Technique 4: Double plan - Lesson preparation

Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Technique 4: Double plan
Lesson preparation

Here's something possibly obvious about Christine Torres's lesson preparation—so obvious that it might be easy to overlook even though it's one of the most important things she does.

She's working from a copy of the student packet—the document they are working from throughout the lesson. It's what she holds in her hand as she teaches; it's where she makes her preparation notes. Her starting point, in other words, is a document that outlines what students will be doing at each stage of the lesson. Just the fact that there is such a document is profound. Yes, there's a lesson plan also that Christine can consult if she needs it. It contains more detail about what she will do and how. But more central to the preparation of the lesson is the document that describes what students will be doing each step of the way.

A lesson plan describes a series of activities you will lead or topics you will discuss, but what the teacher is talking about or doing is not the same as what students are doing. Double Planning describes in detail what students will be doing each step of the way. A lesson plan might say that a teacher should lead a discussion about a line in the text. A double-planned lesson would describe what students should be doing during the discussion: jotting down notes about insights their peers make that they find useful, for example. A packet goes a step further and gives them an actual place to do so. A lesson plan might say, “The teacher should read the passage with students.” Double Planning clarifies this: What should the students be doing? Is listening sufficient? They'll be a lot more successful if you tell them what to listen for (examples of irony) and if you plan for them to be jotting notes while you read. You might even think about where they should jot those notes. Their actions while you're teaching are key drivers of how much students learn, this is to say, so it should be part of the planning process.

For teachers like Christine that often means not just planning for students to answer a given question in writing, say, but providing a specific place that communicates to students, in its design or in the directions, whether they are casually brainstorming—in which case the packet might include bullets or a box with no lines—or writing multisentence paragraphs—in which case she would surely want not only lines (and enough of them to communicate her expectations for length) but perhaps a space for outlining as well. A packet like Christine's does this. It translates her plan into a document students can work from directly to ensure efficiency and simplicity. There's space to take notes and a reminder of what to take notes about.

Do you have to have a packet, then? No. Would high school students preparing for college be better served by the experience of note-taking sometimes, often, or perhaps always? Yes. But the lesson should still be double planned, perhaps via a sort of T-chart in which the teacher's actions are described on the left side and what students should be doing on the right.

Still, don't sleep on the packet. Its value is high—a fact that's mildly ironic because some educators dismiss materials copied and given to students as “worksheets” and presume that implies banality and superficiality. A reminder then: The means by which instructional materials are reproduced and disseminated has no correlation to their quality.

Designing a lesson packet in fact is one of the most effective tools for Double Planning. Here are five ways well-designed packets can improve your teaching and increase students' learning.

Goal 1: Everything in One Place

A well-designed packet provides students with all (or many) of the lesson materials in one place, where they are easily accessible, and thus minimizes the need to distribute additional materials, take out new documents, and move back and forth between them. Students can read and write about a text seamlessly in one place. Christine's packet, for example, includes the nonfiction articles she'll read to illuminate the chapter from the novel as well as definitions of the vocabulary she'll teach, the Exit Ticket, and various places to take notes. It's all in one place and that streamlines her lesson.

Goal 2: Synergy with Pacing

The packet allows Christine to be able to manage the student experience easily and effectively: she can jump ahead and skip an activity to save a little time but still have students complete it for homework; she can have students go back and reread a passage or check the Do Now at almost no transaction cost. It reduces the time required to change tasks and activities to a minimum. She can skip passing out the vocabulary sheets or collecting notes. Although it may seem trivial, saving minutes this way each day helps her add back days of lost instructional time to each school year.

As I discuss in the chapter on pacing, one way to draw attention to mileposts (see Chapter Six, “Pacing,”)—reference points inserted along the route of a journey to make the distance covered more visible to travelers—is evident in Christine's packet. Each question or activity stands out as something new and discrete as opposed to a muddled mass of undifferentiated responses to the novel. Students can see clearly that they are moving dynamically from activity to activity.

