Lesson Study at CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel
Visitors, comprising mostly school leaders, from England and the US got a glimpse into one way Singapore teachers develop themselves.
We gate-crashed the lesson study efforts of two mathematics teams.
This achor task was meant to help students see that a composite figure consists of simple rectangles (and squares).
In the subsequent guided practice, the group I was observed, confused between perimeter and area. I would suggest rephrasing the question as how many times is the figure as big as a 1-square cm. However, the bigger question is how do we help such students possess the metacognitive ability to know that they were doing something incorrect, which they did in rapid succession and not stopping to say that they may be wrong.
Students had difficulties in distinguishing area from perimeter, in seeing the component rectangles and using correct information in the formula to calculate area of rectangles. How can the anchor task be tweaked to help the weakest students in overcoming these difficulties? I imagine the revised lesson plan would consider these points and also how to help more students reach the highest level response (saying that the area formula for square and rectangle are the same and seeing the subtraction method in finding area of composite figures). The team members saw the benefits of (1) time provided to explore (2) time for discussion (3) use of concrete manipulative. These were the three main points raised during the very brief post-lesson discussion we did. I suppose the team will discussed this at greater length subsequently | Lesson Study May Bee
