Curriculum-to-lesson planning for secondary teachers

This idea was brought forward by a friend who is a former secondary teacher. The initial provocation: How might we ease the planning of curriculum-aligned lessons that are engaging and build upon student learning across subjects?

Problem

In an interview, I mapped the journey of a teacher’s first year at an Australian secondary school, from getting class allocations to understanding the curriculum expectations and front-loading lesson plans for the year ahead.

Several pressures contribute to the challenge of planning lessons to curriculum standards for teachers:

• Teachers often have to cover multiple subjects and year levels, including those outside their specialty, multiplying their workload.

• Class allocations may be distributed under two weeks before teaching begins, adding time pressure.

• Curriculum standards are outcome-oriented which leaves room for interpretation in lesson planning, causing ambiguity.

Guided by my friend’s experience, we defined the tasks that go into curriculum and lesson planning together. We landed on two distinct workflows tied to key user needs:

1. Planning the lesson sequence before the year begins.

2. Preparing lessons for the week ahead.

<< move table here >>

An early hunch was that first year teachers are likely to feel the pain of lesson planning the hardest, which informed the scope and product positioning.

Solution

For first-year secondary teachers who are handed a wide teaching load and little guidance at the start, SageBox turns curriculum standards into a year of teachable, auditable plans that adapt and carry forward across a career.

<< How >>

Impact

For my assessesment, I developed a Get-Keep-Grow strategy and defined success metrics.