Thoughtful planning communicates care

Classrooms are unpredictable environments, and students have diverse and specific needs. For a teacher to be able to respond in the moment, they need to be well prepared in advance.

Visualizing in detail what might unfold in a lesson can become tangled, given the many variables at play, and there are only so many ideas that one teacher can generate on their own. Moreover, being diverted by the mundane details needed in completing templated lesson plans only adds to the cognitive load.

Noticing dialogically scaffolds the planning process by reminding, suggesting, tracking, and keeping the focus on the students and their learning.

Meanwhile, the plan is taken care of automatically.

Scaffolding planning

Noticing safely and securely…

stores any knowledge that you tell it about you and your classes, the curriculum, your students and your context, and uses these to fill in the blanks in your plans;
aids you in placing yourself in the future context of your lesson, and visualizing what might unfold, and what you might do in response;
offers additional strategies for differentiation and ways to apply the principles of Universal Design for Learning;
takes on the burden of writing up a structured lesson plan for you, which you can then edit, finalise, print and share.

How does it feel?

In my next lesson, I'll be teaching English to Year 2 Australian students. They'll be learning about how to make inferences.

Let's get the ball rolling by thinking about what your Year 2 students already know about making inferences. Have they done any activities or lessons related to this before? What kind of prior knowledge or skills do they bring to the table?

They will know about inferencing informally, as a skill they use on a day-to-day basis (e.g. when seeing viewing content online).

Great! And are there any specific students or groups in your class that might need special consideration when it comes to differentiating the lesson? For example, do you have any high achievers, English language learners, or students with different learning needs that we should keep in mind?

Sarah and David are high achievers. Marko and Klara are ESL students. Thom doesn't write yet and tends to be restless.

Got it, thanks for sharing that! So, let's visualize the start of your lesson together. How do you plan to initially engage your students? Imagine you're standing in front of the class—what will you say to hook their interest and get them excited about making inferences?

[provides initial ideas]

Nice, that sounds like a fun and engaging activity! Let’s dig a bit deeper into how this will play out. How will you get their attention at the very start? Maybe a hook or an attention-grabbing statement? Also, how do you plan to organize the pairs and manage transitions smoothly?

[provides ideas]

That's a good plan! Now, how will you know when your students are ready to move on from this part of the lesson? Is there something specific you'll be looking or listening for?

[provides ideas]

Sounds good to me! You’ve mentioned a lot of engaging activities, but just to be super thorough, are there any other activities for the main body of your lesson that you haven’t mentioned yet? Or perhaps any additional ways to differentiate so as to support different learners, especially for Sarah, David, Marko, Klara, and Thom?

Practice

Reflect

Investigate

Contact us

We are always looking for new partners and collaborators. If you are interested in using Noticing in your educational context, or if you would like to contribute to our research, please get in touch.

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