Further planning meetings
Details of the first planning meeting are given here.
Between the first and second meeting the planning team should do some homework...
Homework (between planning meetings 1 and 2)
Work through the task and anticipate student responses.
Think about:
§ What different representations might students use? (Physical? Diagrammatic? Symbolic?)
§ Will they be able to work on a solution using techniques within the reach of your students?
§ Can some students use a more sophisticated method?
§ Is there a really elegant approach?
Approach the task from the students' point of view:.
Think about:
§ How will my students respond to the task?
§ What variety of approaches do I expect?
§ What difficulties will they encounter?
§ How will I recognise that students are making progress during the lesson?
Anticipate students’ responses in detail, listing them, and planning questions for the teacher to ask or actions to take. This will mean that the lesson plan will soon grow very much beyond what teachers normally have time to do.
Planning meeting 2
This meeting should prioritise bringing everyone's thinking together.
Depending on numbers we have found it useful to designate a small number of people, two or at most three, to write the actual plan. If there are more teachers involved in the Lesson Study group this meeting can draw on their wider thinking and this can be reflected in the final plan written by the smaller team. It is probably best if the small team includes the teacher who will teach the research lesson that everyone will attend.
Use this meeting to:
§ Finalise the lesson task. Consider if it needs tweaking in any way - particularly taking into account the students who will be taught in the research lesson.
§ Think carefully about the lesson structure.
§ Identify, and think carefully about the wording of, the research questions for the lesson
The writing team can now go away and finalise the plan
Planning meeting 3
By this meeting you should have a close to ready research lesson plan. The purpose of this meeting is to share this plan with the Lesson Study group and think carefully about its suitability. It is important that you build on all of the work that has been done in getting to this stage but do take a critical look at all aspects of the plan and particularly make sure that the person who is going to teach the lesson is happy with the plan and thinks that it will work for his/her class.
Make sure that the teacher who will teach the research lesson is supported by the whole team as much as possible (for example they may help with getting resources ready for the lesson). The whole team should have ownership of the lesson.