Using Lesson Plans to Diagnose Instruction

One of the most common tasks for school administrators is reviewing lesson plans.  But, the question is why are you reviewing lesson plans.  If your answer is accountability, then you most likely are not leveraging your lesson plans for the fantastic conversation starters that they are.  Lesson plans in conjunction with observation are a powerful tool that helps you understand how teachers think and to provide the appropriate coaching to teachers.

The question for each TEACHER's lesson plan review is "why you are reviewing it"?  Note, that I focus on the teacher and not the general lesson plan.  Why the teacher?  Because if you are looking to improve instruction through your feedback on the plan, you have to know the teacher's needs, not the lesson plan template requirements.

I look at lesson plans for four standard things:

1.  Does the teacher understand the standards and how they are meant to be implemented?
2.  Does the teacher organize instruction into clear objectives that are logical and that build on each other?
3.  Does the teacher plan instruction and/or activities that are aligned with objectives and/or standards?
4.  Does the teacher plan for formative assessment and differentiated response to student needs'?

If your school has a special instructional initiative, you can also ask a fifth question: Does the teacher implement X strategy in their activities with fidelity to our school vision of implementation?

To decide on what to review, I find it is usually helpful to observe the teacher and looked at some type of student results - this does not have to be standardized or state exam data.  For instance, my school district has Gradebook, I can go into any teacher's gradebook and look at how students did on a teacher's specific assignment or exam.  Gradebook provides a simple pie chart for every assignments/exam showing the distribution of student performance.

Diagnosis for Question 1:  If you walk into a teacher's classroom, and no one including you, knows what is going on, it's probably best to start at the standard.  Does the teacher demonstrate that they actually understand the standard or are they just copying and pasting from your state/district documents?  Other indicators are that the teacher is completely off from what the standard describes or they are doing incredibly low, rote exercises (e.g. having students trace pictures from the textbook, copying portions of the textbook, etc.).

Including more than two standards for the lesson plan is always a clue.  Standards usually have to be broken up in order to be taught; giving a laundry list usually suggests that the teacher doesn't know what they are teaching, what the students are learning, or what the students are practicing.  These classrooms frequently are just a non-stop activity fest, and students don't know their progress until after the test is given.

Diagnosis for Question 2:  Does this teacher have a standard of the day?  Start the class without referring to any previous learning?  It might be that they haven't really broken the standards down into viable instruction units AND put them in a logical order. Classes like these are often poorly paced and have plenty of student complaints - "We never learned this", "The teacher goes too fast", etc.

Teachers with this issue usually are at the extremes of the instruction spectrum - they're always "teaching" or the students are always "practicing" even though there was no instruction - because they're short on time.  Both the teachers and students are always complaining that no one is learning anything.  The teacher also has to frequently interrupt the class as they interact with students to share what they "forgot" to tell the class.  In addition, the teacher has to continuously extend their instruction or activity time because they are out of time.

Diagnosis for Question 3:  Are all of the teachers' classes EITHER instruction or activities?  Many teachers plan instruction but fail to provide activities OR they plan activities and fail to plan instruction.  The result is that they get mixed results on assignments/exams and student response.  These teachers are most likely to have wonderful instruction or fantastic activities that end up netting "no results".

These teachers can also get lost and forget to make sure that their classes are aligned to their stated objectives and standards.  You may see a great class from this teacher one day and an o.k. class another day.  Inconsistency is one of the biggest clues that this may be the needed starting point for this teacher.

Diagnosis for Question 4:  Do all students perform in the same range of performance with this teacher or are there large gaps between different groups?  You might have noticed that all of your top students complain about this teacher or that all of the special education teacher complain about this teacher.  The teacher may actually say to you themselves that they just can't get through to a certain type of kid.

If you persistently see that specific groups of students are excelling in a teacher's classroom, you know that the instruction is somewhat effective, but it's not responsive.  In these classrooms, you will see many of the students engaged, but some students not engaged or the same group of students continually asking for assistance.  The teacher probably has one great lesson that works for many students, but not all.



Now, I should provide an aside on lesson plans.  I do not believe that all teachers should be required to submit lesson plans weekly.  What?  Yes, I said it.  All teachers should not be required to submit lesson plans weekly.  Why?  If they have a clear curriculum map and solid units, the lesson plans tend to be redundant, and I think teachers could better spend their time on developing assessments or finding resources - which are crucial to high quality Common Core implementation.  Furthermore, I don't think that reviewing every lesson plan is the best use of administrative time.  I know some people will disagree, but it is my experience that turning in lesson plans has never been the deal breaker in ensuring high quality instruction   (in fact, I know some high performing schools that don't require lesson plans but have great, collaborative cultures and strong curriculum plans that I envy).

Let me know what you think?  Am I missing questions?  Are my diagnoses off?  Is there something I should be considering?  I look forward to your questions and comments.

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