Lesson study team 2 consisted of three teachers – Ayşenur, İrem and Merve – who were happy to work together in harmony in this long process. None of them experienced this process before. Therefore, it was not also exciting, but also tiring and sometimes complicated for them. They conducted their research with the help of İlknur Bayram and the group facilitator Ayşe Karataş who had a lot of experiences in lesson study. The processlasted about four months. There is a more detailed explanation

about the process and the cycles below.

 

STEP 1 :Introduction to Lesson Study

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Meeting 1, 2 and 3

The team started by learning the steps of Lesson Study

project and they discussed the dates and each task that

they need to complete during those dates. After learning

the procedure, they discussed each other's teaching

philosophy in detail and they shared ideas on that topic.

Luckily, all three teacher had the same course, Academic

Writing Skills and their student profile was similar. They

decided to ask their students about the problems that

they have in Academic Writing Skills Course and then

they discussed common problems in their classes and

shared their ideas on those problems. They also go over

the first chapter of Bill Cerbin’s book to get to know more with the LS process. Then they started to think about possible research areas considering student problems. They come up with some focus areas like ‘idea generation’ , ‘paraphrasing’ and ‘pre-writing process’.  They also made research on those topics to obtain more information. ‘Patchwriting’ was their main focus on this research and they tried to figure out what it is and the differences between patchwriting and paraphrasing. They realized that they as teachers have some misconceptions about those focus areas and they wanted to clarify them by finding common definitions.

 

STEP 2: Finding a Focus

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Meeting 4 and 5

After doing research on patchwriting and other topics,

team members decided on it is similar to paraphrasing

but not much relevant to our context. Using student

feedback and their discussion, they wanted to focus

‘paraphrasing’ as a problem. 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 the group facilitator Ayşe Karataş and they decided that the main problem was students’ failure at paraphrasing without plagiarism for their academic essays so they thought it would be useful to focus on the paraphrasing process and they came up with 3  research questions:

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• Which requirements do students tend to fulfill while paraphrasing in their academic writing?”

• What are their rationalesbehind their tendencies?

• To what extent are the requirements that students employ successful/met for an effective paraphrase?

 

They chose paraphrasing process since they observed that the students were unable to paraphrase a text effectively for their academic essays because they did not actually know what paraphrasing is and why they need it so they decided to see students’ perceptions of paraphrasing concept by analyzing their paraphrasing process with a research lesson so that they could make recommendations for further studies and could help them recognize their academic writing skills. Before doing it, they also conceptualize the term paraphrasing under certain criteria to refer the same concept for each of them.

 

STEP 3: Planning the First Research Lesson

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

It was decided that Merve Hoca would conduct the very first research lesson in her Academic Writing Skills class. Since the lesson study helps to see the learning process through students’ eyes, they started with the most important goal of the lesson which needs to be planned in such a way that students can recognize their paraphrasing skills and then the teachers moved to the assessment part that would measure the objectives and finally worked on the activities that help students  and us to reach those objectives. By designing the activities, choosing the text, images and videos, students’ interests were taken into account. The profile of classes that were exposed to lesson study were almost the same apart from their departments. Merve Hoca’s class consisted of Computer Engineer students. Merve Hoca selected three case students who are the high level, average and below the average students. These three students from the different English level as indicated above would be observed by the observers, Ayşenur Hoca and İrem Hoca. For the observers of the lesson, they used the Observation Guideline created by previous lesson study practitioners 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. We 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 first research lesson plan.

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Click here            for the Observation Guideline.

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Click here            for the Informed Consent Form.

 

 

 

STEP 4: Implementing the first Research Lesson

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The First Research Lesson

Merve Hoca informed the students that there would be a video recording and some teachers from other classes would be the guests two days before the first research lesson. Informed Consent Requests had already been signed by the students when Merve Hoca and her guests, namely, Ayşenur Hoca and İrem Hoca entered the class. Merve Hoca had them sit in a way that they were very close to the case students. Ayşenur Hoca just sit next to the high achiever student, and İrem Hoca sit in between below average and average students. The facilitator of the group, Ayşe Hoca, helped us for the video recording. During the Research Lesson, observers took very detailed and elaborated notes that were related to students’ learning  process  - 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, their participation level, the questions that they were asking to their friends or teacher. The duration of the research lesson was approximately seventy minutes with one 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 – Ayşenur, İrem and Merve Hoca. Each interview lasted almost five minutes in Turkish and recorded.

 

STEP 5: Reflection

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Meeting 12, 13 and 14

After the first research lesson, firstly they read Chapter 6 “Analyzing and Revising the Lesson”. By reading this chapter, they found answers for their questions in their mind about reflection and got ready for this step. Before passing to the reflection meeting, they talked about the first research lesson by sharing their thoughts and feelings  and reviewed their observation notes. Then it was the 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 realize as a result of the research lesson?

• How did they realize?

• How did the lesson work? What did not go well?

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

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

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They also talked about the changes that needed to be made to the second research lesson and started to plan it. As they thought that the students did not understand the video clearly, they decided to put a Turkish subtitle for it. In this way, students would hear and understand the context. What is more, they decided to redesign the self-evaluation form by translating it into Turkish so that they could get more solid answers and reasons for the study.

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Simultaneously, they started to analyze the data collected by the students and prepared a rubric which was necessary for finding an answer for the third research question: To what extent are the requirements that students employ successful/met for an effective paraphrase?

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

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Click here            for the interview questions.

 

STEP 6: Repeating Steps 4 and 5

 

The second research lesson

The second research lesson was going to be

implemented in İrem’s class.  İrem’s class were from

Mechanical engineering students. Aysenur and Merve

observed the lesson this time. It was analyzed in the

same way as the first research lesson. All three research

questions were attempted to answer by looking at

general tendencies, their frequencies and the reasons

for their inclinations. 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 second research lesson plan.

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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 Ayşenur’s turn to apply it in his

class. Ayşenur’s class consisted of Industrial Engineering

students. İrem and Merve were the observers at this time.

It was analyzed in the same way as the first and 

second research lesson. The group was

now ready for final report.

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Click here            for the third research lesson plan.

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Click here            for the pre-instructions PPT.          

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Click here            for the paraphrasing activity.         

 

STEP 7: Sharing the Results

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Meeting 15, 16 and 17

For this step, they firstly read the last chapter of Bill Cerbin’s book which is about “Documenting and Sharing Lesson Studies”. Then, they come together and took a closer look at the previous reports done by the previous practitioners. They 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 with the help the facilitator, they had a feedback from İlknur Bayram and started to prepare their presentation for UTAA Third 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 a great joy.

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Click here           for the final report.

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Click here           for the ELT Fusion PPT.