Designing Instruction: The Key to Effective Teaching

1. Designing Instruction: The Key to Effective Teaching Peg Smith University of Pittsburgh Teachers Development Group Leadership Seminar on Mathematics Professional Development February 12, 2009

2. 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

3. 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). .

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. Paige Morris Keith Nichols Darcy Dunn? How Can We Help Teachers Plan Lessons “More Like Darcy”? Thoughtful and Thorough Planning No Planning

7. Learning from the Japanese:What 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

8. Thinking Through A Lesson Protocol (page 134 of white handout) white • Review the TTLP What aspects of the protocol stand out?

9. 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

10. 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?

11. 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.

12. 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 don’t 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.

13. Zachary Carson Sometimes it’s very time consuming, trying to write these lesson plans, but it’s 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.

15. Paige Morris We’re graphing systems of linear inequalities so to understand what the…I guess, shaded region means.

16. Keith Nichols I’m 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 that’s…even though we’re...even though we’re not officially covering exponential functions, we’re just doing the operations of the properties of exponents, I’m just trying to develop a little intuition with exponential functions. We’re basically working on applications of some of the stuff they’ve…application of some of the properties they’ve learned…So basically I wanted them to...it’s a little tricky to figure out exactly what the next day’s salary is so, I mean, that’s just kind of a working through the problem, that really doesn’t have anything to do with the mathematics behind it but once they get the worksheet started, once they get the pattern right I’m just looking for them to be able to generalize the…commission based on the number of days.