A group of four teachers who have been collaborating throughout this school year spent the day with Faye Brownlie engaging in the Lesson Study format. Lesson Study is a collaborative professional learning cycle in which teachers work together to research, plan, teach, observe, and reflect on a specific “research lesson” with the goal of improving student learning and instructional practice.

Goals for the day included:
• Exploring ways to deepen student comprehension by providing opportunities for students to interact with and respond to text.
• Discussing the structure of Literature Circles and how this approach can be used to give students meaningful opportunities to talk, think, and write about the books they are reading.
• Experiencing and reflecting on instructional structures and strategies that support comprehension development, including Say Something, Fish Bowl, and Sticky Note Writes.

This day was planned intentionally to continue the group’s focus on improving student comprehension. The guiding question the team explored was: “How might we boost background knowledge through picture books and big ideas?” The group examined how intentionally building background knowledge can positively impact students’ reading comprehension and engagement with text.

At the end of the day, each teacher committed to implementing one of the strategies shared during the lesson study. In two weeks, the group will be released for an additional hour of collaboration time to reflect on the strategy they tried, discuss student responses and outcomes, and determine next steps for continued student improvement in reading comprehension.  We will use our RFRA reading data to see if our teaching has made a difference.