Early in Peps Mccrea’s tiny yet highly impactful book Lean Lesson Planning the reader is asked to reflect: “What questions do I ask myself when I plan? How consistent and intentional is my strategy?” (25). The lean framework cuts through this and makes it about four questions:
- Where are your learners starting from?
- Where do you want them to get to?
- How will you know when they’re there?
- How can you best help them get there?
The 6 habits of teacher planning build on this design with a solid scaffold for planning:
- Backwards design – start with the end in mind
- Knowing knowledge – establish your route towards expertise
- Checking understanding – build on what they know, not what they don’t
- Efficient activities – select and streamline for the shortest path
- Lasting learning – build memory that lasts and is easy to recall
- Inter-lesson planning – plan for the past and into the future
In the knowing knowledge chapter, I liked the ping pong model that was used to represent how knowledge functions in a classroom. Firstly conceptual understanding is a combination of:
- Isolated – facts along focusing on recall and describing
- Connected – conceptual understanding linked to other facts through explaining or justifying; building interconnected webs of meaning
And technical proficiency in the use of mental tools is also important:
- Rigid – following instructions and find answers
- Adaptive – using this knowledge to problem solve or create new knowledge
The result is a combination of increasing conceptual understanding and technical proficiency of new knowledge.
And finally the book finishes with three ways to organise your professional learning. The focus here is on growing professionally.
- Building excellence – leverage habits to create lasting change
- Growth teaching – innovate, evaluate and iterate to improve
- Collective improvement – get better together for compound growth
Mccrea, Peps (2019) Lean Lesson Planning. John Catt Publishing.
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