The 3Ps Framework That Makes Lessons Stick

Renata Salas

Welcome to the show, everybody! I'm Renata Salas, and I'm here with Colin Whitfield. And Colin, I need to share something that completely saved my prep time yesterday. I was looking at a lesson plan for my third period ELA class, and it just felt so... flat. Like a plate of unsalted broccoli. [laughs] Then I remembered this piece by an educator named Kris Leverton, published in Edutopia back on May 5th, 2023, called "A Unit Design Framework for Teachers." He lays out this incredibly simple mental checklist: People, Places, Problems. That's it. Three Ps. [excited]

Colin Whitfield

Three Ps. [thoughtfully] Right, so it's not some massive, state-mandated curriculum overhaul that requires a three-day professional development seminar and a binders-full-of-worksheets situation?

Renata Salas

Exactly! It's literally a five-minute mental filter. You look at whatever you're teaching tomorrow morning and ask: Is there a human voice here? Is there a physical location? And is there an actual problem to solve? Leverton's whole point is that we often teach concepts in this sterile, placeless vacuum, and then we wonder why the kids are staring at the clock. [short pause]

Colin Whitfield

Well, the research on this is actually quite robust. If you look at John Hattie’s Visible Learning synthesis, authentic tasks—which is essentially what Leverton is structuring here—consistently outperform routine worksheet-style work for both student engagement and long-term retention. It hooks into place-based and project-based learning. When you ground a task in a real place or a real human struggle, the brain registers it as "information worth keeping," rather than just "stuff I need to memorize for Friday's quiz." [matter-of-fact]

Renata Salas

Yes! And the magic happens when you stack all three Ps together. Leverton gives this great example of a Grade 5 biodiversity unit. Usually, that's just: "Pick an animal, research it on Wikipedia, write a report." Bor-ing. But under this framework, it became: how do we help a local nature society—that's the People—protect native bird species—the Problem—right here in our own county forest preserve—the Place. [excited]

Colin Whitfield

A local nature society. [matter-of-fact] See, that immediately shifts the students from being passive consumers of information to active investigators. They aren't just writing a report for you, Renata—they're solving a problem for real people in a place they might actually visit on the weekend. [warmly]

Renata Salas

Right! And it is so easy to adapt this to what you're already doing. Take my middle school ELA class. We have to do argumentative writing. Normally, the prompt is something generic like, "Should school uniforms be mandatory? Support your claim with two sources." [sighs] The kids hate it. I hate grading it. So yesterday, I ran the Three Ps checklist on it. People, Places, Problems. [frustrated]

Colin Whitfield

And let me guess, the original prompt scored... zero out of three? [chuckles]

Renata Salas

Oh, completely blank! [laughs] It was a total ghost town. So, I did a quick redesign. The Problem? Our district's actual, highly debated cell phone policy. The Place? Our school cafeteria, where they just banned phones during lunch. The People? I had them write their arguments as formal letters addressed directly to our Student Council president and the principal, who actually promised to read the top three letters. [excited]

Colin Whitfield

That's brilliant. You've taken the exact same standard—argumentative writing—and by anchoring it to the cafeteria and the principal, you've made the stakes real. The practical takeaway for teachers here is so simple: score your lesson for tomorrow as Strong, Weak, or Missing for each P. If one of them is missing, just patch that one hole. You don't have to rewrite the whole curriculum. [calm]

Renata Salas

Exactly. Just fix the weakest P. Leverton shares a couple of other great examples of this in his Edutopia piece. In a Grade 4 math unit on data and graphing, instead of using a textbook dataset, the kids went to a local beach—the Place—collected plastic waste—the Problem—and then presented their graphs to the local beach cleanup committee—the People. Or a Grade 7 STEM class that designed physical bird deterrents for their own school kitchen garden. [reflective]

Colin Whitfield

The kitchen garden. [reflective] Again, a highly specific place. And you know, if you're sitting there thinking, "I don't have time to brainstorm these local connections for tomorrow morning," this is where AI is actually incredibly useful.

Renata Salas

Oh, tell me you have a prompt for this, Colin. [excited]

Colin Whitfield

I do! You can copy and paste your current lesson plan into Claude, ChatGPT, MagicSchool, or Brisk, and literally write: "Score this lesson as Strong, Weak, or Missing for Kris Leverton's People, Places, and Problems framework. Then, generate three no-prep additions to strengthen the weakest P." [deliberate]

Renata Salas

[gasps] That is genius! It takes thirty seconds, and suddenly you have three concrete ideas to make your lesson memorable. It moves the kids from just being compliant to actually caring. [excited]

Colin Whitfield

Precisely. It turns schoolwork into real work. [warmly]

Renata Salas

Well, that is our quick take for today. Try scoring your lesson for tomorrow morning—People, Places, Problems—and see what happens. We'll see you next time! [brightly]

Colin Whitfield

Cheerio! [laughs]