1. Lesson study is an exotic idea from a foreign country.

~ lesson study is teacher-directed, since teachers determine how to explore their chosen goals and

address student needs through their examination of practice

~Although lesson study is time-consuming, it can also be highly rewarding, so finding time for it is

not impossible once teachers have made a commitment to the practice.

~lesson study meetings can be run more efficiently by assigning roles

to group members, distributing materials for feedback beforehand

~The concern that lesson study will not allow practitioners to measure

and communicate their findings about student performance.

~While teachers may benefit from standardized outcome measures of

student learning, lesson study provides ongoing information that

allows teachers to continually tailor their teaching to their students'

learning needs.

~the collaborative nature of lesson study allows teachers to "fill in the blanks" for

one another, because the activity of planning a lesson together creates many opportunities for teachers to learn basic

content from their colleagues.

~lesson study is generally conducted in a way that shifts the focus from evaluating the

performance of the teacher to assessing the instruction. In addition, ownership of the lesson

is diffused across the group of teachers who planned the lesson.

~the focus is not on deciding which teaching philosophy is superior. Instead,

the focus is on trying out practices - representing any teaching philosophy - in actual classrooms and then determining

the success of these practices

1. Lesson study is about creating a unique, original, or never-seen-

before lesson.

~Parts of the lesson may be borrowed from a textbook, modified from

other lessons, or derived from the existing curriculum

~conduct lesson study for as many lessons as possible.

~By engaging in the formal process of lesson study, teachers will carry an

informal "lesson study mentality" into their daily practice

~a lesson can never be "perfect." The purpose of revising and re-teaching a

lesson is for teachers to reflect on what they learned from implementing the lesson in the classroom, what it taught them about the goal they set out to explore, and how to improve

their practice.

~The teachers who conduct lesson study plan their lessons with a

particular goal in mind and for the specific needs of their students and

classrooms.

~Like a map, lesson study is a tool for going somewhere. But the

important questions to keep in mind are where we want to go, how we

want to get there, and what signposts we will use along the way.

Once teachers make a commitment to professionalize their teaching

experiences, they can invite others to challenge them and help them

achieve their goals.

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