Lesson Design Study Leading Lesson Study
Ideas for conducting lesson review Interviewing Students Bringing in the student perspective following the teaching of the lesson can add an interesting, useful, and sometimes surprising dimension to the debriefing. Taking a few minutes to ask students the following questions, developmentally adjusted, usually generates rich responses.
Ideas for conducting lesson review Interviewing Students 1. What was the point of this lesson? What did you learn? 2. What worked in this lesson? What did you like about the lesson? 3. What didn't work in this lesson? What didn't you like about the lesson? 4. Your teacher might teach this lesson next year. How could she (or he) make it better? Students can be interviewed in small groups, or a small sample of students can be selected for the observers to interview.
IDEAS FOR CONDUCTING THE DEBRIEFING If the team does choose to seek more input, knowledgeable others and guests can help the team consider the direction that their revision might take and to make further sense of the evidence collected. It is helpful for the moderator to ask participants to frame suggestions in the form of questions, using sentence stems such as
Team Debriefing Questions for Guests I wonder what would happen if ...? What is another way you might ...? What might explain ... ? Why did you decide to ...? In your planning, did you consider ...?
Guiding debriefing from guests The sentence stems can be posted during the debriefing. Using questions helps knowledgeable others and guests to refrain from offering overly prescriptive solutions. It also helps engage the collective wisdom of the group in making sense of the data and improving the lesson. Sometimes direct suggestions are offered. It can be useful to follow a suggestion with a question that invites the team to imagine or hypothesize how the idea might work in the lesson.
Examples include: How might that look in your lesson? To what extent might that work in your lesson and with your students? What do you imagine might happen if you were to try something like that?
Final commentator comments. To end the debriefing, the moderator introduces and thanks the final commentator, who will add his or her thoughts and synthesize the discussion. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the final commentator is responsible for the following:
Final commentator comments Contributing any new insights or questions not previously shared in the debriefing Summarizing the key ideas and questions that emerged from the debriefing Highlighting the areas and issues the team might want to pay attention to as they revise the lesson Expressing appreciation to the teacher for opening her classroom to the group Extending thanks to the team for all of their work
Form 5.3 Team Member Log-Post-debriefing Name _________________ Date _____ Describe participants' observations of student learning. Include details of what students said, did, and wrote/produced. ______________________________ Were there any unanticipated student responses? Explain. _______________________________
Form 5.4 Outside Observer Log-Post-debriefing School/Team ___________________________ Date ________ Research Lesson ______________ Teacher ______________________ Knowledgeable Other ____________________________ To what extent were the goals of the lesson achieved? Please provide supporting evidence. Which instructional decisions might have attributed to helping students meet these goals? Explain. What aspects of the goals were not reached? Please provide supporting evidence. Which aspects of the lesson plan should be reconsidered based on this evidence?
Re-teaching the lesson The following documents and items from the observation and debriefing should be gathered for the revision process. These artifacts will also be used in preparing the lesson study report. Observation notes Notes from the debriefing on participants' and team members' observations Post-debriefing individual reflection log Student work Photos of the blackboard Videotape of lesson (if available)
Gather and Review the Data There are several ways to sort the data. Individuals or pairs might look at: A specific section of the lesson plan (Introduction, Explore, Summary, etc.) Individual goals of the lesson One of the points of evaluation One type of data (debriefing notes, reflection logs, observations, student work, etc.)
Guiding Questions Guiding Questions Description What evidence do we need to authentically inform the team's learning? Teams go over the artifacts they have collected throughout their lesson study process. For the revision of the lesson, teams may want to include the following: Student work Photos of the blackboard Videotape of lesson Notes from the debriefing on participants' and team members' observations Post-debriefing individual reflection logs Example Our team gathered the following items: Research notes that were taken during the planning that focused on content, student understanding, and pedagogy The lesson plan Carole's notes from the debriefing Team members' individual reflection logs
Form 6.1 Revising Log-General Observations and Comments Record evidence of unanticipated student responses. Identify any possible changes to the lesson. Unanticipated Response: Evidence: Possible changes: Evidence: : Possible changes (p. 114)