ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS RESOURCES

PACING AND PACING GUIDES

District and school-wide planning is important for establishing more in-depth expectations for each grade level as well as for discussing the vertical alignment from course to course. However, that is only an initial step to the teacher developing his or her own plan for the course. Although each teacher might incorporate the same core works into the course, if decided by the district or school department, individual teachers need to decide the depth of exploration for each text and the best works to supplement the students' learning. Classes that read a text first semester should have different experiences with it than those who read it much later in the course.

The integrated and spiraling nature of the NCELASCoS makes a simple linear or goal-based plan (with goals 1 first quarter, 2 and 5 second quarter, etc.) impractical and ineffective. Thus, each teacher should have a plan for accomplishing objectives from state and local guidelines as well as the teacher's own goals. More developed than a syllabus or reading list, the plan can serve as a blueprint for the year's work. Teachers and students benefit from having a well-constructed yearly plan which allocates time according to curriculum priorities, while allowing teachers flexibility for addressing unexpected events or students' changing needs.

Developing quarterly or yearly plans also allows teachers to consider the progression of their instruction through time and emphasize connections between units of instruction. According to Judith Langer, in Guidelines for Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well (2000), effective teachers "work consciously to weave a web of connections within lessons, across lessons, and to students' lives in and out of school." Designing a blueprint for the year, teachers may be more able to see connections among different units or shift units to emphasize connections within the curriculum.

Additionally, the yearly plan aligned with curriculum priorities should help teachers address demands of assessments throughout the year rather than as isolated activities. Students perform better when "test preparation has been integrated into the class time, as part of the ongoing English language arts learning goals." (Langer, 2000) Teachers can develop instructional strategies that enable students to build necessary skills for the assessments through the standards of the curriculum. For example, instead of having students take practice essays once a week based on the writing assessment, teachers can incorporate features from the writing assessment rubric into assignments throughout the year, as students write for different purposes, to different audiences and in different contexts

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