SMARTER360: Planning for Course, Unit, and Lesson Design
Teachers make many decisions about what to teach, how ideas should connect, what kinds of thinking students need, and how to determine whether students truly understand.
SMARTER360 helps teachers focus instruction on what matters most. Teachers connect standards, content, reasoning, instruction, and assessment so that students can see how important ideas fit together, and teachers can see what students understand.
Teachers and instructional teams use SMARTER360 to distinguish critical, supporting, and extension content. They then plan how students will understand, reason with, and use the critical content. The result is a coherent learning experience in which course, unit, and lesson decisions reinforce one another.
SMARTER360 grew from nearly 50 years of research and development associated with the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM™). It carries forward a central SIM principle: exposure to content is not enough. Students benefit from explicit instruction that helps them understand important information, reason with that information, use effective learning strategies, and become more independent learners.
SMARTER360 is organized around seven recurring planning steps used at the course, unit, and lesson levels:
Step
S Shape Critical Questions
M Map Critical Content
A Analyze Learning Demands
R Reach Enhancement Decisions
T Teach for Strategic Learning
E Evaluate Evidence of Learning and Teaching
R Revisit Learning Outcomes
Because SMARTER360 is a cycle rather than a checklist, teachers continually revisit earlier decisions based on student learning data.
One System Across Three Levels
The same planning process is used at three interconnected levels:
- Course Planning establishes the year’s direction through Course Critical Questions, Critical Concepts, and Course Maps.
- Unit Planning focuses learning around 3–5 Unit Critical Questions, content maps, and lesson architecture.
- Lesson Planning translates unit goals into daily instruction with lesson-specific questions, content maps, and targeted learning supports.
This alignment helps ensure that lessons, units, and courses work together to support meaningful learning.
Critical Questions Drive Learning
At the heart of SMARTER360 are Critical Questions that focus learning on what students must understand and be able to do. These standards-aligned questions guide instruction and encourage deeper thinking. They also give students a clear purpose for learning. Instead of isolated factors, students use information and reasoning to answer an important question. Each lesson connects its Critical Question to a Main Idea Answer that states the understanding students are expected to develop.
Students often struggle when information is presented as a collection of separate facts. SMARTER360 uses visual tools such as content maps, graphic organizers, and instructional devices to make relationships among ideas visible. These tools help students recognize structures such as cause and effect, comparison, sequence, argument and evidence, and decision making. Students learn not only the content but also how the information is organized and how to reason with it. As students discuss, write, organize information, and answer Critical Questions, teachers gain visible evidence of how students are thinking. Teachers can determine whether students understand the relationships among ideas rather than only whether they remember individual facts.
Teachers use SMARTER360 to anticipate learning demands and possible barriers before instruction begins. They consider the complexity of the content, the reasoning required, and the supports that students may need to participate successfully in rigorous grade-level learning.
SMARTER360 combines:
- Organizer Lessons to build understanding of concepts, relationships, and the overall structure of the content
- Critical Content Lessons to provide explicit instruction in essential knowledge and reasoning
- Support Lessons to teach strategies, routines, and learning processes that students can use with greater independence
Teachers select and combine these lesson types according to the Critical Question, the content, and their students’ needs. Lessons designed to achieve these goals ensure that all students can access rigorous grade-level content.
SMARTER360 helps teachers use evidence of learning to make instructional decisions. Student work, classroom discussion, formative assessments, and performance tasks help teachers determine whether students understand the critical content, recognize important relationships, and use the reasoning required by the Critical Question. Teachers use this evidence to adjust instruction, clarify misunderstandings, address learning gaps, and strengthen future planning. The evidence also supports collaborative planning by helping instructional teams discuss shared learning goals while responding to their students' needs.
SMARTER360 with Other SIM Instructional Tools
SIM Content Enhancement Routines (CERs) are validated planning and teaching routines, including the Course, Unit, and Lesson Organizer Routines from which SMARTER360 grew. Higher Order Thinking and Reasoning Routines (HOTR) are a strand of CERs that provide validated procedures and teaching devices for comparison, cause and effect, question exploration, decision making, argumentation, and other forms of reasoning.
SMARTER360 places the use of these routines within a larger planning cycle that connects course, unit, and lesson decisions. When a matching routine is available, teachers can use it within the SMARTER360 process. When a matching routine is not available, the lesson-level guidance provides a general procedure for explicitly teaching the reasoning students need to answer a course, unit, or lesson Critical Question.
By aligning planning, instruction, support, and evaluation within a single framework, SMARTER360 helps teachers create learning experiences that are focused, coherent, strategic, and responsive to student needs.
Access to Implementation Support
Explore the SMARTER360 Guidebook. The SMARTER360 Guidebook provides practical support for applying the instructional cycle to course, unit, and lesson design.
Teachers and instructional teams will find step-by-step procedures, planning tools, editable templates, completed examples, rubrics, and guidance for using evidence of learning to make instructional decisions.
Additional implementation support is available through the comprehensive SMARTER360 Instructional Cycle “TeacherVille” resource website. TeacherVille provides in-depth explanations, examples, rubrics, procedures, and Cue–Do–Review guidance.
Author(s): B. Keith Ben-Hanania Lenz, Janis A. Bulgren, and Jocelyn Washburn
Publication and Purchasing Information: University of Kansas, Center for Research on Learning / KU CRL Online Store
Associated Publications:
Ben-Hanania Lenz, B. K., Bulgren, J. A., & Washburn, J. (2026). SMARTER360 guidebook: Planning for course, unit, and lesson design. University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
Lenz, B. K., & Deshler, D. D. (2004). Teaching content to all: Evidence-based inclusive practices in middle and secondary schools. KU ScholarWorks. https://hdl.handle.net/1808/36234
Washburn, J. (2017). Teaching secondary students literacy skills for content learning. In J. Bakken (Ed.), Classrooms: Academic content and behavior strategy instruction for students with and without disabilities. Hauppauge, NY: NOVA Science Publishers.