Lesson Study at Castlemaine Secondary College

This term I have begun working with a group of teachers at Castlemaine Secondary College using Lesson Study as a professional learning strategy. We have two groups of three teachers involved in a cycle

• one hour planning,
• one hour teaching and observing
• one hour debriefing and evaluating.

Each cycle will take 3 weeks for each round making 9 weeks in total for three teachers. A big commitment, which we might have to adjust.

Research demonstrates that the teacher makes the big difference to students and the most effective professional learning comes when a teacher works with his or her students in her classroom.

A couple of quotes sums this up:

Professional development should be “grounded in inquiry and reflection, participant driven and collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among teachers within communities of practice, sustained, ongoing, and intensive and connected to and derived from teachers ongoing work with their students.”
The International Reading Association (2006)

The problem is that there is almost no opportunity for teachers to engage in continuous and sustained learning about their practice in the setting in which they actually work, observing and being observed by their colleagues in their own classrooms and classrooms of other teachers in schools confronting similar problems of practice. (Richard Elmore, (2004). School reform from the inside out: Policy, practice, and performance p.127)

So far we’ve had 4 sessions for each sub-school providing background to Lesson Study as a form of professional learning, working through the schedule, supporting teachers filling out the PoLT (Principles of learning & Teaching) component mapping, conducting PoLT student surveys, presenting the Release of Responsibility model, deciding on what teachers will say to their class when explaining why three other teachers are sitting in, analysing lesson plans, deciding on a lesson format and collaboratively planning a lesson which one of the group will teach while the others observe.

Next week we begin our first teaching and observing lesson.