One effective tool I've seen in some packets—particularly London's Michaela Community School—is line numbering. If you're spending a significant chunk of time discussing a passage, it's often worth copying it into your packet with line numbers added to ensure more continuity, quality, and efficiency in discussion. The following image shows the first paragraphs of Linda Sue Park's novel A Single Shard with line numbers added. Reading this, Carlise can easily draw the class's attention to Tree-ear's use of the phrase “later today” in line 9 rather than everyone using up their working memory searching for the spot “in the middle of the third paragraph” she's referring to. Afterwards, the teacher might draw students quickly and easily back to a different spot: “What does the narrator's reference to ’the well-fed of the village’ in line 3 tell us?”

1 “Eh, Tree-ear! Have you hungered well today?” Crane-man

2 called out as Tree-ear drew near the bridge.

3 The well-fed of the village greeted each other politely by

4 saying, “Have you eaten well today?” Tree-ear and his friend

5 turned the greeting inside out for their own little joke.

6 Tree-ear squeezed the bulging pouch that he wore at his waist.

7 He had meant to hold back the good news, but the excitement

8 spilled out of him. “Crane-man! A good thing that you greeted

9 me so just now, for later today we will have to use the proper

10 words!” He held the bag high. Tree-ear was delighted when

11 Crane-man's eyes widened in surprise. He knew that Crane-man

12 would guess at once—only one thing could give a bag that kind

13 of smooth fullness. Not carrot-tops or chicken bones,

14 which protruded in odd lumps. No, the bag was filled with rice.

15 Crane-man raised his walking crutch in a salute. “Come, my

16 young friend! Tell me how you came by such a fortune—a tale

17 worth hearing, no doubt!”

Goal 3: A Clear Road Map

When you have a million things on your mind, it's easy to overlook an activity, forget a question, or neglect a topic that you intended to cover. Because Double Plan packets provide teachers with such a clear road map about what they and students should do at every step, teachers are less likely to let activities slip through the cracks or to shortchange important content.

On a similar note, when you script your questions into your packets, it also holds you accountable to ask them in the same form that you planned. This prevents you from unintentionally diluting the rigor of your planned questions or leading students astray with tangential prompts (for more information, see Chapter Nine). The same holds true for What to Do directions: The more clearly you script those into your packets, the easier it will be to ensure that students do what you planned, in the manner you intended.

Goal 4: Standardize the Format

Well-designed packets Standardize the Format (see technique 8). Everyone in Christine's class answers question number 6 in the same place and she can circulate quickly and easily and get a strong sense of what they are writing about because she's always looking in the same place. It makes it easier to move quickly and to compare students' written work with her exemplars, which she's written in the same place into her own packet. What they're doing is mirrored on her page. The demands on working memory are reduced and her capacity to observe accurately is increased.

Formatting the workspace for students helps in other ways too. Whether you include eight blank lines or two after a writing prompt implicitly communicates to students how extensive their answer should be; a “notes” box during a Turn and Talk reminds them that they should (or could) take notes on what they discuss.

Goal 5: Embedded Adaptability

Another detail of Christine's packet worth noticing: a partial answer to the ageless question of what's out there for the strivers who are done first on the Do Now or some other question and want to know what's next. Will their teacher have something ready? What if she doesn't see them? Will they have to sit and wait for the class to catch up? What about the kid she doesn't realize is a striver, but who wants to show her he can be? On Christine's Do Now there's a challenge question embedded at the end, waiting for the strivers. Strive on.

This is a reminder that better planning does not imply a loss of flexibility—the opposite, in fact. Troy Prep math teacher Bryan Belanger regularly includes more questions in his packets than his students will do in a lesson so that he can jump ahead to harder problems or double back for more review, depending on student progress. Brooklyn teacher Taryn Pritchard divides her independent practice into sections by level of challenge: “mild,” “medium,” and “spicy.” That way she and her students can adapt by adding more “mild” or “spicy” work to their diets, as a group or as individuals; thus, students can speed ahead or double back on their own. Other teachers embed “Challenge” or “Deep Thinking” questions in their packets. Individual students can try them on their own or if things are going well the teacher can use them as a class activity.