Small Steps to Simplify Lessons Can Have a Big Impact in the Classroom

Cognitive overload occurs when “the situation in which the demands placed on a person by mental work (the cognitive load) are greater than the person’s mental abilities can cope with” (American Psychological Association, 2018). Although teaching can be a very physical job, given all the standing and moving around, the primary challenge is mental, considering how much thought must be devoted to the tiniest of details.

A lesson plan that went well in first period crashes in third. Why? Students have not completed the assignment that today’s class hinged upon, so now what? More than half of the class failed the district assessment, so does that mean that concepts must be retaught and remediation must occur, which in turn will throw off pacing?

Compounding matters, the daily life of a teacher is divided into a series of endless crossroads, interruptions to learning both great and small, and complex student challenges that require nuanced differentiation. It is simply too easy to become overwhelmed. According to research on decision making, teachers make 1,500 decisions each 8-hour workday, which amounts to about 3 per minute (Klein, 2021)—second only to air traffic controllers, it is often said.

How can anyone sustain such a heavy cognitive load without experiencing eventual burnout? The answer lies in being strategic. If we think about when most of these 1,500 decisions occur, many of them are made on the fly during instructional time and cannot be predicted. However, a large number are rooted in thought processes that occur before students enter the classroom doors—namely, in planning time.

When teachers engage in lesson planning, the focus tends to lean on the what of instruction, or more specifically, the content that will be presented. Although knowing what to teach (and how to teach it) is a foundational tenet of effective practice, focusing primarily on what is essentially activity-driven instruction in the form of a series of tasks results in the feeling of planning for survival rather than for more intentional outcomes. Too often, the phrase “get through” is applied to curriculum, which is seen as something onerous to be tolerated. Teachers get stuck in a vicious cycle of spinning their wheels, planning one week after another and watching as some lessons succeed while others fail.

The actual experience of communicating learning to students in a way that results in growth becomes something of a game of luck rather than a strategic endeavor. Teachers who plan for instruction in this limited way might have a series of habits that looks something like this:

1. Plan a lesson.
2. Teach the lesson.
3. Give students a quiz or test on the content within a few days.
4. Plan the next lesson.

Although nothing is inherently wrong with a cycle of planning and assessment, the subtleties of approach matter. Teachers who plan instruction from day to day and administer assessments without an overarching sense of larger purpose will always feel like they are never quite catching up. Furthermore, students who are not successful in progressing toward a clear learning goal will fall further and further behind.

Suppose there were a different pathway, one in which common planning myths were set aside and replaced with more effective processes. There is no magic bullet for lesson planning. Any meaningful change to teaching practice comes not with seismic change but with small, gradual habits that shift perspective and process. Implementing detail-oriented adjustments to practice begins with awareness, which is the purpose behind identifying myths and juxtaposing them against the reality of how to plan most effectively. To continue making progress in planning with the right priorities in mind, it is imperative to look at one of the most important (and yet most frequently ignored) assets to design: student voice.

The Nitty-Gritty

With all the work that goes into planning instruction, seeing it go awry in execution is a painful if relatable experience. A frequent disconnect occurs between the outcomes teachers intend and actual student performance. Consider a middle school life science class that is learning about the food chain. The teacher has spent a lot of time showing students instructional videos and has provided well-constructed materials to explain concepts such as “consumer” and “food web.”

When students complete a quiz to demonstrate their understanding, a large percentage of them confuse the terms or cannot explain them correctly. The teacher despairs, concluding that nobody was listening to the lesson or paying attention. But is that what actually happened? Perhaps the assessment shows a lack of understanding, which points toward a flaw somewhere in the process of instruction. The question is, how can this lack of success be attributed through the proper use of data rather than intuitively?

The answer lies in how much we seek to understand the student perspective on learning. Much of the time, what seems clear to teachers is anything but to kids, for a few different reasons. First, without realizing it, teachers use a lot of “edujargon,” defaulting to terms such as benchmark and scaffolding that are only meaningful to those who actively practice instruction.

Second, much of what is communicated to students about their work is teacher-facing rather than student-facing; the audience of the content delivery might be students, but teachers use language that is clearer to themselves rather than to kids with phrases such as “Students have engaged in structured discourse.” Instead, using kid-friendly language like “You have had meaningful conversations about the topic” is far more effective.

Finally, although it might seem obvious, the established planning processes that most teachers use do not incorporate student voice. True, students might share their thoughts about their learning in unstructured ways, but how is their feedback provided before the teacher finalizes instructional plans? For the most part, this missing piece creates a chasm between a teacher’s perception of how the class is working and students’ points of view.

Even something as seemingly simple as framing a daily objective can become misconstrued, and students who do not understand why they are doing something remain confused. On the other hand, teachers who see framing a lesson as a series of good habits that are reinforced daily lead with transparency. Consider the teacher who engages in the following habits at the start of each class period:

1. Post an objective that explains the learning in language that kids can understand.
2. Ask students to look at the objective and paraphrase its meaning.
3. Explain how the itinerary for the day will support the objective.
4. Begin the learning with a tie-in to prior knowledge.

To effectively close the door on miscommunication of a lesson’s overall purpose, it is essential to make the effort to communicate goals to students in a way that they can understand. Students might not have the necessary expertise to plan instruction (nor should they), but they can give teachers more information about how they learn. 

From Small but Mighty: How Everyday Habits Add Up to More Manageable and Confident Teaching (pp. 39–42), by M. Plotinsky, 2024, ASCD. Copyright 2024 by ASCD. Reprinted with permission.