Lean lesson planning: a practical approach to doing less and achieving more in the classroom

Mccrea’s approach in this book is to help teachers make better use of their time. Utilising the Pareto Principle – that suggests in many situations in life, 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the inputs – he argues that some aspects of teaching and planning have more impact than others. Teachers, he suggests, need to work out which parts of their lessons have the most impact, and then focus on developing those.

Drawing from the work of Dylan Wiliam, John Hattie and Doug Lemov the book is structured through ‘acts’. Starting with an overview of the ‘lean’ approach, what this means and the habits and mindsets teachers can form to help them in achieving one, Mccrea moves on to outline strategies teachers can use on an individual and collective basis to improve planning. 

His tips include backwards design – planning with the end in mind; shortest path – developing activities that get pupils to the end point via the most direct route; and exit assessment – giving pupils a piece of paper with a few simple questions on to hand back as they leave the classroom, a quick way of finding out who knows what.