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Lesson study team 2 consisted of three teachers –

Ayşe, Ferudun and Sena – who were happy to work

together in this long process. None of them experienced

this process before. Therefore, it was both tiring and

exciting for them. They conducted their research with the

help of İlknur Bayram. The process lasted almost four months.

There is a more detailed explanation about the cycle below.

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Step 1: Introduction to Lesson Study

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Meeting 1,2,3 and 4

The first thing that they did was writing their teaching philosophies in order to get to know their styles and objectives in teaching. When they got together for the first meeting, they discussed their teaching philosophies in a detailed way, which really helped them during the process. Then, they started to read the chapters one by one from Bill Cerbin’s book. They always read at least one chapter before coming to the meeting and they discussed the main parts all together, which made the process easier for them. They read 3 chapters before finding their focus for the research lessons. The chapters included the overview of the lesson study process and getting started for it. They spared two weeks for it since they believed they needed to internalize the concept of lesson study before finding their focus for the research lessons. They talked about planning the study throughout the term and they tried to comprehend the content of the lesson study with those meetings.

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Step 2: Finding a Focus

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Meeting 5

After they were done with discussing the general process, they were ready to find their focus for the research lessons. Sena and Ayşe were giving Academic Presentation Skills course and Ferudun was teaching the MA prep class. Therefore, they decided to focus on speaking skill. They talked to their students and colleagues to find a common problem during the presentations of learners. They read the third chapter of Cerbin’s book and came to the meeting with at least three research questions to see what they had in their minds. They had a long discussion with İlknur Bayram and they decided that the main problem was the preparation process for the presentations, so they thought it would be useful to focus on the outlining process and they came up with a research question:

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“What do the students include in their outlines out of a given text for a speech and what are their tendencies behind it?”

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They chose the outlining process since they observed

that the students never formed proper outlines for their

presentations because they did not actually know how

to form them, so they decided to see what students do

in the outlining process by analyzing it

with a research lesson.

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Step 3: Planning the First Research Lesson

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Meeting 6,7,8,9,10,11 and 12

It was decided that Ayşe would conduct the very first research lesson in her Academic Presentation Skills class. Since lesson study requires the backward design, it was the essential part of it. They started with the most important objectives of the lesson that need to be taught then moved to the assessment part that would measure those objectives and finally worked on the activities that  would help students  and teachers to reach those objectives. By designing the activities, choosing the text, images and videos, students’ interests were taken into account.

 

Ayşe selected three case students who are the high level,

average and below the average students. These three

students from different English levels as indicated above

would be observed by the observers, Ferudun and Sena.

For the observers of the lesson, they created the Observation

Guideline for the Lesson Study Practice in which there are

some prompts and questions to be answered by the

observers during the lesson that makes the observation

process more fertile and easy. They are all familiar with the

ethical issues of conducting research and hence prepared

consent forms to be signed before the first research lesson.

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Click here           for the Observation Guideline

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Click here           for Informed Consent Forms

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Step 4: Implementing the first Research Lesson

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Ayşe informed the students that there would be a video recording and some guest teachers from other classes would come two days before the first research lesson. Informed Consent Forms had already been signed by the students when Ayşe and her guests, namely, Sena and Ferudun entered the class. Ayşe had them sit in a way that they were very close to the case students. Sena just sat next to the average student, and Ferudun sat in between above average and average students. One of their colleagues helped them for the video recording. During the Research Lesson, observers took very detailed and elaborated notes that were related to students’ learning, especially focusing on the case students - as much as possible by focusing on how they were reacting to the instructions, their misconceptions about the topic, the questions that they were asking to their friends or teacher. The duration of the research lesson was approximately seventy minutes without a break. After the class was over, each case student was invited for the interview made by each observer and the instructor of the class. Therefore, all the interviews started at the same time in different classes by three different people – Ayşe, Sena and Ferudun. Each interview lasted almost five minutes in Turkish and was recorded.

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Click here          for the 1st Research Lesson Plan

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Click here          for the Reading Text

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Click here          for the interview questions

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Click here          for the sample interview (in Turkish)

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Step 5: Reflection

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Meeting 13,14,15,16 and 17

After the first research lesson, firstly they read Chapter 6 “Analyzing and Revising the Lesson”. By reading this chapter, they found answers to their questions in their mind about reflection and got ready for this step. Before moving onto the reflection meeting, they watched the video recording of the lesson, listened to the audio recordings of interviews and reviewed their observation notes. Then it was time for the first reflection meeting.

 

At the meeting the practitioners tried to comment on the lesson in terms of these questions:

• What did students learn as a result of the research lesson?

• How did they learn?

• How did the lesson work?

• How did the lesson support student learning, thinking and engagement?

 

In this meeting, firstly Ayşe started to reflect on the lesson as she was the teacher in the first research lesson. After her, Sena and Ferudun as observers made their comments about the lesson in terms of the questions above.

 

They also talked about the changes that needed to be made for the second research lesson and started to plan it. As they thought that the students didn’t understand the instructions clearly, they decided to prepare a PPT including all the instructions. In this way, students would hear and see the instructions. What is more, they decided to redesign the peer-evaluation form by adding Nurella’s (a celebrity in turkey) face expressions in the evaluation part in a way that would be funnier.

 

Before the second research lesson, the lesson plan was reviewed in detail one last time. After they agreed about everything in the lesson plan, they were ready for the next research lesson.

 

Click here           for the 2nd Research Lesson Plan

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Click here           for the PPT

 

Step 6: Repeating Steps 4 and 5

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Meeting 18 and 19

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The second research lesson

The second research lesson was going to be implemented

in Sena’s class.  Ayşe and Ferudun observed the lesson

this time. It was analyzed in the same way as the first

research lesson. After the lesson, a reflection meeting was

held again and the lesson plan for the third research lesson

was discussed and improved. 

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Click here           for the 3rd Research Lesson Plan

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Click here           for the Self-evaluation Form

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Click here           for the Peer-evaluation Form

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The third research lesson

When the lesson study group decided that the lesson plan for the last research lesson was totally ready for implementation, it was Ferudun’s turn to apply it in his class. Ayşe and Sena were the observers this time. The profile of this class was different from the others. There were adults in the class and they were foreign students from Libya.  It was analyzed in the same way as the first and second research lesson. The group was now ready for the final report.

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Step 7: Sharing the Results

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Meeting 20,21,22,23 and 24

For this step, they firstly read the last chapter of Bill Cerbin’s book which is “Documenting and Sharing Lesson Studies”. Then, they came together and revised the analysis of three research lessons and started to write the final report. This was a really long process since there were tons of things and findings to discuss and include in the report. They analyzed all of the data they collected from three different cycles and they tried to find the tendencies and common findings.

 

After they were done with the final report, they had  feedback from İlknur Bayram and started to prepare their presentation for UTAA Second ELT Fusion. They decided on the parts they would include in the presentation based on the time they had for it. They divided their lesson study journey into three steps like: pre-lesson study, on-lesson study and post-lesson study. Then, they shared their experience with great joy.

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Click here           for the final report

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Click here           for the presentation

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