An Overview of Lesson Study

1. An Overview of Lesson Study Teaching American History Summer Institute UCI History Project July 28, 2011

2. Goals of Lesson Study • “Lesson Study” provides an ongoing method to examine, refine, and improve instruction. • lesson study begins with a focus on the classroom and on student learning • teachers draw on their collective knowledge and experience

3. The Process: Structure • Planning . . . • . . . the lesson. Select a topic for the lesson and student questions. What do we want students to understand? What question do we want them to answer? What does previous student work tell us about student needs? • . . . the observation. Select the focus for the observation, decide what evidence will be collected. “How will we know what students learned?” • One teacher “does” the lesson in class, with the other participants in attendance as observers of the lesson and student learning • Debrief • Discuss evidence collected of student understanding • Discuss evidence of promotion of both immediate and long-term goals • Discuss revisions and refinements before teaching it in another class • Collect and analyze student writing

4. The Process: Questions • Student Question • Guides the selection of materials and activities • Focus on student learning • This is at the heart of organizing the lesson’s content • Example: Which characters in the book have the most and least amount of freedom?

5. The Process: Questions • Teacher Question • Research question about the teaching and learning of American History • Focuses the work and the gathering of data • Gives the lesson importance beyond the immediacy of the topic • Example: Can students develop a nuanced understanding, through multiple perspectives, of freedom at this time and place in American history?

6. More question examples • An 8th grade lesson on Nat Turner7 • Student question - Was Nat Turner's Revolt a success? • Teacher question - How can we help students understand that it is possible to tell different stories and come to different conclusions about the same event? • An 11th grade lesson on Populism. • Student question - How successful was the Populist Party? • Teacher Question - How can we teach students to use evidence to support their argument? • An 11th grade lesson on the Mexican-American War • Student question - What issues, interests, and pressures shaped the Mexican-American War? • Teacher question - Given a variety of documents, can students identify and understand the debate around the decision to go to war with Mexico, and also can students understand how debate is a key component of the democratic process?

7. Challenges of Lesson Study • requires meeting as a group to find and locate resources for a lesson • requires negotiating with colleagues and building a professional dialogue within a group of teachers you may not know well • understanding among members that by investigating a lesson they might come to different answers and understandings about how best to increase student knowledge an understanding

8. Benefits of Lesson Study • addressed a genuine need among history teachers for a systematic way of learning from one's colleagues about how to improve instruction • A successful lesson study develops a lesson that is seen by group members as "our" lesson, rather than the lesson of the teacher who is going to teach it first • opportunity to learn about their teaching through lesson study • Opportunity to teach new topics or utilize new instructional strategies

9. Key Points • lesson study should focus attention on teaching and learning, what was done and how did students respond, not on the teacher per se. • So that in the debriefing after a lesson is observed, group members will discuss how "our" lesson worked, not whether the teacher did a good job or not • when visitors come to your classroom you are on display in so many ways. One way to mitigate this tension is to have clearly planned for what evidence will be collected during the observation, and during the debriefing, have the facilitator stick to the ground rules set up in the protocol for this part of the process.