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Session 3. Planning Lessons Together
Objective. Plan one lesson together by anticipating pupils' answers, decide what evidence the team will collect, and run a simple plan-teach-discuss-revise cycle.
Planning together is where a PLC either becomes real or stays a talking group. Teachers who plan a single lesson as a team learn what each of them knows about pupils' mistakes, and they see the same pupils' work afterwards, so the conversation is about the same thing. This lesson adds two things to the key ideas: how to choose a task worth the team's time, and how to hold the discussion after the lesson so that it teaches without judging the teacher who taught it.
Key ideas
Planning together is not dividing the work
- Many groups share out the planning: you do the Grade 5 lessons for Q2, I do Grade 6, and we copy each other's files. It saves time, but nobody learns from it, because the thinking happens alone.
- Planning together means that the team talks about one lesson: the aim, the key task, how pupils will meet it and what evidence you will look at afterwards. One shared lesson, planned well, teaches more than ten copied ones.
- Start with the state textbook: choose one task from it that is key for your shared goal, and plan how to make it work better rather than writing a new lesson from nothing.
Anticipate how pupils will answer
- The strongest step in shared planning is to solve the key task yourselves and then write down the answers pupils are likely to give: a correct one with a reason, a correct one without a reason, a common misconception, a partial idea, and no start.
- For each answer, agree what it tells you about the pupil's thinking and what the teacher will say or ask next. Experienced teachers know many misconceptions; sharing them is where the group's experience becomes useful to everyone.
- Also plan what you will collect: five pieces of pupil work, or the answers of three chosen pupils. Decide this before the lesson, not afterwards.
A cycle you can run with no extra staff
- Plan together (35 minutes) - teach (one lesson, or each teacher in their own class) - collect work or observe three pupils - discuss (30 minutes) - revise the plan for the next class. A guide by Education Northwest describes this research-plan, teach-and-observe, discuss, revise-and-reteach pattern as lesson study.
- When nobody can watch another teacher's lesson because of timetables, all teachers teach the same planned lesson in their own classes and bring five pupil work samples. The discussion is as useful as with a visit.
- Run one such cycle per half-term; do not try to plan every lesson this way.
Make it safe: the lesson belongs to the team
- When a team plans a lesson together, any problem in the lesson is a problem in the plan, not in the person who teaches it. Say this before the first lesson and repeat it in the discussion.
- An observer watches pupils, not the teacher: 'What did Jasur do with the fraction picture?' not 'The teacher spoke too fast.' Pupils' names are used only inside the team and never written in shared notes; use 'pupil A, B, C'.
- Keep a simple paper folder of the team's lessons, with the revised plan and notes on what worked, so that new colleagues can use it next year.
A planning cycle without extra staff
Choose a task worth an hour of planning
Planning together costs time, so choose well. A good task is linked to the shared goal, is known to be difficult for pupils, fits into 45 minutes and can be found in the state textbook or workbook. Ask: where do pupils usually stumble in this unit? Which one question, if pupils answered it well, would tell us they have understood?
Write the aim in pupils' words ('I can explain why one fraction is bigger') and add one hinge question for the middle of the lesson, with answers that show who is ready to go on and who is not. A hinge question lets the teacher change course during the lesson and is the best place to see the misconceptions you anticipated.
The discussion after the lesson
Hold the discussion within two days, while memories are fresh, and keep to 30 minutes. A simple order works: the observer or each teacher first reports facts about the chosen pupils; then the group says what surprised it compared with the anticipation table; then it asks what the plan should change. The teacher who taught speaks last on evaluation, so that colleagues do not wait for a verdict.
Avoid 'Good lesson!' and 'Weak lesson!' alike; both end the learning. Ask 'What did the pupils show us?' If nobody could watch the lesson, each teacher brings five pieces of pupil work from their own class, and the same order is used. The discussion ends with a revised plan and a date for the next class to use it.
Examples from the classroom
A task worth planning
Scene. A Termez team of three Grade 6 language teachers asked where pupils stumble in the unit on text summaries. They chose one task: 'Write the main idea of the text in one sentence.' They solved it themselves in three ways, and found that a long, correct-looking sentence can hide that the pupil did not choose. They wrote the hinge question 'Which of these two sentences is the main idea, and why?'
Insight. Solving the task as a team shows hidden difficulties and gives a hinge question for the lesson.
A hinge question in the middle
Scene. In Samarkand, two Grade 5 teachers used the hinge question 'Which is bigger, 3/5 or 3/8? Hold up A, B or C' on small cards. In one class 14 of 30 cards showed 3/8, so the teacher stopped and used paper strips for five minutes before going on. In the other class 4 of 28 cards were wrong. In the discussion the teachers could compare what each had done at that point.
Insight. A hinge question makes pupils' thinking visible during the lesson, when the teacher can still change what happens.
When nobody can watch
Scene. Four teachers in an Andijan school have lessons at the same time and cannot observe each other. They plan a Grade 4 science lesson on the water cycle together and each teaches it. Each brings five anonymous answers to the question 'What happens to puddles on a sunny day?' Reading 20 answers together, they notice that most pupils say 'the sun drinks the water', and plan a short experiment with a bowl and a cover for the next class.
Insight. A shared lesson and shared pupil work can replace observation when timetables do not allow visits.
Common pitfalls
- Planning so many lessons together that the team burns out after a month.
- Letting the discussion become a verdict on the teacher who taught.
- Observing the whole class and the teacher instead of three chosen pupils.
- Writing the plan on a loose sheet that is lost, instead of putting it in the team's folder.
Plan One Lesson Together
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE Grade 5 fractions task, the one-page shared lesson plan, the anticipation table and the three-pupil observer sheet. In your own school, use a real textbook task. (5 min)
- Alone (6 min): solve the key task in two different ways, as a pupil might.
- Groups of three (20 min): fill the anticipation table with at least five likely answers. For each, agree what it shows and the teacher's next question.
- Same groups (10 min): complete the one-page shared plan: aim in pupil words, the key task, 3 questions, timing of the 45 minutes, and the evidence to collect.
- Second short activity, Watch three pupils (10 min): practise the observer sheet on a 5-minute story read aloud by the facilitator (see Kit): note only what pupils A, B and C do and say.
- Alone (14 min): write your school-based task from the Kit and fix a date for your team's planning meeting.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which anticipated answer surprised the most experienced person in your group?
- What did watching only three pupils show that watching the whole class would hide?
- How will you protect the teacher who teaches the shared lesson from feeling judged?
Reflect
- When did a pupil's answer last surprise you because you had not expected it?
- Which textbook task in your subject would repay an hour of shared planning?
- What would make you comfortable having a colleague in your lesson?
Try it tomorrow
- Choose one textbook task that fits your shared goal and solve it separately in two ways before the team meets.
- Write a hinge question with three answer choices, each linked to a likely misconception, and bring it to the planning meeting.
- Fix the date of the post-lesson discussion before the lesson is taught.
Further reading and links
Plan one lesson together around the answers pupils will give, decide the evidence in advance, and treat any problem as a problem of the plan.