Make Your Planning Time Count: Start With One Outcome and One Piece of Evidence

Picture a typical prep period. You sit down, open your laptop, answer three emails, make copies, start a slide deck, get pulled into a hallway conversation, and walk back into class with half a lesson. You were busy the whole time. You just were not planning.

Tip 23 in the book is about maximizing your planning time: set a regular time and place to plan, plan long term before short term, and start from the standards and the assessments before the daily lessons. The site's Try this tomorrow move turns that into one step: begin your next planning block by defining one student-learning outcome and one piece of evidence. Then build only what is needed to teach toward that outcome.

Why start with the outcome

This is the core idea of backward design, described by Wiggins and McTighe in Understanding by Design (2005). Decide what students should learn, decide what evidence would show they learned it, and only then plan the activities. When you start with activities instead, it is easy to plan a lesson that is engaging and still does not move students toward the goal.

For a new teacher with limited time, backward design is also a time saver. Once the outcome and the evidence are clear, a lot of possible work becomes optional.

Step 1: Give the block one job

Before the block starts, write the one decision it must produce. Examples: "Decide the model response for Thursday's writing task." "Decide the one check for understanding for tomorrow's lab." A block with one job is easier to protect and easier to finish.

Step 2: Name the outcome in student terms

Write what students will be able to do, not what you will cover. "Students will explain one piece of evidence that supports their answer" is something you can see. "Cover chapter 4" is not.

Step 3: Pick one piece of evidence

Decide what students will do or show so you can check learning. Keep it small: a two-sentence explanation, one problem, a sorted set of cards. You need enough to see the pattern across the class, not a full assessment.

Step 4: Build only what serves the outcome

Now plan the materials. Ask of each one: does this help students reach the outcome or show me the evidence? If not, it waits. This is where Tip 37 helps too. Perfection is the enemy of being finished. Aim for purposeful and usable, then improve it after you see how it works.

Step 5: Write down what can wait

End the block by listing what you deliberately set aside. That list keeps those tasks from following you into the next block.

A classroom example

The free Weekly Planning & Reflection tool on the site includes a completed example that shows the whole sequence.

The priority is: students will explain one piece of evidence that supports their answer. The planning block is a 30-minute window on Tuesday afternoon, and its job is to decide on the model response and one check for understanding. The evidence check is that every student submits a two-sentence explanation before independent work. The reset at the end of the week is to keep the model response and shorten the directions before next week's lesson.

Notice what is not there: no new unit, no redesigned slides, no long list. One outcome, one piece of evidence, one decision.

A question to take to your mentor

What is the one decision this planning block must produce? If you cannot answer that before the block starts, ask your mentor to help you narrow it. That conversation is often worth more than the block itself.

Sources

• Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). ASCD.

Site references

• Tip 23: Maximizing Your Planning Time
• Tip 37: Perfection Is the Enemy of Being Finished
• Free resource: Weekly Planning & Reflection, including its completed example
• Book: Crush It from the Start: 50 Tips for New Teachers by Dr. Matthew Rhoads, Dr. Samantha Fecich, Dr. Casey Jakubowski, and Dr. Kevin Leichtman (SchoolRubric Inc., 2022)