Getting Started

After it has been decided to establish a CLR Group it is important to have an organisational meeting where you work through issues relating to both organisational matters (such as developing a work schedule and so on)  and making sure that there is agreement about the (research) focus of the group. You may hold the meeting online although it is probably advisable to have a face-to-face meeting so that everyone gets to know each other. Advice about this meeting is given here.  

It is important in this meeting to consider the aims and purposes of the group and make sure that there is a common understanding of what the group is attempting to do. Before the meeting everyone will have agreed to take part on some loose understanding of what you are aiming to do. In this meeting make sure that this is clarified. 

The group should also consider the purpose and process of CLR.

This presentation might be useful to use with the group to clarify this.

The meeting should also address issues such as:

§ A Research Theme that guides the inquiry that you will be working on throughout your lesson study cycles.
Possible research themes:
- Problem solving
- Teaching for Mastery
- Connecting maths with vocational subjects

§ Who will participate, in what ways, and what commitment is expected

§ When planning meetings will be scheduled and who will attend them (see below)

§ How participants will keep in touch in between meetings (e.g., email, WhatsApp group,...)

§ When the first research lesson will be and who will teach it

§ Whether or not to involve an outside expert (advised) and what role they will play.

Scheduling issues

It is sensible to set the date of the research lesson as soon as you can, so that everyone knows that that is the date that they are working towards. This will need to fit in with everyone's college constraints, holiday dates, the availability of an outside expert and so on.

Planning meetings

It is sensible to schedule about 3 planning meetings, of perhaps 1-1.5 hours each. In between these, participants can email various draft versions of the lesson plan to each other for comments/modifications. Suggestions for what you might do at each meeting are given here (First planning meeting)  and here (subsequent planning meetings).

The actual lesson study planning may be best carried out by a subgroup of the research group. Experience suggests that a large planning group can become unwieldy, and it becomes difficult for the group to be decisive about details of the lesson.

Reflection meetings

It can be useful to schedule reflection meetings after the first cycle and at the end of a year. This gives participants the opportunity to think through what has been learned so far and to consider the future aims of the group.(If there is time, there could also be one in the second term, but this is not essential, and not shown in the timeline below.)
TimelineA typical timeline is shown below. Lesson study can begin at any point during the year, so "Term 1" does not need to be the Autumn term.Don't be too ambitious. One Lesson Study cycle per term is enough. If you do it moist effectively it is a lot of work.

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