There is, sadly, no silver bullet when it comes to educational inclusion in an international context - but going “lean” is as close as it gets for me.

It’s a concept I already knew from the UK after reading the book Lean Lesson Planning by Peps Mccrea. However, since moving to an international school in the Philippines with both students with special educational needs (SEN) and learners with English as an additional language (EAL), I’ve found it to be a real game-changer.

The idea is simple but it requires deep thinking and effort - take away all the unnecessary elements from the classroom and focus solely on that which really matters, amplifying those core components and diminishing everything extraneous.

Planning ‘lean’ lessons

Here are a few of my interpretations and implementations of the philosophy.

1. Reduce PowerPoint complexity

I previously designed PowerPoints packed with information, quotes and graphics. For EAL students or those with SEN this can be far too much to process.

I made a simple change to the process - I try to include just one thing on each slide. A single sentence in a large font is going to “punch” more than a title with a paragraph, a supporting graphic and some questions.

Straight away I noticed students were finding it easier to process what they need to know, filtering out the non-essential - and, even better, the content is easier for my EAL students to translate, too.

2. Clear instructions

Another small adjustment I made to my presentations is to place a small notepad graphic in the top-right corner to indicate when students need to write something down.

This means they don’t spend ages writing everything down and can pay more attention to what I am saying - and also have lean exercise books to review for revision and homework, rather than something laden with endless notes.

3. Cull your activities

I used to think a lesson needed to be jam-packed with activities (a cut-and-stick task, a jigsaw puzzle, a diorama), but if students spend a whole lesson glueing and still can’t tell back to you what you taught them 30 minutes ago, they haven’t learned the lesson.

But in his book, Mccrea advocates for an approach that “begins with the end in mind” - thinking deeply about what you want students to leave with at the end of the lesson.

Cutting back my activities and focusing on quick and simple recall tasks and an “I do, we do, you do” approach to independent work means students with SEN know exactly what it is I need them to know and understand, and EAL students no longer need to process my verbal instructions because I hardly have to give any any more.

4. Trim your feedback

I’ve also worked hard to trim down in-class feedback. For example, where before I would go through the answer to every question in a classroom test, I now only focus on the lowest-scoring questions.

This means everyone is engaged because we’re talking through questions everybody needs help with. We’re all practising the topic again post-feedback with our mini whiteboards. We’re all focused on the questions we need to be focused on - instead of ploughing through them all, we’ve gone lean and amplified the ones that matter.

5. Make minimal adaptations

In a paper co-authored by Mccrea, Inclusive Teaching - Securing Strong Educational Experiences and Outcomes for All Students, he advocates for making the minimum adaptations necessary and avoiding issues associated with traditional differentiation.

For example, in the past I often produced separate lessons for students with SEN and EAL. While well-meant this actually lowered expectations and removed students from the main learning environment - the opposite of inclusion.

The alternative? Go lean. Model a process again to the whole class or use a different analogy, provide sentence starters on the whiteboard to make sure everybody can get started before circulating and offering personalised feedback.

You’ll save yourself invaluable planning time and, ultimately, you’ll be cultivating a more inclusive classroom for our students with SEN and those with EAL.

Well worth the effort

Since doing this I’ve had numerous students (and parents) say they welcome the lean approach and it has helped to improve their learning outcomes.

While a lean approach may not work in all classrooms, there is something very powerful about pushing yourself to plan lessons from the premise of the minimum amount of information required to deliver what’s needed, and build from there.

Doing that may involve work to uproot deeply ingrained habits of resource production, verbal delivery and other classroom practices. But if we want to deliver the best for all pupils, it’s effort that is well worth making.

Adam Jones is a secondary leader in a British curriculum international school in the Philippines

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