On Lesson Planning

Q: How can you lesson plan without spending your entire evening on it?


Jack: My way of lesson planning certainly wouldn't work for everyone, but I think that aspects of it can be helpful for challenging both students and teachers. Essentially, I don't plan lessons, at least not in the same intensive engineering way that I have been known to plan vacations. Even though it's comforting to know exactly where a lesson is going to go, it ultimately doesn't leave room for some pretty important things.

First, an open lesson plan leaves room for lots of questions (this might necessitate teaching your students how to ask questions, what kinds of questions are productive, etc.). It leaves room for adjustment if the students get the material quickly or are totally disengaged by my presentation or aren't picking up on essential concepts. An open lesson plan also creates a sense of dynamism in the classroom and allows for some wiggle-room. Perhaps most importantly, an open lesson plan keeps me from spending all night trying to cobble together the perfect lesson despite my awareness of the fact that there is no perfect lesson. Ultimately, if kids are asking questions and struggling with material, if I'm paying attention to where they're failing and where they're succeeding, they're going to learn something.

So what is an open lesson plan? For me it was a lesson plan that consisted of just a few sentences that described what we would generally be looking at, what questions I would want the kids to be exploring, and what activities they would participate in. This is probably not very useful in a math or science classroom, but in a history class, this might look like the following:

Review basics of what we have covered on Civil War. What else is going on at the time of the war? Is there resistance to the war? Where? Why? What does this resistance have to do with race and class? Make list of groups and what they stood to gain or lose from the war and whether or not they supported it. Choose one and journal from that perspective. Share. Discuss.

Going into a class with only this can be scary, at least at first. But when it's scary in the classroom, (and here I mean because of adventurous teaching and not because of violence or negligence) it usually means that we're growing. In this case, it means that we all have to be able to think on our feet, to raise questions, to communicate, and to be flexible. Now, I should also note that the only way I can do this is by spending my summer planning out a year that makes sense, doing all the readings, and thinking about questions that are important. I lay out my entire year of lesson plans and then each day tinker with them so that they make sense given what we've done so far.

Then again, I don't have a curriculum-package that I have to get through...


Douglas: Preparing for class and creating class materials and homework takes a long time and is absolutely necessary for new teachers. I think you bite the bullet and do it. I would hasten to add that it’s important to under-plan each lesson. Think about the essential two points on your lesson and focus only on those. Leave a lot of time for questions and exploration; that’s where learning really is at.

SAVE EVERYTHING. Save the things you use, save the things you don’t use. Spend 10-20% of your planning time on organization. Keep a file cabinet of teaching materials and file actively. Save everything on your personal computer and your school network. It will help when you create more lesson plans but more importantly, it will save countless hours for the rest of your teaching career. Work very hard on lesson planning your first two years and you’ll thank yourself later. In subsequent years, all you have to do to lesson plan is take out and review your old materials and see what you want to use or how you want to revise.

I’d add something else: don’t neglect grading. Quick feedback is the key to learning, and thus, teaching. Reviewing student work is where you find out if students are actually learning what (you think) you’re teaching. It’s the mechanism where you and they can check whether they understand the material. Quick turnaround time is critical. Get feedback back to students while the material is still fresh, not a week later. Unlike lesson planning and unfortunately for teachers, it doesn’t get less burdensome over time. You’ll be spending evenings grading and preparing feedback for as many years you stay a teacher.


Mike: The best lesson plan I ever wrote was on a beer coaster. I was sitting at a bar called "Zinc" in western Massachusetts, relaxing with some fellow English teachers over some cocktails and - not surprisingly - discussing literature. If I remember correctly, we were debating the appropriateness of using The Bell Jar in a High School classroom. We unanimously agreed on its literary merit, but diverged from there. I remember one of my colleagues worrying about a man teaching this book; she felt the impact of the narrative on some girls was something only a woman would be equipped to understand. In the end, I agreed with her.

Our discussion was intense. I was also a couple of Sapphire and tonics into my evening. The bar was warm against the winter cold outside. All of this combined to put me into a trance, and I began jotting notes on my beer coaster. I was preparing to teach Capote's In Cold Blood. I worked quietly at my corner of the table for half an hour, tucked the beer coaster into my pocket, and rejoined the conversation.

The next day, I brought my beer coaster in to class and kept it hidden behind my book. I used it to help me introduce the new novel to the class. It had about ten sentences written on it, most of them a series of questions. I was, admittedly, nervous about teaching a two hour lesson using only a beer coaster and the sketchy outline it contained. I was even more nervous because this was a group of students thoroughly disinterested in literature. Nevertheless, they all ended up reading every page of that book. At the end of the term, in their evaluations, many of them wrote something like "I didn't read any of the books this year except for In Cold Blood." They attributed their interest to the opening lecture.

I showed the beer coaster to my Dean a few weeks later. He looked it over. After a few moments, he cackled with glee: "how the hell are we supposed to convince people to take lesson planning seriously when you write your best stuff on beer coasters!?" He loved the lesson. He hung the beer coaster on his wall. It was meant to be a reminder that lesson planning is easiest when we are in an intellectually stimulating and simultaneously relaxing environment. I happened to be at a bar. But I've had similar experiences at conferences, on vacation, watching movies, and in countless other places that were NOT at my computer in my office or sitting at my desk at home.

Whenever I have a lesson planning crisis and hit a brick wall, I remember my beer coaster and close my books. Inspiration can come in many forms.