Reflections on Last Year’s Lesson Planning Risks and Changes

I’m writing this mid-July, which means I have about 5-6 weeks of summer left. At this point, I usually start thinking about lesson planning for the upcoming school year with a little less fear and a bit of anticipation. One topic I wanted to talk about before I switch gears into the new school year is reflecting on the changes I made last year. I typically keep things 85% the same and devote the remaining 15% to taking risks or changing units.

Here are some of the changes I made to my school year. In this post, I’ll be reflecting on lesson planning in many of my courses, including AP English Literature, English & Honors English 10, Shakespearean Literature & Journalism. I’m also going to be transparent and reflect on if my changes were good (becoming permanent practice) or poor (meaning I likely won’t try them again).

Poetry Collections Unit – AP English Lit

The only new unit I tried in AP Lit this year was in place of my Poetry III unit. I usually don’t do a lot for Poetry 3, as we’re knee deep into weekly poem analysis by this time, so it’s usually just deep analysis of several difficult poems (such as “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne). We still studied that poem, but I found room to try something new as well. I only had 9 students in AP Lit and they were lovely, a perfect group for trying new things. I took out a bunch of poetry collections and students selected one to read.

We devoted three weeks of independent reading time (30-45 minutes) to reading the poetry collections. I asked that students read the whole book and required 10 dialectical journals on poems from each collection. When finished, each student created a 30 minute lesson on the poet and the collection. They had to teach three poems from the collection, three poems which should be united in theme, topic, or style.

I was blown away by these lessons. It was a fantastic experience to see how much students had grown in their analysis by the fourth quarter, and they were very proud of themselves. Even better, I sat with the students during the lessons and contributed to the discussions like a student. It was so fun to learn among them each week!

Takeaways: I’m definitely keeping this. I also plan to polish it into a TpT resource, so if anyone needs some no-prep materials for doing this in their own classroom it will be coming soon. However, I need more poetry collections. Near the end of student selection, I only had three left, and the last student wasn’t interested in those. She went to the library and found one on her own instead, which was just fine. But I’ve been buying a few more since then so I have a better variety next time.

Shakespeare Final: A project OR a test

My school requires some kind of cumulative final, counting for 15% of the final course grade. My Shakespeare elective, made up of mostly seniors, is always a struggle when it comes time for finals. Senioritis is at an all-time high and getting students to think back on our semester is like pulling teeth. Over the years I’ve tried tests and projects but never see the depth (or the passing rates) I’d like. This year I proposed students could do a project OR a test. They were floored. No one had ever given them such choices! This led to a debate between in class. Many students with test anxiety couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to take a test. And students with senioritis who don’t want to devote any time outside of class on ANYTHING couldn’t understand why someone would want to do a project. Luckily there was something for everyone.

Takeaways: It was a little hard to write a test AND create a project final for my students, but now that I have, I should be able to keep it going with little updates. It was a good change for my students’ well-being, as finals can be very stressful for many.

Nonfiction Boot Camp Unit – English 10

This was a new unit for my sophomores, which needs more exposure to nonfiction. My honors students read nonfiction for independent reading (read more about that below), but my on-level students don’t get much unless they take AP Lang. Knowing this, I created a collection of lessons on different informational texts. Some of things we studied include:

• An in-depth study of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in entirety
• A guided analysis of an excerpt of Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air”
• An exploration of technical writing, including a technical writing project (This was a class favorite!)
• A study of logical fallacies as used in commercials & print ads
• A news-to-print-to-film study of Just Mercy (Also a favorite!)

Takeaways: My sophomores were very engaged and really seemed to love this unit! Even better, I noticed a big improvement in their close reading and analytical skills. I’m keeping this unit and will use it with my Honors section next year as well.

Fall Final Projects – Honors English 10

With my Honors students I usually do a final unit, focused on Identity to close out the semester. However, time got away from us and I moved it to the spring. That left me with just a few days to focus on a final summative assessment. I chose to give students options for their final, but they had to focus on their independent reading nonfiction book from that semester. Options included a book soundtrack, a movie trailer, a book bento, and more.

Takeaways: Interestingly, one of my only negative reviews at the end of the year came from a student who didn’t like having choices for projects. In their words, giving a bunch of options “just comes off lazy.” (Offense taken, as I had to write requirements and rubrics for each of these options.) Other than that outlier, students picked a variety of projects and had fun with the assignment. I will keep the project options but might switch up the units.

