This was the TC just before Spring Break. We watched a video on a lesson study, ate cake, and overall had a relaxed and somewhat unproductive session. Here are the highlights.

Video on Lesson Study

Michael can give us the Utube link. It was a great one! Basically, this video affirmed that what we're trying to do is correct. Their goal is to design, teach, observe, analyze, revise, just like us. We realized that we still need to focus on the students:

"It's not about us it's about the students"

"It's not what you do, it's what they do"

This needs to translate to the panel. The focus must be, "The student did this" or "The student showed this".

This university had several TC's at once, which was a novel idea to us. Their TC's were also much smaller (3-5 people). An interesting phrase used to describe who participants is

Phenomenologists

Unit 2 Activity 4

Henry was observed and focused largely on having students become good graphers. The students were not interested until they were allowed to become inquisitive. Then they got very involved. Even so, most students worked individually and interaction was minimal.

Henry also tweaked the problem because he thought they were too sophisticaed to answer, so he didn't let them answer them.  However, the observers said that these were the only questions students were interested in! The observers suggested giving students more time to work things out on their own before going over the answer.

Math 25 Lesson Study