Lesson Study Meeting at Assumption English School

The school employs the gallery method where all the other learning teams observe the mathematics learning team do their lesson study meeting. In the MCI Lesson Study Porgramme, our lecturers model the facilitation process for critical meeting. This is the firts critical meeting when the learning team have met to craft their research theme and are about to embark on selecting the unit / lesson to be studied.

In such a meeting, facilitators should help team members build mental models of their object of study. For example, the learning team has identified their research theme to be "engaging students in mathematics learning" which is based on the school's focus on engaged learning. In the meeting, the facilitator asked various team members to share what they expect engagement to look like. In the end, the various mental models are either a process-type image of student engagement (e.g. to be able to see where is the starting point to learn algebra and where the ending pint is - perhaps academically weak students are not engaged because their starting pint is so removed from where teachers typically start) or prodict-type image (e.g. engagement as reflected by achievement scores.

In this meeting, facilitators should also help team members prepare for subsequent lesson planning meetings. For example, there are at least a few directions the team may take. (1) using real-life situations to engage students (2) using model drawing to engage students (the textbook also suggests this approach) (3) using the CPA vApproach that Singapore tecahers are familiar with (4) using counter-examples to engage students.

A team member also alerted the team to the PETALS Framework that Singapore teachers already have when thinking about engaged learning.