Curriculum Design
A comprehensive ELA curriculum library with 648+ documents spanning grades 6–7, built on the Gradual Release of Responsibility framework. Every lesson is designed to move students from guided instruction to confident independence — with the kind of intentional scaffolding that makes rigorous literacy accessible to every learner in the room.
When I started teaching ELA at a Title I middle school, the curriculum situation was what you might politely call "patchwork." Teachers were pulling from five different sources, nothing was aligned to standards in any consistent way, and the kids could feel it. There was no throughline — no sense that Monday's lesson connected to Friday's, let alone to the unit as a whole. I knew my students deserved better than a binder full of borrowed worksheets.
I built the entire library from scratch using the Gradual Release of Responsibility framework — the "I do, we do, you do" structure that gives students a clear path from modeling to independence. Every unit follows the same architecture: a 9-document package including lesson plans, student-facing materials, formative assessments, and differentiated supports. I wrote for grades 6 and 7, covering literary analysis, informational text, narrative and argumentative writing, and vocabulary acquisition. The whole collection grew to 648+ standards-aligned documents over two years of teaching, revising, and teaching again.
The design mattered as much as the content. Every document uses consistent formatting, clear visual hierarchy, and language that respects middle schoolers as thinkers — not just test-takers. I wanted a teacher to be able to open any lesson and immediately know where they were in the unit arc.
What started as survival-mode curriculum building became a system that other teachers could actually pick up and run with. The library is fully standards-aligned, internally consistent, and designed to reduce the "Sunday night scramble" that burns so many educators out. It's proof that rigorous, thoughtful curriculum doesn't have to come from a publisher — sometimes the best person to design the learning is the one who knows the kids in the room.
