Don't plan lessons
Referring to Bodil Isaksen’s post on lessons being the wrong unit of time and David Didau’s post on lesson planning, the idea that teachers focus too much on what children do, rather than what they learn, is shown up for what it is: a poorly thought out assumption that the time constraints of lessons, or hours, are the packages in which children learn simply because those are the periods of time in which we teach.
"Our planning is weakened by lesson-based thinking", which is furthered by stating that "When we accept that anything of worth takes time then we can tell students that what we want them to learn is too hard to pick up in a single lesson." To many of us I suspect this is a revelation. We plan so many “lessons” with starters and mini-plenaries: all the bits in between. But in doing so I did the content a disservice and the learning subsequently often took a back seat.
When we plan with activities in mind we often, naturally, round them up. It makes sense – 5 minutes on this, 15 on that, then a short 5 minutes again. We often have pace in mind, or a misunderstanding of chunking or interleaving, because these are words we’ve heard someone else say, someone who’s Good. We like to be neat, partly because we have to be, and partly from a wish to be organised. Or someone else wants us to appear organised, and so our folders and filing cabinets do, but we end up too tired in the process.
This leads us to write overly detailed, minute-by-minute lesson plans, narrated and tightly wound with no expectation of, or room for any interesting tangent to occur. And by spending time on these we’re wasting time we could spend just knowing our subject better, considering the threshold concepts children might need to know first and just improving our explanations.
Lesson plans in the sense that we’re perhaps used to are a pointless exercise, seemingly designed to keep us from actually talking about our subjects with our teams. Schemes of work are often the same, with lists of objectives and skills and the number of times British values have been met. But these constrict: they might ensure certain topics are covered but they do nothing for understanding. And it’s tempting to ask for detailed plans if we’re new to the subject, but actually we’d be better having a discussion with our team. We’d probably find that if we talked to each other more we’d rely on PowerPoints and videos less.
Instead of planning lessons and schemes, spend quality department time actually creating interesting questions to answer, look at the subject matter in detail (especially if there are non-specialists) and talk through learning together? How much more effective would that be than ticking off activities on the lesson plan? We can still use checklists, and even write out learning timelines, but unless we’re really in a rush following a strict plan most of the time is probably not the best way to teach.
Know your subject, talk about your subject and don’t plan lessons. Plan learning.
Agile Delivery Manager at LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group)
8 年Bravo! Very well said. I did the whole lesson planning malarkey for many years in my teaching. However, I knew even at the time this was just a box-ticking exercise for everybody that was actually a barrier to students' learning and my own engagement with the learning exchange. Anybody worth their salt knows a teacher that works in partnership with learners' motivation at a particular time are the most effective and life-changing. More so than reams of lesson plans nobody reads anyway! Apart from (maybe) Ofsted - who, let's face it, not least when led by a Chief Executive that doesn't have a teaching background really isn't in a position to make judgements about whether lesson plans are a good thing!
Lead Teacher at Innovation Learning & Education
8 年Interesting way to look at planning (or not) the lesson. I believe it would take a lot of thought and "planning" to not design an unplanned lesson. Therefore, it seems that one would have to be even more creative and research further to design a less-structured and more organic approach, that would include student-relevant content and comprehensible material that supports the learning objectives. Ultimately, the greatest benefit is that this would enable a more student-centered approach and potentially elicit learning on a deeper level, through higher thinking class discussions. The problem with this approach is that most of the time there is not enough time to do this, because there are specific objectives that are set upfront, and to cover them efficiently the teaching strategies warrant a structured plan that fits in the required content. Thus, I think this could be done in part; focus on a class discussion time when the learners can take what you've covered through exercises and activities to analyze, reflect, and come up with practical applications, spontaneously. Then, give them the option to share there insights about these discussions, autonomously, either by writing a paper, giving a class presentation, or relating it to the world with a video.
Headmaster at Brackenfield School. LIP for COBIS. NPQEL.
8 年To plan learning is still - planning! However, that could be more restrictive than planning teaching. Planning learning indicates you have specific learning in mind - not in itself bad. But I think we all want to create learning opportunities that can take wonderful directions. In conclusion: planning for basic focus and intent and planning to prepare for possibilities.
High School Physics Teacher | International Educator . Microsoft Innovative Educator | Teacher Mentor and Trainer.
8 年We plan lessons as evidence of what is taught and learnt
Internal Audit Senior Manager at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools
8 年"Instead of planning lessons and schemes, spend quality department time actually creating interesting questions to answer, look at the subject matter in detail (especially if there are non-specialists) and talk through learning together?". Why can't a teacher spend quality yime thinking about the subject matter in detail while making a lesson plan? I mean why can't they come together?