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The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and other state standards have challenged teachers to rethink how they plan units and design their assignments within constraints of time and increasingly diverse classrooms. This article describes the author's efforts to create a coherent, useable set of tools to make his teaching at the unit and daily levels more consistently effective. Through the tools and techniques he discusses here, the author presents the notion of a set of “performances” that serve as a guide for his own class and a means of facilitating important, if sometimes difficult, conversations within English departments about who is teaching what at each grade level. While the notion of these “Essential Performances” is not meant to replace the CCSS or any other set of standards, it is designed to lead to a more coherent progression aligned with the CCSS that allows teachers to collaborate when designing lessons and units to improve instructional consistency and professional collaboration.

negligence. Upon reading a study I prepared of the entire year, which tried to provide a portrait of these students, their weaknesses, and the particular problems they faced, the principal and head counselor expressed their strong support for developing a program that would evolve as the next school year unfolded, one that would focus on those trouble areas that had surfaced. To understand who these students are, it would be best to begin with a short description of the class population. Students are placed in the class according to their reading skills and middle-school counselor recommendations. Reading abilities range from first grade to upper seventh in overall word power and comprehension. Because our school is in transition with regard to a comprehensive ESL program, basic English is generally viewed as the most appropriate placement for these students; last year I had several Middle-Eastern girls, this year I have a girl from Vietnam and a boy from Pakistan. Our school, like most others I expect, is also working towards some common idea of how to mainstream its special-education population; roughly thirty to forty percent of the students in this year's class are classified in some manner and to quite varying degrees as "exceptional." Add to this group others whose abilities end up masked or distorted because of behavioral problems that make them dysfunctional in a regular classroom, and you have a rather interesting gathering of young people in one class. The main areas of concern based on an exam