186: Feel like it's Impossible to Teach it All? (Part I)

<p><!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>Last week I received this email from Shannon, a teacher with questions I think we can all relate to. Here's what she wrote...</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>"I am in my 8^th year of teaching, and while I love aspects of it, I work 10-11 hours a day and am burning out. And, I feel that I'm on an island sometimes at my school—I have to re-teach skills that they should have been taught in earlier years, etc.</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>I have one foot out of the door of the teaching profession. I find myself awake at night trying to figure out how to do a good job teaching both reading and writing, and getting in all the skills.</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>How do you do whole class novel units? And teach all the skills? Say, I want to teach Gatsby, and focus on character contrast and figurative language. Is it ok to focus on just a few skills each unit? How do you make sure they get practiced sufficiently, while also making sure to have time for current events/reading informational text stuff? How long do you spend on a unit to make sure you can test them and build background prior? Do you have them write a lot of literary analysis essays?</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>How do we then factor in teaching all of the types of writing--expository, argument, narrative, while we have to teach all these reading skills?"</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>Today and next time on the podcast, I'm going to do my best to answer Shannon's questions, because I think they're ones we have all faced as teachers. How on earth are we supposed to cover all. the. things?! And teach them well?</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>Today we'll look at the big picture - how to plan the year to cover what you want to cover without getting overwhelmed. Next time we'll zoom in on planning a single whole class text unit, and how to make all t