This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 148 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode I'm going to give you an overview of my favorite method for playing lessons

backward design.

When I taught seventh grade language arts one of my favorite things to teach was SE Hinton's

book The Outsiders.

Every year we began the unit with a discussion about the clicks that formed in students' lives,

how these groups interacted, the unwritten rules that govern their behavior, and what happened

when groups clashed or people formed relationships across group lines.

After we did some reflecting writing and talking, we were ready to start the book.

The reading went fine more or less.

Some chapters we did in class, I would read to them, they would read silently, and others

students read at home.

Some students became as absorbed in the novel as I'd hoped they would, and others not so

much.

Predictably some fell behind in the book like they did with all assigned reading.

I checked students' progress with occasional quizzes.

We did some work on plot and characters setting in theme, and then after a unit test

over the whole book containing mostly questions that asked students to identify characters

setting and key plot points.

We spent nearly three class periods watching Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of

the book, and I got to drool over Matt Dillon in the movie's opening scene again and again

and again.

...