In this Cc for Admins Guide, we’ll focus on how to use the Unit Tracker for backwards planning. By using the Unit Planner to create clear unit plans, teachers can be sure that every lesson they teach will be driving toward long-term student achievement goals.
Pre-work: This Cc for Admins guide assumes that you have set up an account and that you have created your first planbook. If you haven’t done that, check out our Cc for Admins video on Account Setup.
In this guide, we’ll focus on how to:
Create new units and subunits and place them on a timeline.
Build a unit plan that includes important components like essential questions, enduring understandings, along with helpful resource links, like assessments or high-quality work examples.
Create new units using the copy feature.
View unit plans during our daily planning routines, so that every lesson will be informed by the unit’s overarching goals.
To get started, from the homepage, click into any planbook. From here, we’ll go to “Unit Timeline.” This is where we can create units on a timeline.
To create your first unit, click the "+" button next to the course for which you would like to create a unit. From here, stretch the unit to the appropriate number of days, using the calendar above. After determining the number of days of your unit, we can begin to build out our first unit.
To do this, click “Show Full Unit in Sidebar.”
Units, just like lessons, are made up of customizable cards. Every unit plan comes pre-set with a standards card. You might start building your unit by attaching every standard that students will need to master.
To do this, we will attach standards just as we would when creating a lesson. We’ll click the magnifying glass where it says “Search and Add Standards.” Choose the state/organization or district of which our standards are a part.
Once we locate our standard set, we can use the search feature to find essential standards for our unit.
I can also click ‘+Add Card’ to include things like essential questions and enduring understandings. And, I can add links to helpful resources, like assessments or media that relates to this unit.
As I move from one unit to the next, it’s likely that there will be some overlap in things like standards or attached resources. To make this process quicker, I can click “Copy” and then repeat the process of creating a new unit on the timeline. Once I am ready to work on the unit plan itself, I can jumpstart the process by clicking “Paste.” From here, I can revise as needed.
When teachers backwards plan, their unit plans provide a solid foundation for what they plan in the day-to-day. Cc makes it easy for teachers to reference their unit plans while they plan a lessons.
To do this, we can click back in to the "Week View" and see the current unit we are working on. When I am ready to plan the next day’s lesson, I can click into the unit title so that I can use it to guide my instruction.
By using the unit timeline to backwards plan and to inform daily lessons, you can be sure that every lesson teachers create will be driving toward student’s year-end goals.