My Plan for Teaching 2026-2027

My Plan for Teaching 2026-2027

I am thinking about next school year, and I want the whole thing to feel more intentional, more connected, and more manageable. I do not want every unit to feel like a separate island. I want the students to see that the same big ideas keep coming back: courage, power, freedom, choice, language, identity, and what people do when life gets hard.

I think I want to start with Tolkien, then Shakespeare, then Frederick Douglass, and then move into a stronger writing and test-prep focus closer to ILEARN. I still think that order makes sense. The Hobbit is a good beginning-of-the-year text because it gives us adventure, character growth, courage, greed, friendship, and a whole world to enter together. Then Romeo and Juliet can move us into drama, conflict, impulsive decisions, family pressure, and language. Then Frederick Douglass can bring us into nonfiction, rhetoric, freedom, education, power, and resistance.

I am thinking of using a six-day teaching flow.

The students have four days of class and one asynchronous day, and I also have to do IXL one day a week until after Thanksgiving and again until after testing in April. So I think the basic pattern would be:

• Day 1: Hook, background, quote, vocabulary, or big idea
• Day 2: Read, listen, annotate, and discuss
• Day 3: Skill lesson
• Day 4: Apply the skill with writing, discussion, or a text-based response
• Day 5: IXL
• Day 6: Quiz

I like the idea of teaching for several days and then having a quiz on the sixth day. That would also rotate the quiz day, which could help because then the special education teacher could push in for the quiz sometimes instead of the quiz always landing on the same day.

I also want to use quotes from the authors we are studying: Shakespeare, Frederick Douglass, and J. R. R. Tolkien. I like the idea of using a quote from one author while we are studying a different author, so students can see how the ideas connect across texts. For example, I could use a Frederick Douglass quote about reading or freedom while teaching The Hobbit, or a Tolkien quote about courage while teaching Romeo and Juliet. That could help students see that literature is not just a bunch of random books. It is one long conversation.

I am also thinking about poetry. I could use 6th period for poetry, IXL support, writing practice, quote analysis, or extra skill work. I do not think I want 6th period to be only IXL because that sounds like it could get boring and dead very quickly. Instead, I think I want 6th period to be more like an ELA Skills Lab.

In 6th period, I could do:

1. 
   
2. poetry mini-lessons
3. quote of the week
4. short writing practice
5. RACE review
6. test-taking strategies
7. small group help
8. creative ELA activities

Poetry could actually be really useful there because poems are short, but they still let us practice tone, theme, figurative language, word choice, and inference. I could do a Poem of the Week or a short quote-and-poem routine. That sounds more engaging than just saying, “Here is IXL. Go forth and suffer.”

I also need to rethink writing. I do still want to do a big writing push about a month before ILEARN because I think students remember things better when they practice them close to the assessment. However, I do not want writing to feel brand new in March. That would be a mistake. I need to spiral writing all year.

So instead of waiting until spring, each unit should have small writing pieces built into it.

For every unit, I would like students to do:

• One personal connection or personal narrative piece
• One argumentative or opinion response
• One text-based literary paragraph

These do not all have to be giant essays. Some can be short. Some can be discussion posts. Some can be RACE paragraphs. The point is that students keep practicing the same writing muscles all year.

For The Hobbit, students might write about a time they had to do something even though they felt unprepared. They could argue whether Bilbo is brave, lucky, or both. They could write a literary paragraph about how Tolkien shows that courage grows over time.

For Romeo and Juliet, students might write about a time a conflict got bigger than it needed to. They could argue who is most responsible for the tragedy. They could write a paragraph about how Shakespeare shows that impulsive choices can have serious consequences.

For Frederick Douglass, students might write about a time learning something changed how they saw the world. They could argue why education is powerful. They could write a text-based paragraph about how Douglass connects literacy to freedom.

I also want to build in pre-learning before students write. I think this matters, especially in an online class with students who come in with very different background knowledge. Before each unit, I could give students a few big questions, have them choose one, do a little research, and then discuss it in a post.

For The Hobbit, the questions could be about quests, greed, courage, or what makes someone a hero.

For Romeo and Juliet, the questions could be about family conflict, peer pressure, impulsive decisions, or whether teenagers should get to make major life choices.

For Frederick Douglass, the questions could be about education, freedom, power, and why literacy was so threatening to enslavers.

Then, when we get close to ILEARN, I can tighten the writing. That month would not be “now we start writing.” It would be “now we pull together what we have been practicing all year.”

The ILEARN writing focus should include:

• How to read a prompt
• How to plan quickly
• How to write a clear introduction
• How to use evidence
• How to explain evidence
• How to write a conclusion
• How to answer argumentative prompts
• How to answer literary analysis prompts
• How to revise weak writing

Overall, I want the year to feel predictable but not boring. Students should understand the routine: quote, read, skill, respond, IXL, quiz. But the actual work should still feel varied. We can move from hobbits and dragons, to family feuds and tragedy, to freedom and education, to poetry and writing.

The big idea is that I want students to practice reading, thinking, discussing, and writing all year, not in panic bursts. I want the structure to help them feel safe, but I also want the content to stay interesting. I think this plan could work if I keep it simple, repeat the routines, and build writing into every unit instead of saving it all for the end.

Universal Design / How We Read

We read everything aloud together. I do not assume that students can access difficult texts independently just because the text is on the screen. Reading aloud gives every student a way into the work, including students with reading struggles, attention difficulties, language needs, anxiety, or gaps in background knowledge.

My approach is built on Universal Design. I believe all students can learn, but they do not all enter the lesson from the same place or need the same kind of support. So I will use repeated routines, audio support, visuals, discussion, modeling, vocabulary support, chunked reading, and frequent checks for understanding.

The goal is not to make the work easy. The goal is to make the work reachable.

READ ALOUD TOGETHER
We read, listen, pause, explain, and think together.
Everyone gets access to the text.

Universal Design = access for all students
Reading aloud = shared entry point
High support + high expectations
All students can learn