Teachers Reflect on Lesson Study

After completing a couple of Lesson Study cycles with two groups of teachers in Florida last week the principal forwarded me the following reflections from a few of the teachers.

Teacher 1 (An intern from a local university)

From this Research Lesson I learned:

• It is important to keep the focus of the lesson in mind as you’re planning, to ensure that the lesson targets the elements that students are having difficulty with.
• In reading, choose a text that best helps you achieve the goals of the lesson focus.
• There is no perfect lesson! The results of any lesson will have implications for future lesson planning and student learning.
• It’s beneficial to try to anticipate issues that may arise during the lesson, so that you can brainstorm as a team how you want to address them in advance.
• Make sure that the lesson chosen provides enough opportunities for the students to think critically and use the strategies you want them to practice.
• Everyone takes ownership of the successes and challenges of the lesson because it was planned collaboratively.

Teacher 2 (Less than 5 years experience)

• Take Away: Choosing and maintaining focus for guided reading based on needs of students is critical not only for text selection, but also when planning and preparing for potential prompts and teaching points.
• Participating in another lesson study yet again reinforced how powerful planning as a team is for our students, as well as emphasized the importance of my own individual guided reading planning process.

Teacher 3 (More than 20 years experience)

From this experience I learned:

• To keep one objective in mind so that you can reach your goal
• To think about my students' needs in order to write a much-needed lesson plan, one that students will actually absorb and learn from
• How to think about appropriate texts for the lesson along with where to find them
• To think of possible problems in the lesson so that when they come up, I'll be prepared for them

Teacher 4 (10–15 years experience as teacher and professional developer for district)

What I’ve learned from Lesson Study:

• The value of working collaboratively. Together we can brainstorm the best ways to meet the needs of students
• Be mindful that at the end of every lesson, students won’t be perfect...perfection is not the goal of lesson study
• To remind myself of what students really need and not get caught up in all the extras
• The focus is on student learning and not teacher performance

The promise of Lesson Study is meaningful teacher reflection and authentic change in practice. Read the reflections from my colleague, Peter Brunn here.

What aspects of your teaching are worthy of reflection and improvement?