Resequencing a Unit Against a Fixed Test
A teacher has seven 50-minute lessons over two weeks to teach Unit 4 of a B1 coursebook to 26 teenagers. The unit's five lessons run reading, grammar, vocabulary, listening, writing; the end-of-unit test on the second Friday includes a 60-word email. Two learners joined last week at A2+ and have not met the past continuous; one learner has diagnosed dyslexia; the reading text assumes familiarity with a school-exchange system that most learners lack. The teacher wants to move the writing lesson earlier but worries about losing the reading. There is no extra class time and the test date is fixed.
1. Produce a seven-lesson sequence and justify the two changes that matter most.
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A defensible seven-lesson sequence:
- Schema plus vocabulary: school-exchange context, key lexis.
- Reading: pre-taught schema, gist then detail.
- Grammar: past continuous, including pre-teaching for the two A2+ learners.
- Writing: model email, plan, timed draft.
- Listening: coursebook listening with support.
- Redraft and feedback on the email; consolidation of grammar and vocabulary.
- Review and test-format practice.
Two changes that matter most:
- Move writing to Lesson 4, not last. The test includes a 60-word email, so learners need a feedback loop. If writing stays in Lesson 5, there is no time for redraft before the test; moving it earlier converts the writing lesson into assessment for learning.
- Pre-teach the exchange schema before the reading. The reading assumes cultural knowledge; without it, Lesson 2 becomes a comprehension failure and the rest of the unit loses its vocabulary base. This is more important than preserving the coursebook's reading-first order.
Why not change everything: the fixed test date and no extra time mean the sequence must stay lean; only changes that protect the assessed outcome and the input base are justified.
2. Which learner factor most constrains the sequence, and what specific adjustment follows?
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The binding constraint is the dyslexic learner, because it affects two high-load lessons (reading and writing) and the test format. The two A2+ learners are a real but local issue: they need pre-teaching of the past continuous, which can be handled in Lesson 3 and in a short pre-lesson handout. Dyslexia affects decoding, working memory and writing fluency, and the sequence places reading (Lesson 2) before writing (Lesson 4).
Specific adjustments:
- Do not put a long reading and a timed writing draft on consecutive days without decoding support: provide an audio or teacher-read version of the text, and a writing frame with sentence starters.
- Give the writing task as a plan-draft-redraft cycle, not a single timed piece, and allow extra time or a scribe for the draft.
- Seat the learner to avoid copying from the board at distance; use a checklist rather than dense instructions.
- Keep the test email format familiar: practise the same 60-word format in Lesson 4 and Lesson 6 so the test is not a new genre.
The new A2+ learners mainly need vocabulary and past continuous pre-teaching; that is a scheduling addition, not a resequencing constraint.
3. Identify one risk in your sequence and a contingency for it.
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Risk: writing is moved before the grammar is secure. Learners may produce a draft with weak past continuous, and the redraft in Lesson 6 may become a grammar lesson that eats the consolidation time.
Contingency: treat Lesson 4 writing as a guided draft with a checklist focused on the email's communicative purpose and the target functional chunks, not on full grammatical accuracy. Mark the draft with two colours: meaning problems to fix, and one grammar point to notice. If Lesson 3 grammar is insecure, add a 10-minute review at the start of Lesson 4 and protect Lesson 6 by folding listening into Lesson 5 as a shorter gist task. The test-format practice in Lesson 7 is non-negotiable, so any slippage comes out of the listening detail work, not out of writing feedback.