Lesson Study 2
This lesson study cycle was a chance for myself and other colleagues to work together to solve a problem that we all shared in the classroom. While working together throughout the course of this process, this particular lesson study was conducted with little scaffolding and assistance from our professors as we aimed to further develop our skills and practices as educators. The information and artifacts below highlight the most pivotal aspects and takeaways that we left with upon the completion of our lesson study.
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Equity-Based Research Theme:
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How can we support students in their writing by encouraging them to practice simultaneous reading and writing skills (i.e. annotation)? How could we support all students in their deep reading journey, comprehension, and fluency of text to then translate those skills to writing proficiency?
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Content Understanding Goal:
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Students will better understand writing sonnets by reading, engaging with, and then replicating sonnets given in class to use as a mentor text.
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Lesson Study Memorialization Document:
PDSA Cycle
The PDSA Cycle is a process that helps educators pinpoint a specific activity or lesson that they think will help an area that they see is in their classes (i.e. engagement, collaboration, grammar skills, etc). The common question that my group chose to focus on was how to help students become stronger writers by becoming stronger readers. Our PDSA cycle focused on how we can get students writing more frequently without the fear and anxiety that comes with the expectation of receiving a grade for ones writing. We chose to plan and conduct a lesson in our classes where we had students participate in a quickwrite activity that would not be graded but framed as a way for them to develop a more positive relationship with writing. Students were instructed to respond to prompt and to write for 5 minutes non-stop. The prompt was an image with no text and students were instructed to continue writing anything they could think of if they could not think of anything else to write, even if it did not explicitly related to the image. Based of the student data collected, most students were able to produce more writing than other quickwrites. This showed promising results as students not only produced more writing but also showed trends of developing a deeper understanding of the prompt while making personal and authentic connections to it.
Research Lesson
Lesson Debrief
1 / Before the Lesson
The day before our research lesson took place, students participated in a lesson where they were introduced to sonnets. Students were given a popular example of a sonnet, William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. While reading the sonnet as a class, students were asked to annotate things they noticed and wondered about sonnets.
2 / Lesson Day
The research lesson took place on Valentine's Day so our group chose to plan a lesson about sonnets to stay on the theme of love. Students were given a note catcher to follow along with a slideshow that broke down the structure of sonnets. After completing their note catchers, students were asked to begin drafting a sonnet of their own while applying their new knowledge of sonnet structure. We encouraged students to use their annotated Sonnet 18 to use as a mentor text for their own writing.
3 / Final Product
The lesson was taught to two different classes. Both classes were able to complete their note catchers without any challenges. The real difference was seen in the original writing produced by the two classes. The first class was taught iambic pentameter and based on the student data collected, they attributed that to their struggle producing their own writing. Given this feedback, we pivoted and decided to omit the slides containing iambic pentameter and adjusted what the expectation was for what needed to be produced by the end of class. Rather than asking students to draft an entire sonnet, we asked students to begin with the first four lines of their sonnets. This change yielded starkly different results as 97% of students in the second class were able to complete a draft of their first stanza while the first class had approximately 55% of students with any writing at all.
Overall, our research lesson proved to be somewhat successful. It was a great benefit of having a chance to debrief the lesson after teaching it to the first class. The main aim of the lesson was to ensure that students knew the structure of sonnets (i.e. rhyme scheme, number of lines, number of stanzas, etc.) along with using their mentor text to guide them in their own writing. While students demonstrated comprehensive understanding about the structure of sonnets, we fell short when it came to helping students use their mentor text to develop stronger writing. One of the most significant takeaways from this research lesson was that in the future, it would be most helpful to facilitate a lesson where students explicitly are shown how to use a mentor text to ensure they are following the structure of a writing piece. While we believed that giving students a mentor text would strengthen their writing, it was clear that more explicit instruction, modeling how to use mentor texts, and practice using mentor texts to aid in the writing process is necessary to achieve the desired results.
Research Base
The coursework for the second trimester requires the completion of multiple academic writing pieces. The first was a Read 1-Ask 1-Reflection (RAR) which was a writing piece synthesizing one article and an interview conducted with another educator. The other writing piece was a Read 1-Read 2-Reflection (RRR) where we researched and found two scholarly articles that were on the subject of our Equity-Based Research Theme and synthesized the main ideas that stuck with us and could push our thinking and practice. Another writing piece we completed was an annotated bibliography that consists of all the readings completed in trimester two. Finally, the second trimester requires the completion of a literature synthesis which outlines the common themes found across all the literature we have engaged with this trimester while illustrating how our thinking evolved around our problem of practice. Overall, these writing pieces helped inform the entire lesson study process as we went through each stage.
The RAR was a useful way of helping me and my group begin to formulate our own thoughts surrounding the problem of practice we were studying which was how to use students' reading abilities to develop their writing abilities. Being able to conduct research through published articles as well as personal interviews with experienced educators helped generate insightful ideas to help us plan our PDSA cycles.
The RRR was a great way of adding to our repertoire of research. The RRR helped add a much deeper understanding of the connection between reading and writing. This paper led my group to create a lesson that utilized mentor texts as a way to connect the abilities that students had as both readers and writers.
Both the Annotated Bibliography and Literature Synthesis served as a great way of connecting and synthesizing what we learned from all of the material we had engaged with throughout the course of the trimester. As our group was studying the connection between reading and writing instruction and ability, it was easy to develop our own ideas on the reading-writing connection as we explored, analyzed, and challenged preexisting ideas.
Reflection
Throughout the entirety of the lesson study process, I found myself having many moments where I felt as if I had truly become better at what I do. Not only did I feel like a better teacher, but I found myself having a much deeper understanding of my students as well as the students of my peers. The beginning of the lesson study honestly felt confusing to me personally. I struggled to find something that felt specific and direct and worried that I was not being helpful to finding a solution. As the trimester went on and we read and engaged with more research, I began to feel more comfortable because we found the niche of using mentor texts as a specific way of connecting reading and writing skills. The research lesson that was taught and observed by our group was where I felt I gained the most meaningful insight from the whole process. Our original plan was not successful in the way that we had initially hoped but that forced us to come together and brainstorm what our students needed to be successful and immediately implement that. That small change produced wildly different results and it was a remarkable experience being able to work with a team of brilliant educators who are all so passionate about and invested in our students' education.