To create an effective fluid learning environment unit each Essential Common Core Standard should be represented in at least one unit and may appear in multiple units. In a growth curriculum Essential Common Standards will be split across multiple units especially if skills detected in a particular standard are determined in need of additional instructional support. In one unit an Essential Common Core Standard may be a supporting standard while in another unit the Essential Common Standard becomes a supporting standard. To determine the opportunity to learn standards become essential in a growth curriculum as it is measured within the Zone of Proximal Development. The particular units of study should be named according to their purpose and the dominant Reading and Writing focus throughout the unit. When constructing a Common Core unit supporting standards like NET Standards need to be taken into consideration when building capacity for the development of 21st Century Learning skills. Units can be categorized into one of four types:

Thematic - emphasizes the use of an essential question or big idea to support the theme of the unit.
Genre based - emphasizes an approach with the whole text as the unit in focus rather than the sentence. The focus on the whole texts implies that there is higher level of order and patterning in language than just in sentence-grammar at the level of discourse organization and meta-patterning of grammatical features.
Skill-based—Emphasizes application (writing narratives; using context to determine meanings of words)
Topic-based--Emphasizes a cluster of skills related to one topic but that contains several skills

The Unit Development Template is broken down into four sections: