Lesson Study & Visualization

Follow our Journey. Lesson Study with a Focus on Visualization.

Jugyou kenkyuu, a Japanese phrase gives us the term “Lesson Study”. Introduced in the U. S. in the late 1990s, interest in Japanese lesson study remains strong in the education world throughout the United States. Our Lesson Study this year will focus on visualization and metacognition.

Lesson Study & Mathematics

Lesson study works well across education and in particular, in improving mathematics education. We will wrap up professional summer reading on visualization in September with a look into the routines we create in classrooms that promote visualization. During “Introduction to Lesson Study” in October, we will explore what lesson study is, how it works, how to use it, and best practices with a focus on creating metacognition in students.

Pre-Lesson Study Questions

We engaged our focus group from St. Edward School in Vero Beach by asking the following questions:

What attracted you to this Lesson Study?

Overall the participants felt this lesson study would improve their ability to use visualization strategies in their own classrooms. They felt the experience would allow them to “dig deeper” into learning the best way to improve their teaching skills to build visualization.

What do you hope to learn from this Lesson Study

Participants generally responded similarly, wanting a deeper understanding of the science behind visualization, learning how to integrate visualization into their daily teaching, and using visualization to help students see concepts in a different way.

What is visualization to you?

It is creating a picture in your mind, being able to ‘see’ what you are hearing or reading to help you better understand the lesson, and it brings life to situations, assisting a student in understanding the concepts being taught.

What do you feel you already know about visualization? (before reading)

The response to this question was consistent with all participants. All felt that visualization was a way of seeing something in your mind to better or fully understand it and using it in math as well would bring life to situations and assist students in better understanding the concepts being taught.

Ideas on how to get kids to visualize math?

• Using various concrete and pictorial models
• Incorporating color in our board witing to connect ideas
• Relating ideas especially in the operations
• Have children create a short movie in their minds with each math concept so they can ‘see’ the process and verbalize it before computing

What questions do you have before we start the lesson study?

• Can all students visualize?
• How are other teachers using visualization?
• Does the brain have any physical limitations with visualizing?
• How do we teach visualization to students so they use it seamlessly when seeing a math problem?
• What forces the brain to want/have to visualize?

We will be holding a private Lesson Study at St. Edward’s School, Vero Beach, FL in September.

Follow us through this Lesson Study.

We’ll be at Oak Hill High School in Nashville, TN, October 2, 2019 – October 4, 2019. Seats still open!

Click here to register for this event and for details on this Lesson Study.