Humanities core agreements

Today in the Humanities lesson study group we started with a bit of a reflection on the first cycle.  Virginia shared some of what she learned in the first cycle about using the Promethean software. The group thought that preparing a regular questionnaire and then using the clickers for student responses is a pretty good way of getting started, when using the software the first time. We also agreed that it takes a lot of preparation the first time and that we will try to incorporate it more in other lessons as we go through various lesson study cycles. After some initial reflection on the first cycle we moved on to what we want to focus on in the next cycle. I shared some of my observations made in watching Marie Reynolds facilitate a Mathematics cell group that has been running successfully for the last two years.  We also looked at some slides unpacking and explaining some important elements and principles of Japanese lesson study. After some discussion and collective brainstorming we settled on the following ideas and principles to guide us in our actions going forward.

• We will all collaborate on planning, executing and assessing 
• Whatever the actual learning area, all contributions to the lesson are welcome whether it is content, methods, strategies or outcomes – everyone contributes what they can to make the lesson as effective as possible. 
• We want to plan thoroughly and make sure that this particular lesson - our lesson, is of good quality. We do not want to rush into teaching it before we feel it is ready. 
• We will first “teach” the lesson in a sort of a “dry run” or “pilot study” fashion, to each other, before we teach it to the students – this will be done as part of our collaborative planning sessions before actual presentation to students. 
• We will make video recordings of lessons being presented to student, as far as possible, to facilitate thorough reflection and de-briefing. 
• Notes, classroom scripts, formative and summative assessments are all responses by students to the lesson and will be considered as forms of “data” that can tell us something about the learning that took place.

After teaching the lesson once we will, reflect, re-plan and re-teach the lesson to a different group where it is feasible and helpful. All and all we agreed that lesson study takes more time, commitment and planning than we have been giving it up to this point. Although we feel that we have learnt a lot and it has been valuable we also feel that we should give ourselves time and space to really focus on the detail and see if we can improve our process. In the next 4-6 weeks we want to collaboratively plan, execute and reflect on a Gr.9 LO lesson on peer pressure and addictions. Everyone in the group agreed to bring some “lesson content” like articles or worksheets to the group next time we meet. When we meet again we will each share what we have found around the theme of peer pressure and addictions and will begin the process of collaboratively “scripting” our lesson.