Affirm, Reflect, Expand: The Logic Behind PlanningPeriod.io

Too often, education feels disconnected from students’ realities. The lessons, the textbooks, even the examples used in class can feel like they’re made for someone else. That disconnect is a direct result of an education system that prioritizes high-stakes testing over meaningful-stakes learning—reducing education to memorization instead of fostering curiosity, critical thinking, and in-context application.

At Planning Period, we believe that community is the compass for learning—we pursue knowledge in order to make our lives, our families' lives, and our communities better. This pursuit drives our logic model, a simple but powerful framework that helps teachers create lesson materials that are rooted in students’ experiences, reflect the issues their communities care about, and expand their understanding of the world.

In this blog post, we're going to dive deeper into the Planning Period Logic Model and the evidence base that supports it. This practical approach is built to make planning easier for teachers while ensuring students feel recognized, engaged, and empowered. Planning Period’s AI-powered, community-centered tools help educators source, create, adapt or extend curricular materials in order to make learning personal, meaningful, and deeply connected to students’ lives.

Affirm: Leveraging Community and Cultural Assets

Every student enters the classroom with a wealth of knowledge—drawn from their lived experiences, languages, cultural backgrounds, and communities. However, traditional education often fails to acknowledge or build upon these assets, treating them as separate from academic learning. At Planning Period, we see students’ existing knowledge as an engine for deeper learning. By affirming students’ cultural and linguistic assets, educators can create learning environments where students feel seen, valued, and capable of academic excellence.

What does this look like in practice?

• Encouraging students to use home language and cultural points of reference as tools for understanding new concepts.
• Incorporating local knowledge and traditions into classroom discussions.
• Designing  learning experiences that start with what students already know and expands outward.

The Research Behind It: There is an abundance of research supporting the power of recognizing and leveraging students’ cultural strengths. We believe that  The Funds of Knowledge framework put forth by  Moll and González demonstrate that when students’ home and community knowledge is brought into the classroom, engagement and comprehension significantly increase. Similarly, studies on Disaggregate Instruction (Brown, 2011) emphasize that allowing students to process content using familiar linguistic structures before introducing academic vocabulary leads to stronger conceptual fluency.

When it comes to STEM education, tailoring instruction to language use can have a big impact—up to 1.86 when using everyday language and 1.34 with scientific language, showing the power of accessible communication (Brown, 2011).

By Affirming students’ already existing wealth of knowledge,  teachers ensure that students can build upon their own knowledge rather than feel disconnected from learning. It’s the first step in transforming education from something externally imposed to something personally meaningful.

Reflect: Connecting Learning to Real-World Challenges

Once students see their knowledge as valuable, the next step is helping them apply it to real-world contexts. The Reflect phase of the Planning Period Logic Model encourages students to connect their learning to the issues, challenges, and opportunities that exist within their own communities.

What does this look like in practice?

• Students analyzing local environmental concerns and proposing sustainability solutions.
• A history lesson framed around understanding neighborhood changes and civic decision-making.
• Math lessons applied to critical community data, local business planning, or ongoing infrastructure projects.

The Research Behind It: Studies on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy by Gloria Ladson-Billings demonstrate that learning tied to the issues that our students experience and talk about in their daily lives fosters rigorous academic knowledge application, cultural competence, and critical consciousness—equipping them mental models to challenge societal inequities while developing a sense of agency.

Additionally, research on the Transfer of Social Knowledge (Álvarez-Martínez-Iglesias) highlights that students are more likely to retain and apply knowledge beyond the classroom when they see real-world connections in their learning​.

"Key competencies must be transferable and multifunctional, equipping students to solve problems, achieve different objectives, and navigate real-world situations. In Geography and History, this means students should actively construct knowledge through interaction with their environment, while teachers create learning experiences centered on their interests—ensuring a truly effective learning process." (Álvarez-Martínez-Iglesias, 1992)

By implementing Reflect, teachers help transform rigorous learning into applicable and timely opportunities for students to enact agency in their communities.

Expand: Developing a Global Mindset

The final phase of the Planning Period Logic Model, Expand, encourages students to see their academic knowledge and their understanding of their communities as part of larger global contexts. By making these connections, students develop a sense of agency as global citizens, recognizing how local issues relate to worldwide challenges.

What does this look like in practice?

• A student learning about local water conservation efforts compares their town’s policies to international water sustainability initiatives.
• A student analyzing historical migration patterns in their region researches similar trends in other countries and their socio-economic impacts.
• A student examining local businesses’ supply chains explores global trade and its ethical implications.

The Research Behind It: Research on Abstract Narrative Construction (Immordino-Yang) suggests that linking personal and global contexts deepens learning by strengthening cognitive and emotional connections. Additionally, studies on Critically Relevant Civics (Clay and Rubin) show that fostering civic engagement on both local and global levels enhances student agency and motivation.

"Adolescents who interpret social scenarios concretely tend to feel more positive, satisfied in their relationships, and comfortable with diverse friendships. Meanwhile, those who think more abstractly show stronger memory, creative flexibility, and self-directed executive functioning" (Immordino-Yang,2024)

In the Expand Phase, students' learning for their immediate context helps them developing the skills to engage with the world at large.

Learning That Lasts

Education should not be about rote memorization to succeed at high-stress testing that is disconnected from students' reality; it should be about making learning meaningful, empowering, and deeply useful in our lives. With our AI-powered platform as the vehicle, we offer the Affirm, Reflect, Expand model as a shift in how we design instruction to ensure every student sees themselves in their learning, connects their knowledge to the world around them, and develops the agency to shape both their present and their future.

We’re just getting started in this journey to scale Community Centered AI. If you’re passionate about designing instruction to affirm, reflect, and expand students’ lived experiences, follow our blog for ongoing insights, resources, and strategies. Together, we can make education more relevant, engaging, and impactful for every student.

Work Cited

Brown, Bryan A. “Isn’t That Just Good Teaching? Disaggregate Instruction and the Language Identity Dilemma.” Journal of Science Teacher Education, vol. 22, no. 8, 2011, pp. 679–704. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-011-9256-x.

Clay, Kevin L., and Beth C. Rubin. “I Look Deep into This Stuff Because It’s a Part of Me: Toward a Critically Relevant Civics Education.” Theory and Research in Social Education, vol. 47, no. 4, 2019, pp. 456–479. Taylor & Francis, https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2019.1680466.

Gotlieb, Rebecca J. M., Xiao-Fei Yang, and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. “Concrete and Abstract Dimensions of Diverse Adolescents’ Social-Emotional Meaning-Making, and Associations With Broader Functioning.” Journal of Adolescent Research, vol. 39, no. 5, 2024, pp. 1224–1259. Sage, https://doi.org/10.1177/07435584221091498.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. “But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” Theory into Practice, vol. 34, no. 3, 1995, pp. 159–165.

Moll, Luis C., and Norma Gonzalez. Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms. Routledge, 1992.

Planning Period. Planning Period Logic Model: Affirm, Reflect, Expand. Research & Evidence Base Summary, Jan. 2025.

Tolbert, Sara, and Jayson Bazzul. “Toward the Sociopolitical in Science Education.” Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol. 12, 2017, pp. 321–330.