Teacher Leaders Providing Classroom Support to Teachers through Lesson Planning

Teacher leaders will work with teachers in many venues to help them change instruction. If teacher leaders are planning to spend time working with teachers in their classrooms, they might also assist teachers beforehand in planning what will happen in the classroom. There are many issues for teachers to consider as they attempt to change their instruction. Careful planning is essential if teachers are to ensure that they cover the intended content while also trying to implement new pedagogical practices. Teacher leaders can help teachers think through all of the issues they will need to consider, and work with them to create or tailor lesson plans that guide them in their instruction. Conversations with teachers during planning can also help build a shared vision for what quality instruction looks like.

Experienced practitioners, including MSP program leaders, offered insights around strategies that teacher leaders can use to provide instructional support to classroom teachers, for the purpose of improving instruction. Data were collected and vetted through multi-round, online panel discussions with practitioners, as well as interviews and focus groups with MSP leaders. The insights below reflect general agreement among these practitioners on the strategy of lesson planning, lesson review, or lesson analysis and include illustrative examples from their own practice. After reviewing these insights, you will be given an opportunity to share your own experiences with using these strategies for these purposes. The information you provide will be included in the analysis of insights and examples from other practitioners as this website is periodically updated.

Start with the end in mind – Ensure that teacher leaders articulate the learning goals of a lesson so that they are clear and meaningful to the teacher.

Lesson planning can be a powerful tool for teacher leaders working with teachers when it becomes the occasion to clearly articulate learning goals. In that way, the particular activities, materials, and procedures become a means to the larger end: the learning goals. An MSP leader advocated that teacher leaders and teachers:

Focus on the learning outcomes intended for the lesson, rather than just the activities the students will be doing. All too often instruction becomes a mechanical set of experiences and activities and the learning targets get lost, for both the teacher and the students. Intentional lesson design, review, and analysis can help avoid this. Scaffolding this process with resources to address content and big ideas, articulation of how those ideas develop over time and researching commonly held student preconceptions all better prepare a teacher to anticipate student response and facilitate learning.

Experienced practitioners highlighted the need for the learning goals to be meaningful to teachers, connected to his/her instruction, so that teachers are invested in them. As one noted,

Teacher leaders have to work with teachers “where they are,” in the context of their own lessons or new lessons they are committed to teaching from designated materials in order to engage them in the change process. Nothing that is imposed on teachers from the outside that teachers don't have some stake in or buy into on their own will have the same potential for improving instruction.

Insight in action
As part of a middle school science mentoring program, mentors met with classroom teachers on a fairly regular basis to help them improve instructional practice through lesson planning. Mentor and teacher pairs usually met before or after school, during lunch, or during preparation periods. In the beginning of the mentoring cycle, mentors reviewed the teachers’ lesson plans, and as the pair became more comfortable working together, the mentors would challenge teachers to think more carefully about lesson design and how the lesson supported the development of district standards.

Content is job 1 – Emphasize with teacher leaders the centrality of the content of the lesson when lesson planning.

In lesson planning, experienced practitioners noted the importance of the teacher leader and teacher having a shared focus on the mathematics or science content of the lesson. While attending to the mechanics of the lesson is useful, particularly when a teacher has very limited experience with a particular strategy, the mathematics or science content needs to be a central part of any lesson planning practice. The content focus might come into play in discussing the learning goals of a particular lesson; considering students' prior knowledge; articulating how the lesson builds understanding; and considering strategies for assessing student knowledge; all as part of the process of planning a lesson. MSP program leaders warned of the pitfall of having the content “negotiated out” of the lesson, in the hopes of making a lesson more accessible for a teacher, lest the result be a lesson devoid of rigorous content.

Stay focused – Advocate that teacher leaders use a shared protocol to structure lesson planning.

The use of a protocol or guiding questions can provide needed focus to lesson planning. Teacher leaders can bring to or develop with teachers a shared protocol to use in planning successive lessons. As an MSP leader noted,

A protocol or set of guiding questions structures the practice of lesson planning or review. This provides greater focus and consistency over time, so that lesson planning is more about an overall strategy for working on and improving lessons, rather than a disconnected, one-by-one look at individual lessons. The protocol or guiding questions can, with time, be less explicit as teachers internalize an approach toward planning lessons.

A protocol might consist of reflection questions to pose when planning a lesson (What is the goal of the lesson? How does this lesson relate to those that came before and follow? What content may be challenging for which students?). Or a protocol might focus on particular aspects of a lesson (identifying activities that review, introduce, solidify or extend concepts; clarifying the purpose of whole group, small group, pair or individual work). A protocol might be specific to a curriculum or a unit, or it may be generic enough that it is used consistently in planning a variety of lessons.

Insight in action
MSP-sponsored teacher leaders used a protocol that focused attention on cognitive demand and student engagement as they planned and reviewed lessons with mathematics or science teachers. Using the protocol helped teacher leaders and teachers develop a shared understanding of learning goals for students in a given lesson, and provided teachers with guiding questions they could use in planning. How will students be encouraged to challenge the ideas of others? What investigations will students carry out? How will students be asked to share their content knowledge? How will students be encouraged to develop multiple solutions? After using the protocol to frame the lesson planning process, teacher leaders used it as a basis for observations and feedback provided to teachers as they co-planned or implemented lessons.

