Planning Best Practices
Planning Best Practices
Start with the learning destination
Identify the grade-level standard and intended learning.
Clarify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the lesson or unit.
Review the culminating task or assessment before planning daily instruction.
Internalize the HQIM
Study the unit before focusing on individual lessons.
Understand how lessons build toward unit outcomes.
Identify the purpose of key texts, tasks, questions, and routines.
Annotate the curriculum instead of rewriting it.
Plan from student evidence
Review recent assessment data and student work.
Identify strengths, unfinished learning, and likely misconceptions.
Use evidence to determine scaffolds, grouping, and instructional emphasis.
Anticipate student thinking
Complete or analyze important student tasks before teaching.
Identify what a strong response should include.
Predict likely responses, errors, and misconceptions.
Prepare questions that will move students toward deeper understanding.
Maintain grade-level rigor
Preserve the intent and complexity of HQIM.
Provide access through scaffolds rather than replacing rigorous work with easier tasks.
Plan supports that help students successfully engage with grade-level content.
Plan for student thinking and ownership
Make sure students do the majority of the cognitive work.
Include opportunities to read, write, discuss, solve, explain, and justify.
Clarify success criteria so students know what quality work looks like.
Build in checks for understanding
Decide in advance where evidence of learning will be collected.
Use questions and tasks that reveal understanding, not just participation.
Plan ways to gather evidence from all students.
Prepare to respond
Decide what you will do if students demonstrate mastery, partial understanding, or significant misunderstanding.
Plan possible scaffolds, reteaching, extension, and regrouping.
Use evidence from today’s lesson to inform tomorrow’s planning.