Lean Lesson Planning: A practical approach to doing less and achieving more in the classroom (High Impact Teaching Book 1)

by Peps Mccrea

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." Abraham Lincoln

How lean is my practice? What steps can I take right now to do less and achieve more? Think about what you've learned and ready

Backwards design is about striving for excessive clarity about what you want your students to be able to do as they progress through the lesson.

The aim of any lean activity is to help as many students as possible to feel success. Success happens where there is just enough challenge, but not too much. Your goal is to keep as many students as you can in the zone of challenge, and out of the zones of comfort or confusion for as long as possible (7).

Low floor, high ceiling One task that is accessible to all, but can be taken as far as each student is able. These are often open-ended, or investigational in nature. • All start, no finish A series of questions graduated in difficulty so everyone can answer the first one, but no one can answer the last.

"Expert teachers plan lessons as interlinked sequences." John Hattie

12. Collective improvement "The co-planning of lessons is the task that has one of the highest likelihoods of making a marked positive difference on student learning." John Hattie (1)

"The star teachers of the twenty-first century will be teachers who work every day to improve teaching - not only their own but that of the whole profession." Stigler & Hiebert (3)