Moving Poetry Unit 1 – AP English Lit

For some reason, I was very keen on teaching Frankenstein this year. I found myself hyping it up in September already, even though we wouldn’t likely get to it until November. Since I found I could roll it out the week of Halloween, I decided to go straight from Short Fiction Unit 1 (Unit 1 of the CED) to Long Fiction Unit 1 (Unit 3 of the CED), skipping poetry (Unit 2 of the CED) until later in the semester.

Takeaways: This was a mistake. My students loved Frankenstein for sure, but waiting until November to start poetry made it seem scary and hard. I will definitely be moving poetry further up in the year, possibly even doing it before short fiction.

APE Paragraphs GALORE – Honors & English 10

In an effort to improve our writing and make my sophomores ready for eleventh grade, I assigned a lot more APE paragraphs with them. If you don’t know, APE is my acronym for a strong analytical paragraph. It means Assert-Prove-Explain. We wrote one for every unit, sometimes twice. Did they love it? Absolutely not. But did their writing improve? Yes!

Takeaways: This was a huge success! Not only did they improve in writing paragraphs, I found it became much easier to teach longer papers as we went. My sophomores write two lengthy research papers, a career paper and their position paper. Once they nailed down the APE paragraph, so many realized that every paragraph in a paper is essentially an APE paragraph. It helped them write the paragraph section by section, rather than going on long-winded tangents that I usually see.

Journalism/News Crossover – Journalism

I’ve been teaching our Journalism class for four years now. It started as a class for appreciating journalism, but I’ve been moving it more in the direction of reporting and writing journalism as well. Usually, my students are hesitant about sharing their work with our school community. But this year we were loud and proud, printing weekly newspapers for the school and covering press conferences at State Tournaments. We even paired up with our school’s news team, which focuses on the visual broadcasting side of reporting. My students presented the weekly news segments, then partnered with news kids to co-write articles for the papers.

Takeaways: This was such a fun unit. It seemed like my Journalism students appreciated the exposure from the news, as not everyone knows that we even have a school paper. Furthermore, the news kids appreciated how much work we do to write an article. Many didn’t realize all the steps it takes: interview, write, edit, fact check, edit again, and print! I would recommend trying any cross-curricular opportunity that comes your way!

Nonfiction Novel Circles – Honors English 10

After a semester of independent reading in Honors English 10, some students asked if they could read in book clubs. I already had novel circle materials ready from other classes, so it wasn’t much work to tweak this for nonfiction. We rolled it out at the beginning of semester 2 and students had to work in groups to read their book. We went on a on/off cycle of reading weeks and discussion weeks for the whole spring semester.

Takeaways: Ugh, I hated this. My sophomores pitched that reading the book with friends would make it more fun, but all it did was give many an excuse to skip reading. In most groups it fell to just 1-2 students who were actually reading, filling in the rest of the group who didn’t bother. The discussions were pure summary and I think engagement went even lower than in independent reading. But hey, that’s why we try things! Now I know that literature circles were not a cure to my independent reading woes.  

Conclusion: Trends I see

I see two common trends in this year-end reflection.

1. I repeatedly changed up how I approach summative assessments, especially finals. I’ve slowly moved away from tests, favoring projects, Socratic Seminars, and group activities in all of my classes. I also worked choice into many of these projects, so students look to them as learning opportunities rather than scary exams.
2. I’m struggling with independent reading across the board. Five years ago, I had it worked into all my classes. At this point, I think it will only live in AP English Lit. In my year-end surveys, one student said, “It felt like we never had time for everything.” This was spot on! I was constantly saying, “Well, if we had more time, we’d do this…” Sacrificing one instructional period per week for independent reading was great for giving me time to grade and plan, but I don’t feel students used it well enough to merit the lost time. However, it works in my AP Lit class so I’m keeping it there.

In Conclusion

Writing this reflection took longer than most of my blog posts, but it was so good for my brain! If you haven’t done a year-end reflection on the last school year, I recommend looking back at your plans from last year. Spend some time thinking about what you changed, what worked, and what didn’t. It’s a great way to get your brain ready for back to school, but not too stressful.