Thinking about lesson or unit planning may mean changing how we introduce or conclude a lesson. It could include planning in silence if we want students to have time to reflect and wonder. It can be decisions about what to include or exclude, such as including a faith connection or excluding detail in order to highlight a new emphasis. It could include the pace we set and allowing time for slow contemplation or group discussion.

  • Teachers can allow time for students to attend to a work of art rather than merely glancing at it. This can mean returning to look at it more than once during a lesson as a way of respecting the artist. They can plan time in an English lesson for different ways of reading a text, including slow reading, so that students may come to love a text.
  • Teachers can change their introductions and endings, introducing a painting as a visitor from another country or concluding an art class by having students sit before a painting and letting the painting have the last word, so to speak.

These examples show that incorporating a new perspective at the planning stage is more likely to make it happen during class.