ELA Unit Planning Guide | Facing History & Ourselves

Search

Give
Sign Up Log In

Search

Give
Sign Up Log In
Collection Coming of Age in a Complex World
Viewing:
Previous Guide Next Guide
Three educators smile while sitting together working.
Guide

ELA Unit Planning Guide

This guide provides the framework and classroom resources to help you design an English Language Arts unit for middle or high school students centered around a book of your choosing.

Subject

  • English & Language Arts

Grade

6–12

Language

English — US

Published

Save
Print

About This Guide

The ELA Unit Planning Guide coaches teachers through the process of applying Facing History’s approach to their unit design process. The guide includes seven sections of interactive learning content, plus classroom-ready resources such as essential questions, journal prompts, and customizable student activities to help teachers build daily lessons within the unit. 

In full, the guide supports the creation of literature units that center students’ identities and experiences as young adults in the world today.

Download the guide, which has everything you need to get started with your unit planning process. You can also use this page to orient you to what you’ll find in the guide.

Cover of ELA Unit Planning Guide.
Get This Resource

ELA Unit Planning Guide

Date of Publication: March 2024

ELA Unit Planning Guide

By signing up for a Facing History account, you can access this and other resources. You'll also be able to save items for later and build collections to support your teaching. It's fast, easy, and free!
Sign Up Already have an account? Log In

Guide & All Materials

By signing up for a Facing History account, you can access this and other resources. You'll also be able to save items for later and build collections to support your teaching. It's fast, easy, and free!
Sign Up Already have an account? Log In

The Unit Planning Guide includes the following sections:

Before You Plan Your Unit

An overview of the guide and how to navigate it to support your planning process. Start here to access the Unit Planning Worksheet and a sample Unit Outline before beginning to plan. 

Go to the Getting Started section of the unit planning guide.

Related Materials

A guided self-reflection to help you consider your identities, your students’ identities, and your own ideas about teaching and learning. 

Go to section 1 of the unit planning guide.

Planning the Unit Structure

A question-driven protocol to support the text selection process, as well as questions to support you as you help students fully engage with the world of the text.

Go to section 2 of the unit planning guide.

A guide to Facing History learning objectives and learning outcomes that can be paired with state and local standards or used on their own to identify enduring areas of understanding, important ideas, and key concepts in the unit.

Go to section 3 of the unit planning guide.

A guide to writing compelling essential questions for a unit that can help students explore the curriculum in greater depth, as well as an activity to help you test drive your essential question. Plus, a bank of essential questions aligned with each of Facing History’s thematic ELA collections.

Go to section 4 of the unit planning guide.

Related Materials

A menu of summative assessment ideas that support you to create an engaging culminating task that is aligned to your learning objectives, outcomes, anchor text, and essential question.

Go to section 5 of the unit planning guide.

Related Materials

Planning the Daily Lessons

Creative ways to incorporate journals into your unit and lesson plans, plus a bank of Facing History journal prompts aligned with each of our thematic ELA collections. 

Go to section 6 of the unit planning guide.

Related Materials

A guide to using Facing History Learning Experiences, which are student centered, classroom-ready activities aligned to our learning objectives and outcomes that you can incorporate into your lesson plans. 

Go to section 7 of the unit planning guide.

Related Materials

Collection-Specific Planning Resources

Here and within the Unit Planning Guide, we offer resources aligned to Facing History’s two ELA collections, Coming of Age in A Complex World and Borders & Belonging.

These resources support a unit and anchor text that center around the theme of coming of age. You might also consider using other resources from our Coming of Age in a Complex World ELA collection within your course.

Related Materials

These resources support a unit and anchor text that center around the themes of borders and belonging. You might also consider using other resources from our Borders & Belonging ELA collection within your course.

Related Materials

Contact us