They were fantastic four- Alex, Tuğçe, Tunahan, Türkan as Lesson Study Team 4 – and were quite collaborative despite their differences in terms of their characteristics. All having different experiences and perceptions made the process more fun and productive. Their team leader was İlknur Bayram and the facilitator was Çisem Altuğ. The process lasted three and a half month and each cycle lasted two weeks including the following steps; planning the lesson, observing the students, interviewing the students, debriefing and writing a reflection on each cycle.  

 

There is a more detailed explanation about the process below.

 

Step 1: Introduction to Lesson Study

 

Meeting 1, 2, 3 and 4

 

At the very first meeting, all the members of the group shared their opinions about each other’s teaching philosophy so to see whether they had similar understanding of teaching and learning concepts. They discussed Chapter 1 from Cerbin’s book. At the second meeting, they were asked to read Chapter 2-3 from the book and based on the book, some questions/concerns about the future process arose regarding the LS cycle and finding a focus. Therefore, they came to the conclusion that most of them would be answered in the process. The schedule of Team 4 was discussed a little as it was too early to decide on a term based schedule so they left this issue for the following meetings.

 

As team members were teaching different courses, they needed to share syllabi of the courses so that it would help the team find a common focus. They had brainstorming on the focus options. Though paraphrasing seemed to be their number one option, they found out that students’ habit of learning new vocabulary might be a better focus for their study. Therefore, they discussed the following as their research questions: “How do students deal with new vocabulary?” “What do students find useful while learning?” “How do students learn new vocabulary in reading and what are the approaches/methods/techniques they use when they encounter new vocabulary?” but they had not decided on a specific question till Meeting 5. At the end of the 4th meeting, they set the 7th week as the ideal date for the first Research Lesson held by Alex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: Finding a Focus

 

Meeting 5

 

After the long discussions, the group decided on “What strategies do students use to handle unknown vocabulary in a reading text?” as their focus for the research lessons but agreed on making some adjustments was a good idea when necessary. Backward design was shortly discussed and the group realized that this was the regular design they used in ELT field all the time. The group didn’t prefer a specific design from the book. Instead, specific activities based on a reading text were suggested and discussed. The group agreed on giving two reading texts in the lesson, each of which would be followed by student discussions. However, the arrangements concerning the level of the texts were left for the following meetings, as it seemed to be challenging due to the different levels of departments / classes chosen for the research.

 

 

Step 3: Planning the First Research Lesson

 

Meeting 5, 6, 7

 

In this step of the study, it was decided that Alex would

conduct the first research lesson in his Academic Writing

Skills class. Before going to the class, they started with

writing the objectives of the lesson that need to be

taught and seen at the end of the lesson. Then they

prepared the lesson according to their objectives and at the

end they found out the materials that would be used in the

lesson. They designed the activities, chose the texts and

prepared a PPT to be used to give the instructions to the

students. Moreover, for the observers, they prepared

the Observation Sheet which makes the observation

process easier.

 

After preparing the whole lesson, the team arranged a demo lesson in Alex’s class to see the students, to lessen the camera and observer effect and to choose three case students who were high, average and low achievers. After the demo lesson, the teacher of the class gave the consent form which had been prepared beforehand because of the ethical issues. The students who were willing to join the research lesson signed the form and turned it back to the teacher. 

 

Click here           for the research lesson.

 

Click here           for the reading texts.

 

Click here           for the Consent Form.

 

Click here           for the Observation Sheet.

 

Click here           for the lesson PPT.

 

 

Step 4: Implementing the first Research Lesson

 

For the research lesson, Alex informed his students and the observers took their places with their observation sheets. During the Research Lesson, observers took very detailed notes that were related to students’ learning, their reactions to the instructions, their behaviors, their interaction with the teacher and their friends. Moreover, the facilitator of the team shot a video which would be used in the debriefing and analyzing phases of the research.

 

The duration of the research lesson was approximately 45 minutes. After the class was over, each case student was invited for the interview made by each observer without the instructor of the class. Therefore, Tuğçe, Tunahan and Türkan interviewed with the students at the same time in different classes. Each interview lasted almost three minutes in Turkish and was recorded. All the recordings were uploaded to the Google drive account which had been used to share every document they have prepared, videos and recordings and the meeting minutes written for each single meeting.

 

Click here           for the interview questions.

 

 

 

Step 5: Reflection

 

Meeting 8 and 9

 

After the first research lesson, firstly they read Chapter 6

“Analyzing and Revising the Lesson”. By reading this chapter,

they learnt how to reflect on a research lesson and how to

revise the lesson. Before the first debriefing, each member of

the team watched the video of the research lesson, listened to

the recordings of the interviews, reviewed the observation

sheets and took notes.

 

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

• How did the lesson plan work?

• What positive and negative sides did it have?

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

• How did they learn?

• How did the students feel about the lesson?

• What changes should be done?

 

In these meetings, everybody in the group tried to reflect on the first research lesson. After gathering all the thoughts and suggestions, the facilitator of the group asked questions about what they have thought to change in the lesson plan. All the members tried to suggest something, but they all thought there were not a major change on the lesson plan, but there might be some minor adaptations which may give better results. Thus, they changed the duration of the group discussion parts, and they changed the questions which were unclear for the students. After revising the research lesson, they went to the demo lesson for the second cycle in Türkan’s class.

 

 

Step 6: Repeating Steps 4 and 5

 

Meeting 10, 11, 12

The second research lesson was implemented in Türkan’s class. Others were there to observe the lesson as well. Use of a timer was added to the lesson plan to track timing better for the tasks, which later is removed and timing check is left to the teacher because sharp timing did not prove of any use rather than potential waste of time. Other aspects were kept the same. Meetings were arranged after each implementation to debrief and evaluate the lesson and the findings. Third was Tunahan’s cycle with another minor change. A discussion question is moved to interview questions, which settled the lesson plan into the final version. This version was also used in Tuğçe’s cycle, which was the final step of implementation of this long journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 7: Sharing the Results

 

Meeting 13, 14

For this step, they firstly read the last chapter of Bill Cerbin’s book which is about “Documenting and Sharing Lesson Studies” and talked about the previous reports done by the previous practitioners. They discussed the analysis of four research lessons and the data collected from those lessons as well as interviews. One of the practitioners volunteered to put the experiences, procedures, thoughts and analysis on paper. After he finished writing the report, other members checked it.

 

Finishing the report, groups members discussed how to present their never-ending journey. They decided on the parts they would include in the presentation based on the time they had for it. They divided their it into four parts like: facilitator’s experience, preparing, implementing and presenting the lesson study and shared it at UTAA Third ELT Fusion.

 

Click here           for the final report.

 

Click here           for ELT Fusion PPT.