Designing for Accumulation

There’s a quiet assumption in a lot of English departments: that good curriculum is something you piece together over time. 

A lesson here.
A resource there.
A late night before Week 3.

It works - in the sense that things run.
But it doesn’t scale.
And it doesn’t hold.

Because what’s missing isn’t effort. It’s design.

A small shift that changes everything...

Most units don’t fail because of weak lessons. They fail because nothing is accumulating.

Each lesson works - in isolation. But across the unit, the thinking stays flat. Students get better at completing tasks. They don’t get better at thinking.

The shift is this: design for accumulation, not activity.

Where thinking deepens across lessons.
Where interpretations sharpen over time.
Where independence is designed - not just hoped for.

I’ve been building a tool to help make this visible in planning - something you can actually use to design units that hold. 

You can access the Designing for Accumulation: Unit Planner here.