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
Fractions as numbers vs. fractions as ratios
A grade 4 team was recently considering the following task for a lesson in which they hoped to have students make a connection between fractions and decimals: What would you say about this? I wrote them two emails about it. First email: What would be the purpose of...
Learning goals should describe cognitive change
A surprisingly difficult but critically important part of designing a lesson is establishing the learning goals. Many teachers write learning goals in the form of behavioral outcomes: “Students will be able to…” Frequently this is what their administrators want, and...
It’s not the teacher’s job to teach the students!
What?? you might be thinking. What else could the teacher's job be but to teach? The teacher's job is to ensure that students learn – all of them, we hope, though we know we will usually fall short. In Japan, most (elementary) math lessons are designed as "teaching...
The choice of numbers matters!
I am looking at a lesson research proposal for grade 5 on division of decimal values by a whole number. The problem the team plans to use is 4.26 ÷ 3, and their goal is for students to discover that the same processes they use to model division with whole numbers...
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