Designing Instruction: The Key to Effective Teaching

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Designing Instruction The Key to Effective
Teaching

• Peg Smith
• University of Pittsburgh
• Teachers Development Group
• Leadership Seminar on Mathematics Professional
  Development
• February 12, 2009

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Overview

• Establish the importance of lesson planning
• Compare and discuss two lesson plans
• Read and discuss the Darcy Dunn vignette
• Consider the benefits of the TTLP as a planning
  tool
• Brainstorm ways to help teachers engage in more
  thorough and thoughtful planning

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Why Lesson Planning?

• The effectiveness of a lesson depends
  significantly on the care with which the lesson
  plan is prepare (Brahier, 2000).
• Good planning shoulders much of the burden of
  teaching by replacing on-fly-decision making
  during a lesson with careful investigation into
  the what and how of instruction before the lesson
  is taught (Stigler Hiebert, 1999, p.156).
• During the planning phase, teachers make
  decisions that affect instruction dramatically.
  They decide what to teach, how they are going to
  teach, how to organize the classroom, what
  routines to use, and how to adapt instruction for
  individuals (Fennema Franke, 1992, p. 156).
• .

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Comparing Two Lesson Plans

• Review the lesson plans (and related tasks) for
  Paige Morris and Keith Nichols
• Compare the two plans and consider
• How are the plans the same/different?
• How do you think the differences are likely to
  impact the teachers enactment of the lesson?

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The Darcy Dunn Vignette

• Read the Darcy Dunn Vignette
• Consider the following
• What do you think Darcy Dunn might have done to
  prepare for this lesson? What evidence can you
  find in the vignette that supports your claims?

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How Can We Help Teachers Plan Lessons More Like
Darcy?
Thoughtful and Thorough Planning
No Planning
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Learning from the JapaneseWhat it Takes to Plan
a Lesson

• Anticipating solutions, thoughts, and responses
  that students might develop as they struggle with
  the problem
• Generating questions that could be asked to
  promote student thinking during the lesson, and
  considering the kinds of guidance that could be
  given to students who showed one or another types
  of misconception in their thinking
• Determining how to end the lesson so as to
  advance students understanding
• Stigler
  Hiebert, 1997

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Thinking Through A Lesson Protocol (page 134 of
white handout)
white

• Review the TTLP
• What aspects of the protocol stand out?

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Thinking Through A Lesson Protocol (page 134 of
white handout)
white

• Makes teaching more controllable (and
  successful) by limiting the amount of
  improvisation needed
• Supports the enactment of cognitively challenging
  mathematical tasks
• Shifts the focus from the teacher to the students

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Brainstorm

• How can we help teachers improve their capacity
  to plan (and enact) lessons that support
  students learning?
• Can tools, such as the TTLP help in doing this
  work?

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Darcy Dunn

• I follow this model when planning my lessons.
  Certainly not to the extent of writing down this
  detailed lesson plan, but in my mind I go through
  its progression. Internalizing what it stands
  for really makes you a better facilitator.

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Kelsey Evans

• Coming up with good questions before the lesson
  helps me keep a high-level task at a high level,
  instead of pushing kids toward a particular
  solution path and giving them an opportunity to
  practice procedures. When kids call me over and
  say they dont know how to do something (which
  they often do), it helps if I have a ready-made
  response that gives them structure to keep
  working on the problem without doing it for them.
  This way all kids have a point of entry to the
  problem.

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Zachary Carson

• Sometimes its very time consuming, trying to
  write these lesson plans, but its very helpful.
  It really helps the lesson go a lot smoother and
  even not having it in front of me, I think it
  really helps me focus my thinking, which then
  it kind of helps me focus my students
  thinking, which helps us get to an objective and
  leads to a better lesson.

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Paige Morris

• Were graphing systems of linear inequalities so
  to understand what theI guess, shaded region
  means.

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Keith Nichols

• Im just interested in them realizing that
  salaries are going to go up then down. The
  commission is going to go up. Just kind of
  develop a little intuition about exponents and
  thatseven though were...even though were not
  officially covering exponential functions, were
  just doing the operations of the properties of
  exponents, Im just trying to develop a little
  intuition with exponential functions.
• Were basically working on applications of some
  of the stuff theyveapplication of some of the
  properties theyve learnedSo basically I wanted
  them to...its a little tricky to figure out
  exactly what the next days salary is so, I mean,
  thats just kind of a working through the
  problem, that really doesnt have anything to do
  with the mathematics behind it but once they get
  the worksheet started, once they get the pattern
  right Im just looking for them to be able to
  generalize thecommission based on the number of
  days.