Thinking about Lesson Study

Last week, my colleagues and I began our work with lesson-study facilitators in Orange County and Leon County, Florida. We had a fantastic time helping folks think about how to launch lesson study in their schools. As a part of the workshop, each participant received one of our Lesson Study Support Kits to help them get started.

If you were there and have some questions as you get started, please feel free to post them below. We will be sure to help you through any issues you struggle with. You can also become a fan of lesson study on Facebook. For those of you Facebookers out there, if you  "like" lesson study you will get lots of updates from people engaged in lesson studies across the country. It is a great resource.

One of the things teams struggle with as they get started is deciding which lessons to start planning with. New lesson-study teams often operate under the misconception that they need to write a lesson from scratch. They use their valuable planning time to write curriculum instead of studying it. We suggest that teams start with a good lesson that has already been created. It is often one from the programs you are already using in your classrooms. Our lesson-study support kits contain lessons that were specifically tailored to fit with your teams first attempt at lesson study. We have lessons in reading, writing, and math from grades K–12.  

As our work continues to develop we will share what we are learning. As you all begin working on your lesson-study projects I will be anxious to hear how it is going.