What’s the big idea? – Ensure that lesson planning addresses a series of lessons developing a "big idea."

A lesson should not be treated as an independent event, disconnected from the lessons that precede or follow it. Teacher leaders can support teachers’ understanding and effective implementation of lessons when they help to situate a single lesson in the context of a series of lessons developing a “big idea.” As one MSP leader observed,

The storyline should start first - what chapter or big idea is the lesson part of, and then how does the lesson fit into this? The literature on learning suggests that a key factor in lesson planning is being able to organize and structure what is to be learned. Teachers have to help students see how the structure fits together so no lesson should ever be isolated from the others.

As experienced practitioners noted, the big idea or network of ideas may be introduced as an organizing principle under which to proceed as a teacher leader begins his/her work with a teacher, to reinforce the idea that lessons need to add up to something from the perspective of the student learner. With each lesson, a teacher leader might work with the teacher to identify (or construct) the big idea. Articulating the big idea among lessons may not happen when the practice of lesson planning is new to teachers, but does need to get increasing attention as teachers become more skilled in this practice. An MSP leader noted that “lesson planning helps teachers focus on the big ideas. Without a coherent vision of lesson planning, a lesson can easily become ‘activity for activity's sake’.” Teacher leaders need sufficient content knowledge themselves, in order to articulate the big idea to teachers during lesson planning, or to understand how instructional materials call out the big idea, so that they can foster that understanding among teachers.

Insight in action
As part of collaborative reform efforts to improve K-6 science education across multiple urban school districts, teacher leaders facilitated grade-specific meetings for elementary science teachers to prepare and support them in teaching specific lessons from designated materials. The teacher leader and the teachers worked together to explore how each learning experience built conceptually on the preceding lesson and how teachers could elicit the desired understandings from students.

All together now – Develop shared expectations about what constitutes good instruction.

As teacher leaders and teachers plan lessons together, it is important that there be shared expectations about what constitutes good instruction. These shared expectations may precede lesson planning or evolve through discussion of a lesson. Teacher leaders and the teachers they are working with need not have shared expectations at the outset, however. An MSP leader explained:

Teacher leaders can effectively work with teachers who do not yet share a vision as to what constitutes good instruction. Teachers and administrators develop an understanding of effective practice over time by experiencing and observing success. I think that teacher leaders can be effective in less than ideal situations. Their goal should be to work with other teachers and administrators and together develop shared expectations as a result of together helping students learn….Many people don’t change their ideas about good instruction until they begin to change their practice. They might be pressured into changing what they say, but it is less likely that they will change what they believe.

If expectations are not shared initially, experienced practitioners noted that it is the teacher leader’s role to introduce them through his/her work with a teacher. Lesson planning can be an avenue for doing so as teacher leaders and teachers plan, implement, and reflect upon instruction. As described by one MSP leader, lesson planning “should be undertaken by teacher leaders and teachers for the purpose of improving instructional practice, meaning that there needs to be thoughtful and cumulative reflection on lesson goals and strategies (and not a ‘show and tell’ mentality to showcase best lessons).” What is important is that teacher leaders and teachers demonstrate a commitment to improving practice as they engage in their work together.

Two or more can play this game – Recommend to teacher leaders that they engage in lesson planning with groups of teachers.

Teacher leaders often help individual teachers with lesson planning, but engaging in this practice with a group of teachers offers some distinct advantages. As one practitioner explained,

The process of engaging in lesson planning, review, or analysis with a group of teachers is the icing on the cake. It helps create a common dialogue and the shared vision of effective instruction, and moves teachers as a group in a school or district forward and provides the structure for sustaining the change in instruction over time.

It may be more difficult to schedule lesson planning with a group of teachers, and also more demanding to facilitate discussion. Even so, lesson planning with a group of teachers can lead to conversations enriched by multiple responses and build agreement about lesson goals, thus building greater accountability within the group. In reflecting on what it takes to facilitate such group work, an MSP leader commented:

The role of the leader is to organize the work; help provide the resources; push to ensure that the group stays focused on the mathematics; help them work together and mediate the tensions that arise from conflicting views on how the lesson should proceed; and ask questions to make sure the lesson "hangs together" and that the mathematics is correct.

What is important, experienced practitioners suggested, is that teacher leaders consider the needs of the teachers as they implement this strategy with individuals or with a group, as well as attend to the larger goals of the lessons that are being planned.

Now It's Your Turn...

If you would like to comment on any of these insights or provide an example based on your own experiences with lesson planning as a strategy for supporting instructional improvement, we invite to share your comments or example here.

If you would like to share additional insights (not included in the list above) from your own experiences with lesson planning, review or analysis, we invite you to add these insights here.

If you are interested in how these practitioner insights were collected and analyzed, a summary of the methodology can be found here.