Rigorous Curriculum

Design
Middle School
Todays Focus
Revisit Prioritized Standards
Naming Units
Assigning Standards
Develop Timeline/Pacing Guide
Construct the Unit Planning
Organizer
Units of Study: Defined
A series of specific lessons, learning
experiences, and related
assessmentsbased on designated
Priority Standards and related
supporting standardsfor a topical,
skills-based, or thematic focus that
may last anywhere from two to six
weeks.

Naming the Units
Name all the specific units of study
for the course.

These units will be used to assess
student comprehension of content.

Units provide a framework for the
course outline.

Naming Units
1. With design-team colleagues,
consider how you plan to name the
different units of study for the course.

1. Identify the units according to their
purpose and dominant focus, and then
name them accordingly.

Naming Units
3. Draft the names of the various units
of study for each grade level and
course within a specific content area;
revise as needed.

4. Classify the named units of study by
type: topical, skills-based, or thematic.
(No curriculum is limited to only one of
these 3 types.)

Types of Units
TOPICAL Units of StudyFocus
on a specific portion of a larger subject or discipline
Topical Examples
Science: Solids and Liquids
Math: Estimation
Reading: Story Elements
Skills-Based Units of Study
Emphasize application

Skills-Based Examples
Converting Fractions to
Decimals
Making Text Connections
Editing and Revising
Topical
Skills-Based
Thematic
Thematic Units of Study
Emphasize connections to other topics within the same
discipline or to completely different disciplines.

Thematic Examples
Science: Life Cycles
ELA: Inferences
Math: Geometry
Topical
Skills-Based
Thematic
Lets Name the Units!
Assigning Standards to
Units
1. Make the initial assignment of
Priority Standards to the units
according to each units focus.

1. Match related supporting
standards to each units focus.
These should connect to and
enhance the priority standard by
being taught in conjunction with it.

Assigning Standards to
Units
3. Determine the appropriate number of
Priority Standards based on their
cognitive difficulty average is three
or four.

3. Distribute Priority Standards across
multiple units as long as it makes
instructional sense to do so. This will
enable student to have more that one
opportunity to experience it.
Timeline or Pacing
Calendar
A yearlong or course-long schedule
for delivering all of the planned units
of study for a designated grade level
or course, NOT the instructional
materials used within those units.

Timeline continued
Begin with Number of instructional
days or hours.
Consider the complexity of
materials and range of student
knowledge
Consider the End of Year test
distribution of each strand (this may
change depending on testing
changes)
Calculate in a buffer week

Work on Timeline
Using the Pacing Chart, fill in the
unit title and number of days or day
ranges for each unit.
Designate buffer days between
units. (Used to tie up loose ends, pretest,
remediate, and enrich.)
Make Copy and rename by subject
and grade level.
(Cells can be added as needed.)
Consider:
Give pretests in enough time to use the
results to alter instruction.
You will not have 90 days to work with
each semester remember to build in
days for Explore, Assemblies, snow,
workdays, etc Think about using 75-
80 days total for each semester.
Building in days for unit assessments.
Review questions to think about while
assigning days handout.

Team Time for
Working on
Timeline
Review of Process
Phase 1 -------- Final Product
Identified Units Named based
on Priority Standards with
developed Pacing Guide

Phase 2
Begin work on Units of Study
beginning with Unit Assessment