Jennifer, Thanks for sharing more of your lessons study with us. It sounds like a wonderful lesson, and I am left with some questions. Did your colleagues realize that you had intentionally changed the language you were using--and was this something planned? What sorts of changes in questions did you see (do you have examples from the observation notes)? What are you thinking about as a follow-up lesson for those students who did not quite get there. I assume by the student summaries in the beginning that they had heard this story before this lesson?
What I take away from your notes is the reaffirmation of careful word choice. I remember this from my own lesson study experience in mathematics as well. One of the things we saw in Japanese lessons was this exacting way teachers had of wording things. We learned that much of that wording was a result of the lesson study experience, and we found the same thing happening to us when we tried our own mathematics lesson study. Many teachers I have talked with get disturbed by this exacting idea of teacher talk. I think they relate it to scripted lessons and fear a gestapo method. Yet to me the difference with lesson study is teacher consciousness and ultimate choice and that is so profoundly important. (How can a teacher not be thinking about the lesson, and yet expect and hope that students will?) Thank you for sharing your experience, Bonita _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
