons that encourage students to be conscious of and reflective about their learning process. Education scholar Royce Sadler advocates for clear learning objectives and success criteria that are presented explicitly to students so that they “understand where they are going and what good outcomes look like” (Dyer, 2018). Begin and end lessons with explicitly stated learning objectives and success criteria: By the end of this lesson, you will be able to [measurable objective] . . . Success criteria: "I can..." [learning objective].