1. Write down some things students should be able to do at the end of the unit--the important stuff.  You want to think very clearly about what you want students to be able to do at the end of a unit.  Do you want them to appreciate the unique narrative voice in Catcher in the Rye?  Do you want them to be able to discuss, in a thesis driven essay, how Holden is, or isn't, the typical adolescent?  What do you want your students to get out of your instruction?
2. Write a brief, one to two paragraph introductions, to your unit.  This helps in a number of ways.  It helps you think through why you want to do things and acts as a sort of statement of purpose.  This is also something you can show to your department chair, your principal, and parents of your kids if they have questions about what you're doing.
3. Plot out the time period that you're going to need, paying attention to the pace of reading, writing, and discussion.  You probably want to think about taking fifteen days, if not more, to get through a 200 page book with most students grade 9-12, particularly those who are not in the AP track.  Of course this varies enormously from school to school, class to class, and child to child, but 15-20 pages of reading a night is a good rule of thumb until you figure out (from your cooperating teacher or your students) what pace your students can read at.  Also, make sure that you, in the outline of sorts, think about the activities that you want your students to do in class.  They will often need time in class to read, write, and (certainly) to discuss.  Make sure that you fold all of these activities into your unit plan at some point.
4. Think about connections between lessons.  This is a crucial thing to consider.  You want to have lessons build on each other.  You want to try to have the writing that students do in one class carry over into the next.  Ultimately, you want to start off a unit (or even a year) with fairly straightforward tasks and move towards tasks of increasing complexity.  You want to, essentially, use in-class writing, journaling, and other types of informal writing as a way to help students do increasingly complex actions.
5. Procure as many materials as you can.  Always try to have enough materials on hand (be they canned materials from a book or good ideas from the web) that you can fill time, drop something that isn't working, or simply save yourself and your students some serious boredom.  A student teacher recently told me an important realization that he made, which has stuck with me.  He's found that he needs to have something "Englishy" on hand at all times, everything from crosswords to short writing exercises.  These "Englishy" activities may not always directly align with the rest of the lesson, but they do work on valuable skills, and they're fun for students to do. 
6. Don't feel obligated to get more than two weeks ahead of your students in actual lesson planning.  Unless you have an incredibly intuitive feel for how your students are doing, it's hard to plan more than two weeks in advance.  Classes move a variable paces, and it's important to not plan too far in advance so that you can change things up in midstream if necessary. 
7. Think about tests and papers before you get too far into unit planning.  You probably want to start thinking about tests and papers before you start breaking down each day of a unit plan, at least in some general sense.  Are your students going to create a final project, a final essay, or take a test at the conclusion of a unit?  All are a possibility, but you'll want to think about what sort of formal assessment tools you're going to use in your class to see what students learned during the course of your unit. 
8. Pay Attention (when you do this for your own classes) of what Jim Burke calls "The Seasons of Learning."  You want to plan units that will really work at a given time.  Use the time at the beginning of the semester as a way to hook students into class and more interesting projects.  Students generally start out marking periods intent on doing well--harness this good will to your ends.  However, also realize that students, teachers, and everyone else associated with schools burn out at the end of marking periods, semesters, and years, so plan accordingly. 
9. Plan ahead and be willing to change. Once you've written the perfect lesson plan, don't feel obligated to use it because you've created the perfect lesson plan.  The perfect lesson plan can bomb in an imperfect class.
10. Show your unit to a friend/colleague.  Show what you're thinking of doing to a colleague, your cooperating teacher (when you're student teaching), or anyone else who might be interested.  The more people who read your unit, the potential ideas you can get.  Remember, good teachers borrow, great ones steal. 

Last Updated 11-16-02