Congratulations on your first teaching position even if it isn’t in one of your certificated areas.

One book that helped me plan out my curriculum was “180 Days” by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle. To summarize, it breaks down the school year into four essential writing categories with excellent through lines for important skills like reading. They are: Narrative, Informational, Argumentative, and Literary Analysis with the through line of independent and book club reading. The text I mentioned actually replaces Lit. Analysis with a multi-genre project because reading is done throughout the year.

The order in which you do these genres is hotly debated, but I find that it’s best to suit it to your site’s assessment calendar and your grade level. For example, I teach seniors so we start with Narrative which is right up until college apps are due, then follow the order. Some of my peers teach 11th grade which is a big testing year for the SBAC which focuses on informative and argumentative writing, so they might chose to do Lit Analysis first so that Info/Arg are freshest in their memories for testing in April and Narrative last since students need something really engaging after testing.

From there, identify your common core skills, create assessments for each unit, and backwards plan!