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“Is this for a grade?”
“Why we gotta do this?”
Those were two questions I heard every single day as a classroom teacher. Early on, my go-to answers were, “Everything is for a grade” and “Because it’ll be on the state test.” As with all things in teaching, once you know better, you do better. The “knowing better” part came a little later in my career once I began to understand why the students always had to ask.
The biggest opportunity to learn came three years later. My school transitioned to a new teacher evaluation system, and along with it came new collaborative planning structures and leadership roles. What a time to be alive, right? I was somehow chosen to be part of the new leadership team, and our mission was to support our fellow teachers in understanding the new evaluation rubric. Our starting point? Lesson goals and objectives.
We began by collecting data to show the need for focusing on lesson goals and objectives. We didn’t want to hand the teachers another graph or report to analyze or a ton of research to read. Instead, we videoed a handful of students at the end of a school day and asked them what they had learned that day. As you can imagine, most of the answers were pretty generic.
“We read a story and answered questions about it.”
“We worked some math problems.”
“We played outside at recess.”
It was evident to us that, although students might have been compliant in those lessons, they definitely did not comprehend what they were learning or why they were learning it.
Those of us on the leadership team who were still classroom teachers did a field test to try and change that data. We decided to work on framing our lessons better by introducing learning targets. Yes, that included writing them on the board in student-friendly language. It also included having students take a second to turn and talk with a partner and put those targets into their own words, giving them time to understand what they were going to learn.
We videoed the same students at the end of that week and asked them the same question.
The results were a step in the right direction.
“We used text evidence to prove a character’s traits.”
“We found different solution methods to answering a math problem.”
Students were able to articulate their learning clearly. It felt like we had done some kind of magic trick.
We still had a long way to go, but this was a promising start. I started to reflect and connect the reasons students were asking “if this was for a grade” and “why they had to do” the lesson activities. Their brains were looking for connections and patterns! The what and the why. As a school leadership team, we were eager to keep moving in a positive direction and develop a clearer understanding of what framing a lesson looks and sounds like.
Lesson Framing: An instructional strategy in which educators outline lesson objectives, communicate how learning will occur, and the criteria for success.
When I use the term “framing,” I don’t just mean that objectives, standards, or learning targets are posted somewhere during the lesson and then repeated again at the end of the lesson. (Some of us, ahem…me…liked to try to “game the system” and just write all of the standards on the board at the beginning of the year, only to have that one kid take their finger and drag it through my dry erase board’s surface. I’m still mourning the loss of my standards visual masterpiece…sniff.)
I’m actually talking about setting the lesson up in such a way that we activate learners’ brains from the beginning so they understand what we are expecting them to learn. We help them connect learning all throughout, check their understanding, and then provide closure at the end.
It comes back to, “What are we learning today?” and, “Why are we learning this?”
So, what are some keys to effectively framing a lesson? Let’s check some of them out and understand how to use them in your instruction.
Have a clear lesson structure every day.
Every strong lesson usually includes some type of clear, daily roadmap for learning. This roadmap helps to ensure students understand expectations, time is managed well, and objectives are met. This doesn’t take a convoluted 12-page lesson plan to maintain- it can be as simple as starting the lesson with the objective and ending the lesson with a check for understanding. This keeps the most important things as the bookends of the lesson and provides students with a predictable structure that messages what they will be learning and how they will be accountable for learning by the end.
What it could look like: Have a quick warm up routine (I’m talking 2-5 minutes) that either activates students’ learning and/or gets them settled into the classroom. Once the warmup is complete, introduce the learning objective and how learning will be assessed by the end. No surprises here! (Now, you may still get the dreaded, “Is this for a grade?” question, but the answer will be totally up to you!)
Pitfall to avoid: While a predictable lesson structure is helpful, keep it from becoming too stale of a routine. One example: There might always be a check for understanding at the end of the lesson, but it doesn’t have to look the same every day. It can be a response on a sticky note, an annotation in a text, or a response on a mini whiteboard!
Provide a visual agenda.
If you’ve gotten pretty consistent with the first key, a next great step would be to provide students with some type of visual agenda that previews the activities they will be completing to meet the lesson objectives. I don’t mean anything fancy or complicated– a few quick bullet points on the board will suffice. This creates a through-line in the lesson, showing students the “why” of the activities. The purpose of each task is to intentionally move them toward the learning targets, and having a visual for them (or you) to refer to can help students see the cohesion or intent of the tasks. Now, I can’t guarantee that it will eliminate the “Why we gotta do this?” questions, but I can say that it significantly decreased that question when I started using quick agendas with my students. As a bonus, it actually helped me with lesson pacing!
What it could look like: Bulleted list on the board, screen, or chart paper.
Pitfalls to avoid: Keep the agenda items as short as possible and focus on the most essential activities. This will prevent students from feeling overwhelmed by the feeling of a big “to-do” list.
Use a lesson closure to connect the dots.
When I think about powerful lesson framing, I automatically think beginning, middle, end, and the elements mentioned above. But I remember all too well that when lesson pacing got tight, the lesson closure was often the first thing to go. It was like lesson whiplash- we would be in the thick of learning only to find out the next class was already waiting in line outside. (cue the flurry of exit tickets, packing up, and changing classes) It took me a hot minute (aka many years), but I eventually found the power of having a strong lesson closure. What do I mean by that? A lesson closure allows students to formally close the learning loop that was started at the beginning, providing time for them to reflect back on the purpose of the lesson and whether or not they moved toward their target. This small but powerful moment helps students process and store new learning in their brains instead of letting it fly out of the classroom as quickly as they do. Essentially, it allows students to connect the dots of the day’s learning.
What it could look like: Try to plan for 2-3 minutes at the end of every lesson for students to refer back to the initial learning target and internalize their progress. This can happen through a turn and talk moment, or even just having students rate themselves on a scale of 1-3 (with 3 being, “I nailed it!”) at the bottom of an exit ticket before turning it in.
Pitfalls to avoid: Spending too much time overthinking the closure or feeling like it’s “one more thing to do.” Practice lesson closures until they feel authentic and like a great use of instructional time.
Although I now lead professional development for teachers and leaders instead of students, I find that the keys of framing still apply in order to land the day’s learning. If I am in a room full of teachers and I don’t frame the learning correctly from the jump, it takes participants anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours to feel as though they have a handle on the goals of the day and the purpose of the activities in the learning session. It can be extremely disorienting (even for adults).
Next time you are in a professional development session, pay attention to the session framing. Which elements are present? Which ones help orient you to the learning goals and help you stay “in the game”? Are there any missing? What effect does that have on you as a learner?
For your own practice, which element of lesson framing are you ready to focus on next?
