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.