How to create lessons based on a book: A step-by-step process

This is a record of my process for making an English reading unit based on a book. Rather different than other posts here, I think it could be beneficial to actively record my process and leave it a place I can easily reference it later. I can also refer friends and fellow teachers here so that we can compare our methods.

For background: I teach English as a second language in primary school. I think the process is somewhat generalizeable to theme-based learning in other contexts.

1. Choose a book. 

Ideally this should be an enjoyable, interesting, or at least informative but working teachers know that this isn't always guaranteed.

This can be the hardest part. I rely on years of knowledge of my target audience's reading level and interests. You will be better at this the more experience you have. A good proxy for interest is books you liked (or would have liked) when you were younger. It helps if you can also enjoy the book as an adult. Another factor is how easily you can create relevant, engaging activities based on the subject matter. Whenever I run across a great kid's book I try to envision where it could fit into the primary curriculum.

For this unit I'm teaching Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding by Linda Liukas.

The author is a programmer turned educator and advocate for teaching computer literacy. The book is about a girl who goes on something of a problem-solving scavenger hunt. It introduces a lot of basic concepts related to computational thinking and coding.

The story is meh, but I chose the book for it's conceptual density, relevance to student interests, and the exceptional teaching section at the back of the book with themed activies for each concept (2-3 per chapter!).

2. Read the book and generate a list of concepts. 

This can include literal topics discussed in the story, thematic concepts, vocabulary words, linguistic constructs like rhetoric or point of view, anything that can be mined for conceptual depth, interactivity or relevance to student (or pedagogical) interests.

I read through the book and write down key concepts in each chapter. Hello Ruby is exceptionally rich in tools and so I also noted down each activity from the back of the book.1

The concept list provides a kind of menu for lesson ideas. The list I have here includes concepts and themes such as:

- computer, computational thinking, literalism, logic, algorithms, code

- Ruby as character, personality, creating a personal bio

- identifying the story problem, prediction, making a plan, identify locations on the map

- booleans, sequencing, instructions, recipes, navigation by command, pattern recogntion, categorizing, loops as dance moves, substitution cypher codes

- Scratch (coding program), guess the rule (through the glass door), pretending to be a robot, Robo Rally, Guess Who?, 20 Questions, design a board game

It can help to look for additional sources, gathering other books on related topics, websites, videos, games, etc. This is particularly useful if your main text lacks sufficient content or an idea from your concept list requires additional supporting material.

Different books would obviously contain very different mixes of concepts, but the tone can vary greatly. Some books will feel more like traditional literature lesson and others (including Hello Ruby) more like grab bags of similarly-themed material.

3. Pick a main teaching objectives for the unit

This is another area where experience is going to make a major difference. You need to decide on something is practical and achievable for students of all different backgrounds and ability levels. In my experience go for something slightly on the easy side and make sure it is simple to explain. You can often add a bit of freedom or a creative element for more able students to challenge themselves, but if your idea isn't simple to explain it can be very easy for students to lose the plot. That said, working a in a second language context makes expressing complicated ideas much harder than in an average classroom.

The main task is very important to lesson design because it acts a purpose for learning. You can tell students at the beginning of a unit what they should be able to achieve by the end of a unit. It provides a sense of progress and gives context for all of the other activities you present.

With regard to Hello Ruby, the main objective will be for students to be able to use computational thinking skills to solve problems. Conceptually, I want students to understand different aspects of computational thinking, thing like using rules to categorize information and applying Boolean logic and if / then statements to problems. For the final task students will need to create a set of English instructions (a program) to solve an in-class challenge.

I envision this as a competitive game in which students need to set a series of instructions to beat a partner. In the ideal form of this game, students program robot avatars to battle in an arena using a limited set of commands. They write commands without knowing what the opponent will do, then simulataneously reveal the commands and see how they play out. The ideal would be something like the game Robo Rally or a robot battle arena.

The task can work with varying degrees of freedom or support, from a controlled whole-class game in which Ss individually write instructions to complete a set course, to a team game in which Ss work together to a two player game played in pairs. I plan to move from whole class practice to a pair activity for the final product.

4. Determine length of the unit

What will your students need to learn in order to accomplish the goal you set for them? What is their base level of knowledge? Work backwards.

For my students to be able to play a programming game they will need to both play and observe the game (1 lesson) and to practice writing instructions (1 lesson). They will also need time to read the book (1-2 lessons), to absorb key vocabulary and concepts (1-2 lessons) and ideally some extra time (1-2+ lessons) to explore other related activities like making codes, doing logic puzzles, identifying patterns, etc.

Realistically I have five 1-hour lessons because that's all the time available in the curriculum this year but the fit isn't drastically off and there's room to plan for contingencies. It will be very common that length is fixed by external consideration.

5. Unit structure

With the objective and duration in hand all that is left is to put flesh to bone. 

How do I come up with all the activities? First I look at the concept list pick concepts that support the main task and objectives I've designed. Sometimes it helps to read the book at the beginning of the unit as an introduction or to focus on the story. For Hello Ruby, since the story is less important than the concepts, I plan to read a bit each week and then discuss a related concept.

The best activities are engaging because they both encourage students to participate and they hijack student brains. People are naturally curious, so presenting partial information is hard to resist. It's hard for your brain not to want to complete the picture. Children especially are very easy to nerd-snipe.

Puzzles and game structures are similarly irresistible, so stealing liberally from classic games can be a good method to create an activity. Simple, obviously wrong statements are also a good method to hijack attention. It may seem manipulative to use the same tactics as social media, advertisements, video games and clickbait, but this is exactly the competition teachers are up against! A minimum of one unique, suprising or behaviorally rewarding activity a lesson is usually a good target.

For example, teaching binary will include a game of 'Guess Who' with the class as board. 

This is a link to the unit outline.

6. Create materials

This could be a separate article, but for the moment I have nothing particular to add here. 

I use Nearpod frequently because my students each have access to a tablet and it is a good way to present detailed information to each student and receive feedback from everyone at once. Not at all necessary though.

7. Iterate

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to try and revise the lessons. For this unit I will teach the same lesson four times a week and I am very likely to make significant changes between lesson one and two. It also helps to hear from other teachers using the materials and to see how their experiences differ. I look at teaching very much in the same manner as a working comedian who polishes their material night after night until it simply kills.

Footnotes:

1. There is an extensive section of additional activities and teaching materials for Hello Ruby here. I intentionally avoided this material to show the process of creating a unit solely based on what is contained within the book. Of course I will steal liberally from the site before actually teaching.