Leaders! Welcome to a new school year. Schedules are finalized, rosters are almost complete, beginning of the year benchmarks are wrapping up, and the year is finally clicking into a steady rhythm. Congrats! You survived the back-to-school safety training videos (barely), staff icebreakers (as if you didn’t know one too many “truths” and all of the “lies” to begin with), and new district initiatives for the year. Now the real work begins.
As you begin to go forth and conquer this year, here’s your friendly reminder to keep things simple.
Speaking of simple things, I want to spend a few minutes talking about one of the most controversial topics in education- lesson planning. I bet you’re thinking, “Well lesson planning is the least simple thing about education.” You’re not wrong. Buuuuut…
What if I told you that the lesson planning process doesn’t have to be complicated? What if we could simplify the process and leverage it to have a greater impact on student learning and school culture?
I bet you’re probably shaking your head right now thinking, “Yeah right. Sure.” Stick with me here.
To figure out what a more effective lesson planning process could look like, I think we need to look at everything we don’t want lesson planning to be. Let’s step into an all-too-familiar scenario for teachers:
It’s the beginning of the school year. You just received all of your new curriculum materials and are eager to dig in and start planning. When you approach your leadership about expectations for planning, you are told, “There’s no lesson planning template. We have a scripted curriculum, so you just need to annotate your lesson plans.”
Great. You open your materials and begin ferociously reading through the notes, gathering up the materials needed for the first week of lessons, and start underlining key information you want to remember when you deliver the lesson. You are knee deep in planning when your mind flashes back to the directive you were given- just annotate your lesson plans. You look around in search of another writing utensil… something that looks different than the one you already underlined information with so whoever checking these lesson annotations really knows you thought hard about the plans, and you begin marking the lessons up with a different writing tool. There. That should be good enough.
But is it? You begin to consider grabbing another highlighter/pen that includes a different color. You know, just in case.
This scenario probably feels personal because most teachers have been there. If they haven’t, they’ve probably been in this scenario…
It’s the beginning of the school year. You just received all of your new curriculum materials and are eager to dig in and start planning. When you approach your leadership about expectations for planning, you are told, “The lesson plan template is on the drive for this year.”
You open your school laptop, and after 23,940 updates (that didn’t get done during the summer), you begin digging through the drive to find this lesson plan template. You bring it up and it has no less than 12 blank spaces you must fill out for each day’s lesson. Cue the gag reflex. You immediately begin attempting to fill boxes, but you have an average of three questions about each box, leaving you frustrated and with a list of more questions than answers.
I recently led a professional development in a district that was attempting to implement a lesson planning template, and it looked a lot like the second scenario. As I wrapped up our new learning for the group and began applying it within their district’s expectations, I found myself fielding a plethora of questions from the group about the lesson planning template/form. It was painful.
The bottom line is this–anyone that ever signed up to become a teacher knows that some kind of lesson planning is involved. As leaders, there needs to be a level of accountability to ensure that teachers aren’t looking at the lesson for the first time as the kids are experiencing it. It’s not enough just to have a scripted curriculum. But how much is too much? What is realistic? And how do we leverage the planning done to actually impact student learning?
Here are a few ways we can make that happen:
- Narrow the lesson planning requirements. We recommend these four:
Objective | Check for Understanding |
Text/Source/Materials | Student Engagement |
Regardless of the simplified guidance you give teachers (whether it be annotations or a template), make sure to include a model of what that looks/sounds like in conjunction with their curriculum. For example, if you’re going to tell teachers to annotate their curriculum lessons with these four things in mind, give them a copy of your annotations on a curriculum lesson so they can see what those four things look like in action. The same thing goes for a template–if you’re going to ask teachers to fill something in, you‘d better give them an example of a completed template for them to see. You can find out more about those in our Big 4 Essentials Guide.
- Make it monitorable and manageable. If you’re requiring teachers to turn in evidence of their planning, make sure you are doing your part to monitor it. Just like our students, no one likes to work their tail off on something they know someone will never look at again. At least pick 6 a week to look through to ensure the planning expectations are being met. Give teachers feedback. Those who are doing their job well deserve to be seen and celebrated, and direct conversations need to be had with those who are not purposefully planning for student learning.
- Utilize the plans! Just like with student work, we should utilize teacher work in collaboration time. Showing examples of strong annotations and doing strong vs. weak annotation comparisons side-by-side with analyzing student work shows the impact the planning has on student learning. This also will shore up misconceptions about annotations and reinforce the expectations of planning you have already set. Using something you already require to refine habits and practices will improve a teacher’s craft and show that expectations are set, monitored, and celebrated when they are met. After all, culture isn’t built on jean day passes. It’s built on consistency.
As you can see, lesson planning doesn’t need to become an overly convoluted process to be meaningful and impactful. Keep the expectations focused. Show teachers what strong planning looks like. Monitor it, give it feedback, and use the work they’re already doing to strengthen instruction..
Planning matters. It is arguably one of the most important moves we make as educators, but more requirements don’t automatically lead to better lessons. When both lesson planning is both meaningful and manageable, teachers can spend less time proving they planned and more time preparing to teach well.
Check out our Edu20/20 Big Four Essentials Guide, a practical companion for lesson planning that helps teachers understand and apply each of the Big Four planning components. (Your teachers will thank you.)
