Upcoming Events

Th AREA Lesson Study Special Interest Group (SIG) is having a series of monthly presentations by various guests on Zoom followed by discussion. Currently the following are scheduled:

  • September 12, 6pm Central time. “The Study in Lesson Study”, by Trena Wilkerson, Rachelle Rogers, and Ryann Shelton, Baylor University. Click here for the flyer.
  • October 6, 5pm Central time. “Sustaining lesson study by making it part of the school culture”, by Tom McDougal, Lesson Study Alliance and Berenice Heinlein, Helen Peirce Elementary School.
  • November 7, 6pm Central time. “Exploring Online Resources to Support Lesson Study, School-wide Lesson Study and Teaching Through Problem-solving”. Catherine Lewis, Mills College at Northeastern.

Contact Gloriana Gonzalez, the Lesson Study SIG chair, if you would like to join.

Stay tuned

Stay tuned for information about our annual conference in the spring and our summer institute! The best way to hear about these is to subscribe to one of our very low-traffic mailing lists:

Lesson Study Reports Database

Check out our searchable database of research lesson reports. These reports are intended to support the work of lesson study teams and are free to download.

About Lesson Study 

Lesson Study is a structured process for teachers to work together to discover solutions to common teaching-learning challenges. Read “What is Lesson Study? A Primer”.

The members of Lesson Study Alliance help teachers and schools implement an especially powerful form of Lesson Study called Collaborative Lesson Research, or CLR.

About Us

We are a coalition of educators dedicated to helping each other and others learn about lesson study and use the process to improve teaching and learning. The most important work is done by the hard-working teachers who design and teach public research lessons, assist with the annual conference or summer workshops, and more. Backing them up are Tom McDougal, who handles the day-to-day business of Lesson Study Alliance and supports teachers through the lesson study process, and Dr. Akihiko Takahashi of DePaul, who contributes his expertise by giving talks and serving as a knowledgeable other.

Our activities include:

  • hosting the international Chicago Lesson Study Conference
  • hosting smaller conferences and training sessions for teams of teachers;
  • facilitating and giving final comments for research lessons;
  • providing site-based professional development, including knowledgeable other services; and
  • supporting and distributing LessonNote, a free iPad application used in classroom observation and discussion.

Contact us at info@LSAlliance.org or 773-888-3404.

Blog

Representing vs. solving; and missing-addend problems

I have seen many lessons in which the distinction between how to model or represent a story problem and how to solve the story problem get confused. This happens especially with story problems in which either the starting value or the change is unknown, a type of...

Letting students in on the secret in a TTP lesson

The core of a Teaching Through Problem-solving (TTP) lesson involves presenting students with a problem that requires that they learn some new mathematics. For students to focus their energy productively, it helps them to know what that new mathematics is – at least...

Great article on division with remainders

One of Chicago's Lesson Study Leaders, Joshua Lerner, wrote a terrific article in NCTM's journal Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching in PK-12. It is titled, "Recommendations for Teaching Division with Remainders." From the introduction: Recently our team of...

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